If you were to look at the United States from far away, you might think, “Hey, that country runs off of a capitalistic society in which their GDP is the most important thing to their current state of existence.”
That statement right there is what got Donald Trump elected to the presidency, my friends.
You'll notice that I qualified that this is only the way that the US appears from a distance. This is because any person who is educated about the way in which we as a country were designed to function should know that we, as a capitalistic and democratic society, can’t depend purely on GDP and allow a totalitarian CEO to come in and run the country like it’s their own personal business. If you don’t currently see why that’s not an acceptable course of action for our nation, allow me to explain.
To start off with, a democracy and a business are run in the exact opposite order: a democracy being run in an upside-down pyramid shape and a business in a regular pyramid shape. In other words, in a democracy, the people are at the very top and the president or other leader is at the very bottom. This is because a democratic nation is supposed to be ruled and determined by the people and the president is merely an organizer who is meant to help guide the government and assure that it acts in the peoples' best interests. On the contrary, a business is meant to be ruled by the CEO or leader. In this model, the CEO has all the control and makes all the decisions, perhaps taking into consideration the thoughts and needs of others lower than him in the company. In this model, the every-day workers who come in and work their asses off for the company mean literally nothing to the CEO, who views them all extremely replaceable.
Tell me, which pyramid would you like to live under?
Well, as an American citizen, you automatically have the right to live under the democratic pyramid that our country was founded on, and which is established by the United States Constitution. This fact seems to be quite lost on the current President. Aside from the fact that it goes against the structure of government set up by the Constitution and literally destroys what we would call a democratic nation, running the country like a business also means making shady deals to earn more money. It means lacking any kind of ethics and going straight for the gold. During Donald Trump’s campaign in the 2016 election, one of his main selling points was that he was going to eradicate the big powers of Wall Street and give the money he was going to make all back to the every day people (who he didn’t previously care about at all)— of course this didn’t actually happen. Personally, I didn’t know how the millions of people who voted for him didn’t see it coming. Donald Trump IS Wall Street! Are any of you aware where Trump Tower stands?
Anyone?
No?
IT'S IN NEW YORK, ON WALL STREET, RIGHT NEXT TO ALL THE BANKS HE PROMISED TO TAX AND DESTROY. The sad fact is that Wall Street actually can’t be dismantled. The entities that make up Wall Street that are government-protected by the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. This was an act put in place during the real estate crash of 2008 and occurred because all of the major banks would have gone bankrupt if it had not been enacted. Though seemingly necessary at the time, what this now means for the economy is that the banks can never lose. No matter how poor the people are, no matter what big banks as entities have done wrong, they will always remain. You might argue, “Well, Donald Trump as President can just revoke that act and then he can destroy Wall Street!”
No. No. No. Absolutely not.
You see, this would never happen because Wall Street drives the stock market-- not to mention that it's where all of Donald Trump’s wealthiest friends reside. He would never abolish the act. The problem that people never seemed to grasp is that you can’t send a big business Wall Streeter into the government expecting them to hurt Wall Street. Trump was never going to do anything that would jeopardize his connections and the way he personally runs his own privatized business-- which he still owns and controls, by the way. He was never going to give the money back to the people. That’s why, at this point, he has continued to over-tax blue collar workers and create tax breaks for the wealthiest of Americans. That’s why every Executive Order he’s made is in the interest of some big business.
The point of this article is not just to rant or display my obvious disagreements with who this country elected as their President, but also to demonstrate that the reasoning behind why Trump was elected is flawed. There is a severe lack of awareness concerning how we should actually be functioning based on our status as a developed democracy, which also happens to be the wealthiest country in the world. Many people are afraid that if we don’t continue to run the country as a business, we’ll lose money and our world status will dissipate. This is entirely untrue. We currently have the most ineffective national budget of any of the developed nations in the world. What we really need is for our citizens, our professionals, and our leaders to be more educated about the structure of an effective democratic government, to put stock in that systems, and to care just a little bit more about each other. The next time you go to vote on any measure, think about what it will actually mean for you and for all of your fellow human beings.
