My criticism of Donald Trump, if anyone would like to know

A tax rebel fighting a collector during Shays' Rebellion. Opposition to central government
precedes the presidency itself in American history. (Newsela)

Since taking office, President Trump has made it an almost hourly ritual to check in with who's the latest person with whom he's come to loggerheads. I've had periodic arguments with a coworker whose main criticism has been that his disgraceful behaviour fails to "bring the country together". Yesterday I made the the point that there is no such thing as that. We have a nation where there will always be a natural strain of rebels, right or wrong. 

Dissent is innate to American politics
Most Americans are not aware that the "filibuster" was originally a term for freebooter American adventurers that broke with official policy in the 1850s to invade Central American states like Nicaragua. Most Americans are not aware that in the early days of the United States the union was almost undone by Shays' Rebellion of 1786-87 and the Whisky Rebellion of 1794. John Fries, one of those that was charged with putting down the Whisky Rebellion, later launched his own from 1799-1800. The president at the time of the last two of these revolts was the great icon American values George Washington, while during the Filibuster era the weaklings Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan were in office. Let's not forget also that in the run-up to World War II President Roosevelt was contending with the likes of the isolationists like legendary pilot and US Senator Charles Lindbergh as well as extremist preacher Father Charles Coughlin.

Why am I mentioning all of those figures? It's not because I oppose the president as such, but for those of you that do perhaps you should find a substantive reason why. Personal allegations against Donald Trump exist, and they range from the verifiably awful (Trump University) to the ludicrously libelous (Christopher Steele Pee Dossier). The issue with criticizing a president over personal misconduct that his opponents should pay attention to is that not a single chief executive has been removed from office over it. There were some like the corrupt Warren Harding that died in office before anything could be done, and in the one exception there is Richard Nixon who eventually resigned.

And what about those of you that really really hate Trump? The only president to be assassinated for a known political motive was William McKinley who was murdered by anarchist Charles Guiteau and replaced by the much more well-known Theodore Roosevelt. James Garfield was murdered in 1881 by a disgruntled fellow Republican incensed that he didn't receive a job under the patronage system.

The fact of the matter is that if you have a beef with the president, the most tried and proven way to remove him from office is through the ballot box. We still have two living presidents that were voted out of office before winning two terms, Jimmy Carter and George HW Bush. How did that happen? Well, their challengers Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton did not rage out over "locker room talk" or "adult day care", rather they presented a well-crafted and conceived alternative. So to get you guys started I picked out a number of areas where I already have deep philosophical differences with this administration.

Military spending hikes

In July prompted by Trump the House of Representatives approved a $68 billion increase in military spending. This was in fulfillment of the president's campaign promise to grow the military in the style of Ronald Reagan. Trump fans love it when Trump appears to come through on his promises, but in this case it clashes with one of his other ones: reducing the national debt and avoiding foreign entanglements. Military spending spikes, in the minds of many debt-monitoring small government advocates like me, cater to the corporate welfare wing of the GOP and their military industrial complex lobbyists. Unfortunately for him, such demented concessions have not earned him the acceptance of that same wing of the party fronted by such neo-conservative warmongers as Bill Kristol and Sen. John McCain. 

Tremendous coddling of the oil and mineral mining interests

Big Oil can do well without government help. It's arguable whether Trump's extreme pro-coal, fracking, and oil domestic energy policy is good long term economics, but it is a an approach that has worked in the past. When it comes to foreign policy however oil interests are a toxic plague. Donald Trump appointed Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as his secretary of state and under him the United States signed an arms deal worth up to $110 billion ostensibly to fight Iran, but more directly to sustain their bloody war in neighboring Yemen. This type of traditionally byzantine strategy towards relations in the Middle East has only led to more entanglements and is why our forces have had to intervene in Iraq on 3 separate occasions. If the United States wants to break with the nation building foreign policy we must end foreign and military aid as it is today; those countries that do want American arms must purchase them in a more straightforward manner rather than through corporate welfare endowments that prop up defence contractors.

Non-pursuit of politician criminals

During the election Democrats and their media fleas acted shocked and indignant when the Trump campaign and its supporters would chant "Lock her up" regarding Hillary Clinton and her email scandal. Since then it has been revealed that the Justice Department under Loretta Lynch and the FBI under James Comey dramatically put their thumbs on the scales of investigations into Clinton  with Comey going so far as to call press conferences both in July 2016 and the week before the November election of that year. This conduct was so unusual that both Trump and Clinton have blamed Comey for various aspects of what happened during the election, with Clinton even claiming that the FBI director was responsible for her loss.   

Under new Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director Christopher Wray the Justice Department has been slow in pursuing a number of scandals both fresh and stale:

• The non-prosecution of IRS official Lois Lerner who had under Barack Obama harassed activist groups with audits in the run-up to the 2012 election. This was actually (for a change) a matter that Republican congressional investigators had succesfully produced evidence to indicate a prosecutable offense.
• In a related matter Trump has failed to take action to fire IRS Director John Koskinen, Lerner's boss. Since then the IRS has allowed the tax information of hundreds of thousands of Americans to be leaked and awarded a no-bid contract to the now scandal-plagued credit agency Equifax.
• On the topic of the Clinton investigation Trump has told voters to "ask Jeff Sessions" and  not committed to appointing a special prosecutor like he had promised during the election. 

These investigations and prosecutions, if not executed, will further the perception that Trump may actually be a creature of the same corrupt Washington "swamp" that he constantly rails against.

Many of you probably don't agree with my criticisms of Donald Trump, but you should at least accept that they are valid policy issues. I urge you to examine his policies on trade, the Federal Reserve, environment and more that speak to you, because in the interest of time I only featured a small portion of the areas where I think Trump is doing a poor job.