Death of a Nation

     I don't know if there's a word for nation-killing. The obvious choice would be patricide but that's already taken for the murder of one's father.
     Whatever the word is, Donald Trump is committing it. Slowly. And if he isn't stopped by Senate Democrats or his own insiders through the 25th Amendment, the last thing Lady Liberty will see is his perfect white teeth and bloated umber face.
     I remember not so long ago when Republicans were whipping themselves into a spittle-flecked frenzy over President Obama's executive orders. Executive orders are, of course, part of the job description of the leader of the Free World. However, they're largely nonbinding, just strongly-worded suggestions rather than royal declarations or papal bulls.
     Donald Trump seems to think one can run the country by executive order only, as if he was still the CEO of the Trump Organization and not the POTUS. We're just eight days into this Mordor administration and Trump's already signed more executive orders than most people can count. And that's more in keeping with a dictator issuing unilatetal royal proclamations than a democratically-elected President.
     As Learn Progress writes, "These executive orders are causing chaos in the White House. But Trump and Bannon are more worried about creating the illusion that the administration is getting a lot done." They're also designed, they say, to give Trump's ignorant goober supporters the illusion that he's keeping his campaign promises.
     And he certainly is, even to the point of blocking legal immigrants and travelers from the seven countries Trump had designated in his hit list (despite not a single one of those nations being tied to any terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11). The nations in question are Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and Libya. (Iran has already responded with a ban of its own on Americans entering their country, thereby undoing whatever tentative steps the Obama administration had made in reopening diplomatic relations with Tehran.)
     The problem is that Trump's not even reading these pieces of paper that he thinks is actionable law because they're written by neo Nazi Breitbart CEO Steve Bannon and Stephan Miller. These directives, written without even first consulting with the agencies that would be directly and indirectly affected by these royal proclamations, aren't even read by Trump. Just barely 150 hours into this administration, they're causing major turmoil in the White House and are already resulting in legal challenges from all over the nation.
     These decrees cut funding to cities with refugee shelter programs (Boston Mayor Marty Walsh showed some serious backbone today when he defied Trump's edicts and said he'd open up Boston City Hall on Beacon Hill to legitimate refugees, including his own office). They also block the entry of legal immigrants with green cards and visas issued by the State Department. Seven Muslim travelers coming back to the US were detained and prevented from boarding a flight leaving Cairo and two Iraqi travelers (one of whom having worked with the US government for a decade and has a family here) were detained at Terminal 4 at JFK.
     In other words, Trump has abjured the honeymoon phase and got straight into the spousal abuse. He's thus far, and will for the foreseeable future, bypassed a supine Republican-dominated Congress, government agencies, the judiciary and every other check and balance that, you would think, would still be in effect. That makes Trump a dictator and a tyrant.
     Thank you, Trump backers. You wanted President Goodbar, now you have him.