Remember: "Here, the People Rule"

In 2006, Donald Trump announced that he wanted to turn six hundred acres of farmland and sand dunes in Aberdeen, Scotland into a billion dollar golf course. His plan didn't make much sense. The dunes were supposed to be protected from development. The perfect view Trump imagined for the golfers was going to be obstructed by an upcoming wind turbine project. The links would be covered by a cold fog most of the year. And most importantly, some people already lived on the land — if the golf course was built, they would be forced to move.

But Trump assured the community that the golf course would be a boon to the local economy. It would bring thousands of jobs to Aberdeen — the farmers and fishermen that were to be displaced, he argued, could be hired to serve all of the wealthy people that would flock to the small coastal community to enjoy the Trump International Golf Links.

The local planning board didn't buy his sales pitch. Its leader, Martin Ford, convinced his colleagues that Trump's promises were ridiculously implausible.

But Trump didn't respect Aberdeen enough to come back to the board with a revised proposal. Instead, he went behind the community's back and pulled strings with the national government to veto the community's decision. It worked — he was given the green light to build his golf course in 2008.

But some residents of Aberdeen still stood in Trump's path. He thought he could get them out of the way by buying them out. But this didn't work — many refused to sell their homes.

So Trump started playing hardball. After one couple, Susie and John Munro, turned down Trump's offer to purchase their home, he had his team build a two-story-high hill in their front yard, causing flooding.

When David and Moira Milne fought back against Trump's encroachment on their property line, he offered cash, jewelry, a golf membership and spa privileges in exchange for their home. When they refused, Trump ripped out a fence near their house, installed his own, and sent the Milnes a bill for the cost of the installation. When the Milnes refused to pay, Trump had a row of trees planted to block their view of the sea. When the trees died, he planted another row.

When fisherman and farmer Michael Forbes refused to sell his home, Trump told the press that Forbes lived “like a pig" in "a slum" that was "obliterating" the views from his luxury hotel. Forbes responded by painting "NO MORE TRUMP LIES" on one of his buildings. Trump responded, according to Forbes, by disrupting a water pipe leading to his property, leaving Forbes and his 92-year-old mother without clean drinking water for years.

Having failed to buy off or bully the residents of Aberdeen, Trump started pursuing a strategy of "compulsory purchase" — a Scottish legal maneuver similar to eminent domain that would force them out of their homes. When their neighbors got word, they banded together to put their names on Trump-targeted deeds — a counter-maneuver that would make it more complicated for Trump to seize their property.

Trump even bullied the Scottish government over the wind farm, suing to block the turbines. He began lying to the press about having been promised by the government that the wind project would be cancelled. He took out ads opposing the turbines in local papers and even gave political leaders who supported wind energy mean nicknames, like "Mad Alex."

Trump was able to get the golf course opened in 2012. But reality, of course, caught up to him. In its first four years, Trump International lost $7 million dollars. Scottish conservation groups discovered that the golf course was breaking rules on sewage pollution, groundwater, and dune preservation. Of the $1.5 billion in investment, 6,000 jobs, two golf courses, and 450-room hotel that Trump promised Aberdeen officials in 2008, he has delivered on only $100 million in investment, 150 jobs, one golf course and a 16-room boutique hotel.

As expected, Trump's very unpopular in Aberdeen today: when 500,000 Brits signed a petition to bar Trump from the country in 2016, the highest concentration of signatures came from the community. “Nobody wants him around," one Aberdeen resident told The New York Times. "He refuses to see or refuses to accept what is reality.”

This is who Donald Trump is. He's a rich bully who despises ordinary people. He hates when citizens make their voice heard. He hates when neighbors come together to assert home rule over their own land, their own communities, and their own homes. He is an elitist so disconnected from the mainstream that he thinks folks would want to trade their hometown for some jewelry and spa passes, because the only freedom he can wrap his head around is the freedom to consume his own products.

The whole episode reminds me of a scene from A Man for All Seasons. After Richard Rich is appointed to a high and mighty position in Wales in exchange for falsely testifying against St. Thomas More, More asks him: "Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for Wales?"

Here we wonder: "Why Donald, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for a golf course?"

But in many ways, making golf courses — astroturfing our commonwealth so that rich and powerful people have more walled-off space to do their bidding — is what Donald Trump is all about. It's why he's used his power over these past two years to help low-wage behemoths squeeze their workers, oil barons aggravate the climate catastrophe, insurance giants block national health security, monopolists stiff their customers, chauvinist bosses sustain their harassment, absentee landlords evict their tenants, cruel jailers lock up children, and wealthy donors transfer public money from the many to the few.

And just like he did to the "pig" fisherman from the Aberdeen "slum,” whenever Trump's about to be held to account, he starts calling people names, And if his taunts can divide us up — say, by emboldening racists across the country — the better Trump can distract us from his con.

Michael Forbes and the Munros and the Milnes and the planning board and the Scottish conservationists fought back. But for the people of Aberdeen, it might be too late.

But for us, it’s not too late. Trump and his complicit Congress may be part way through turning our beloved country into the biggest Trump International yet, but the job’s not complete. We have time to turn the tide.

But we must do as the proud residents of Aberdeen did. We must come together to show Trump that here, the people rule — that the beauty of America is that we exist not for the golfers in the luxury hotels, but for the citizens whose power and purpose obliterates the plutocrats’ pristine views.

Go Vote!