It is common to over-react to politicians in the present. Three years after Trump leaves office few citizens will be able to name a single thing he said or did.

Politics is the stage where our groups moral battles take place. And most people imagine that political disagreements are bad or debilitating. Quite the opposite is true. Moral arguments and heated political confrontations prove to us that our democracy is alive and well.

It is only by this method that the larger population is drawn in and contributes to settling social issues.

The nations that have no open political debate are the non-democracies.

It is always necessary to evaluate cyclical events in America. Each president can follow a different policy and doctrine. Trump is a politician who tends to look at issues from an economic and commercial perspective. It is therefore very difficult to reconcile his movements with the science of politics and to achieve long-term results. Once Trump is gone and a different president is replaced, we will be talking about different concepts this time

Well I am afrai it appears to be somewhat global, yet a regional reality in several parts of this world, in particular South East AND Western Europe: we in Germany suffer as much from rightwing fascist movements as it seems the case in the US. Luckily, dumbness does not pay off too well, I am hopeful :)

Stephen: do you think Trumpism is an ephemeral trend? Think about Nazism and Hitler, McCarthyism and its dark years, Thatcherism....

Do not you think the threat is real?

Mehmet: The business of America is business as Taft once put it. Do not you think that his extreme views may change the world as we know nowadays?

Plato once thought that democracy leads to tyranny. Somehow the rule of the majority will lead to a cult figure that embodies the popular trend of a particular time. Hitler rose in a democracy, and now Trump is doing the same thing. Can we fix this major loophole in our modern day democracy? And in trying to fix it, are we not acting like tyrants?

Francois Sebastien Bouali I think TRUMPISM is a figment of over-worrying imaginations. All presidents have followings and every one of them enjoys a small cadre of hero-worshipers convinced they will save the world...

As well as a cadre of detractors convinced they are destroying the universe.

Both views are wildly exaggerated.

Trump is putting forth no coherent policy that merits an eponymous title.

His policies are almost identical to Obama's and G. W. Bush's. Both predecessors built barriers on the southern border and deported illegal immigrants, both ran enormous deficits, both increased domestic spending across the board, (as Trump is doing) and both increased military spending and continued America's never ending wars in the Middle East.

If you could see only the policies without knowing the president's name behind it, you'd find the activities of the current administration as INDISTINGUISHABLE from his recent predecessors.

The government at Washington is an enormous multi-Trillion dollar on-going concern employing over two-million people spread across half a continent - - -

It can only be marginally effected by any given office-holder.

Both Trump's detractors and his supporters keep their political bases energized, revved up, and foaming at the mouth by portraying him as the Devil by his opponents or as the Messiah by his supporters.

The same will be done again when a democrat gains the White House in 2024.

The spectacle is quite amusing, but hardly novel or dangerous.

You recalled the quote "THE BUSINESS OF AMERICA IS BUSINESS" (I think t was Coolidge who said it) ... these words are as true today as they were a century ago when first uttered.

America is its people and its businesses ... it is production and innovation .... what it's government is up to on any given day is just a thin and over-rated veneer atop a very creative and progressive culture.

Trump is merely a bubble floating atop a raging river who claims to be directing the current.

He is more colorful perhaps ... more obnoxious and more flamboyant... but a mere bubble just being carried along none-the-less.

If he actually reduced the deficits, ended the wars, or altered America's interventionist foreign policies it would be something to take notice of.... but there is little chance of any of that happening.

I slightly disagree with you on two points. First, Trump's rhetoric and actions are very divisive. Americans are deliberately against each other and Trump is always a victim of the swamp or the deep state.

Second, His policy has a clear outline to my mind: Destroy the institution (FBI, CIA, Judicial system, the news) a core component of any democratic society and establish the autocratic Hitler/Mussolini like system of the hero/savior that is going to make America great again.

Francois Sebastien Bouali All government agencies are fueled by the same thing: MONEY.

After the Vietnam war, American liberals tried to reign in the policing agencies of the state. They wanted to reduce the power of the FBI/CIA and other spy agencies. They went about it in two ways, one was very ineffective, the other was very effective.

The ineffective way was to pass innumerable laws about what the people in the CIA or FBI could do, limiting who they could snoop on, and how and where resources could be spent in spying on everyone. Congress tried to REGULATE them into submission. This always fails.

Such paper chains are always broken or ignored or gotten around and are invariably ineffective.

The second method was far more effective. Congress simply cut the amount of money going to the FBI/CIA/NSA the military etc.

This is the action that sends shivers through the spine of every bureaucrat -- this is what really works.

Government needs funds to support its activities. If you want to undermine or weaken a government agency, you simply cut its funding.

Donald Trump has not moved to reduce the spending of any government agency of any kind. Certainly not of any government policing, spying or military agency.

And Americans seem no more against-each-other today than at any other time in my life. TV news promotes division and focuses on troubles. But most American communities are harmonious and peaceful. Turn off the TV and life is good.

We have to keep in mind that no matter how big our armies are .... those on the right will still demand we need more tanks and subs.... they will never say

"STOP GIVING US SO MUCH MONEY - OUR MILITARY IS BIG ENOUGH."

And those on the left will never say

PLEASE DON'T GIVE US ANY MORE MONEY FOR FOOD STAMPS OR CHILD CARE ... WE HAVE ENOUGH.

Governance is the process of problem solving ... and the governors remain employed and in power by telling everyone that there are monstrous problems facing us that need solving. And, the solution is always found by giving government more money and more power.

It was the same 25 years ago and it will be the same 25 years from now.

Trump just occupies the leading role in our stage-play today.

In a few years it will be someone else.

But as long as the civilian economy grows faster than the government that is forever trying to control, regulate, and direct it .... we'll be OK.