A few days ago, I came across an article by Brian Stelter of CNN. He is the host of Reliable Sources on CNN.
His article started with the following paragraph of a quoted short statement: "Our country will not survive this."
As I continued to read the article, I realized that it wasn't even from his reliable sources. The statement was picked out of an interview that Donald Trump gave to a different medium.
The statement first shocked me. Then learning who said it failed to surprise me.
Then I asked myself what parameters or metrics make a country stand and survive. My mind first went to its constitution. I am unaware of any constitutional change between the time Donald Trump took office and since he left office. So, the constitution couldn't be a source of alarm.
Then my mind went to the 50 States in the federated union that makes the United States of America. I couldn't remember if any current Governor of any of the States has been accused of being an illegitimate governor.
Then my mind went to the U.S. Congress, including the 100 Senators and the 435 or so House of Representatives. Again, I couldn't remember if any current Senator or House Representative has been accused of being an illegitimate legislator.
For all I know, all the Governors, Senators, and Representatives are undertaking their constitutional duties daily in a healthy democracy with differences in policy opinions.
I also remembered clearly that the highest guardian of the law of the land, the Supreme Court, is functional albeit with variant interpretations of the law of the land by its members.
Last but not least, I remembered the Executive Branch with 15 or so Cabinet Secretaries. The President and Vice President were elected through a widely acknowledged democratic process and the Cabinet Secretaries were duly appointed and doing government businesses on a daily basis.
On top of all these, I quickly thought of the opportunity for all the citizens of the Union to change their government down the road, including the potential to reelect Donald Trump himself. That opportunity for all the citizens to exercise that right in about three years also looked to be wide open.
Then, I stepped outside the sphere of government to the wealthiest corporations in the world that I have heard about. I quickly remembered Boeing, Apple, Amazon, Tesla, and WalMart, among others.
By all these measures, I failed to figure out how it could occur to any American citizen's faculty that his "country will not survive."
Then again, remembering that it came from Donald Trump's faculty, I failed to be surprised. Instead, it sounded to me that it may be reflective of a transition to an acceptance stage that he lost in a democratic election.
While democrats accept a win or a loss promptly, it doesn't come to dictators naturally. It is my understanding that in the long history of human progress, democracy has been the victor whereas dictators and dictatorships have been footnotes in history even if those footnotes have been colossal in various cases.
Given that long history of human progress, an affront to democracy can only emanate from an unbelievable level of subconsciousness to it.
In 1997, a Native American stated in Denver, Colorado, at a conference of student scholars that America's founders learned the process of peaceful transfer of power from a cultural ritual of Native Americans overseen by a Native American woman. The presenter added that there is a statue in Washington, DC, as a gesture to show that cultural lesson. I have no reason to second guess the statement made at that conference.
The ritual that some American leaders respected and accepted in the 18th century became unacceptable to its dictator in the 21st century for a long while.
If the above statement by the same dictator can be characterized as a mere acceptance of a loss in a democratic election, it may only mean that dictatorship failed and progress became triumphant in America. In the progress of democracy that defined what it means to be humans millennia ago, Donald Trump as a citizen of the United States of America is no more or less entitled to citizenship rights than Colin Kaepernick, to take one example.
As a discredited and tainted dictator, if the American people happen to give him another chance to lead down the road, he may be no more or less entitled to head of State rights than those European heads of State that he was seen pushing over during a meeting there.
On the other hand, if his statement is his personal reflection that the U.S. can not hold back a rising China, and that the former can not remain a sole global power, and that it is in a position to cave into the challenge, I am not qualified to qualify that reflection because I have little reading about it. I can only add China's public pronouncement that it refrains from interfering in the internal affairs of other States. That sounds like a statement from an adult in the room, a standard it can be held to and it can call on others, including the U.S., to be held to as well.
In the final analysis, whether Donald Trump's statement that Brian Stelter quoted is reflective of the former's view of domestic affairs or international affairs, it sounds to me that such is suggestive of the failure of dictatorship and the triumph of progress in America. To the extent that it has claimed moral authority for the progress of democracy for long, its weaknesses notwithstanding, the failure of all inclinations toward dictatorship spearheaded by Donald Trump in such a pivotal place is a triumph toward progress globally.