(NOTE: This column was filed before a New York City jury on Thursday returned guilty verdicts on 34 felony charges against Donald Trump.)
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Well, it isn’t as though we haven’t been warned.
Some of us, believing that common sense — even common decency — would ultimately prevail, continue to expect the best in the face of the worst. The good old USA has been through a whole lot, they say, and we’ll get through this.
Others, believing their political opponents are always wrong and seething with anger at the changing faces of their country, talk of “derangement syndrome.” They are willing to pass off former President Donald Trump’s vulgar threats to judges, insults to women, “Muslim bans,” “Mexican rapists” and unhinged suggestions that a gulp of bleach could end a deadly pandemic. His boast that a third term, the Constitution notwithstanding, is part of his plan doesn’t faze them.
Still others believe our courts will enforce the rule of law against our authoritarian and his lawless acolytes, even as he stood outside his courtroom mouthing the endless lies of a lifelong con man who promises to pardon the men and women convicted of mounting an insurrection to overturn an election he lost. He knows democracy works on the honor system and he has none.
Some contend the old man in the White House is the problem. President Joe Biden is too feeble, too liberal, a destroyer of some idealized vision of America that never was and never will be. It’s all about the economy, they say. But after a prolonged pandemic that our authoritarian mishandled with deadly consequences, the U.S. economy is doing quite well.
As The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell notes: “In reality, the U.S. economy has been growing consistently for nearly two years, even after accounting for inflation. By virtually every benchmark, in fact, we’re exceeding growth expectations. The U.S. economy has been outperforming other advanced economies. We’re also doing better than pre-pandemic forecasts had situated us by now, both in terms of gross domestic product and the number of jobs out there. This generally isn’t true elsewhere in the world.”
But those are facts, not the hard liquor of grievance that powers authoritarian politics.
It’s not as though Trump hasn’t told us he plans to be a dictator — only for a day he confidently proclaims — and such talk is easy for some to dismiss, but only if you don’t listen to the detailed plans for his second term. He’s really not going to destroy the nonpartisan civil service, is he? Those mass deportations and internment camps are just campaign season talk, aren’t they? Withdrawal from NATO: Can he do that? Wholesale pardons? Surely not.
Sure he provides a platform for white nationalist racism and posts a video saying all liberals will die when he’s back in power, but that’s just the way he talks, right? Claims of total immunity? Not to worry. The courts won’t let anything really, really bad happen, will they?
He talks of “human scum” and tells supporters he will deport all the pro-Palestinian protesters while courting Wall Street and Big Oil with promises of more tax cuts and more warming of the climate. But he was good for business, wasn’t he? At least his tax cuts worked for the people who frequent his golf courses.
Trump has outsourced his plans for another term, such as they are, to the Heritage Foundation, which has produced “Project 2025,” an ultra-right-wing manifesto that proposes to be the playbook for an authoritarian American state: Eliminate public education, white Christian Nationalism, further restrict abortion, deport millions and institute a loyalty test for anyone in the federal government. The “project” is our “Mein Kampf” for the 21st century.
Of course, it’s not like he has any real plan to improve anything. But that’s not the point, is it? He makes some of us feel really good by saying outrageous things and giving a middle finger to all the old complications of democracy. He speaks for me, some say, when he speaks of hatred and revenge and attacks a “crooked” legal system that strangely is best exemplified by his Supreme Court, which reeks of the entitlement, arrogance and elitism that his supporters believe he’ll eviscerate.
After promising to destroy 50 years of established law concerning abortion, he now has no straight answer about whether he’d support a national ban or how he feels about contraception. Testimony at his recent trial confirmed he didn’t wear a condom with the porn star, so perhaps we have his views on the subject.
As Marianne Levine wrote in The Washington Post: “In under 48 hours this week, Donald Trump’s social media account promoted a video featuring a term frequently associated with Nazi Germany and later removed it. He suggested he was open to states restricting access to contraceptives and then walked that back. He falsely accused President Biden of being ‘locked & loaded’ to ‘take me out.’ And in between, he was in court as his legal team rested its case in his ongoing criminal trial.”
It isn’t as though we haven’t been warned.
“His campaign speeches these days ring with Nazi rhetoric,” The Guardian’s Margaret Sullivan wrote this week, “as he claims that immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood of our country’ and that his political opponents are ‘vermin.’ ”
Trump recently posted a video calling for a “unified Reich.” This language isn’t any longer a mere dog whistle, it is a blaring claxon. And it is working with many of his followers who willingly embrace his brand of American fascism.
To understand the appeal of what has happened one must understand the history of authoritarian movements, as the great British journalist and writer George Orwell understood them in the 1930s and later.
In his famous 1940 review of Adolf Hitler’s manifesto — the aforementioned “Mein Kampf” — Orwell wrote: “The initial, personal cause of his grievance against the universe can only be guessed at; but at any rate the grievance is here. He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon.”
The appeal of the authoritarian is visceral and very personal, Orwell said, for “Hitler could not have succeeded against his many rivals if it had not been for the attraction of his own personality, which one can feel even in the clumsy writing of ‘Mein Kampf,’ and which is no doubt overwhelming when one hears his speeches. … The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. One feels it again when one sees his photographs … a pathetic, dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs. In a rather more manly way, it reproduces the expression of innumerable pictures of Christ crucified, and there is little doubt that that is how Hitler sees himself.”
Our authoritarian has, of course, repeatedly compared himself to Jesus.
It isn’t as though we haven’t been warned.
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Additional Reading:
A few other items worthy of your time …
How Paul Manafort Tried to Make Money With a Project Supposedly Tied to the Chinese Regime
I grant you that it is difficult to keep track of all the con men, grifters, low lifes and convicted felons in Trump World. But never forget Paul Manafort, among the sleaziest bottom feeders in American political history.
Manafort, convicted of assorted felony crimes during the Trump Administration, was ultimately pardoned by Trump largely, one assumes, for keeping his mouth shut concerning the role he played in handling Trump campaign material, including polling information, over to a known Russian agent. Someday we may know the full story. Today we know Manafort is back in Trump World, as greasy as ever. David Corn has a summary.
“A more recent Manafort business venture—unknown to the public—raises further questions about him and his attempt to return to the Trump fold. According to documents obtained by Mother Jones—including a memo written by Manafort—two years ago, Manafort was trying to orchestrate a $250 million deal to create a streaming service in China in a project that he asserted was blessed by the Chinese government and that was partnering with a Chinese telecommunications firm sanctioned by the US government.”
Is this the point where we recall that Trump World spends almost as much time fixated on China as it does the southern border, yet a guy reported to be helping Trump at this summer’s GOP convention is trying to do big dollar deals in … China?
Trump supporters call for riots and violent retribution after verdict
While most of us continue to live our lives with some belief that all the wild talk is just that – wild talk. I submit this is a mistake. This stuff is increasingly serious, increasingly ugly and increasingly dangerous.
“After Trump became the first U.S. president to be convicted of a crime, his supporters responded with dozens of violent online posts, according to a Reuters review of comments on three Trump-aligned websites: the former president’s own Truth Social platform, Patriots.Win and the Gateway Pundit.”
And this: “Jacob Ware, a co-author of the book ‘God, Guns, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America,” said the violent language used by Trump’s followers was testament to the former president’s ‘ironclad ability to mobilize more extreme supporters to action, both at the ballot box and through violence.'”
The story from Reuters. It not like we haven’t been warned.
Mansfield and Dirksen
I was interviewed for another podcast this week, this time for the New Books Network.
And speaking of podcasts …
I’ve really been enjoying the 99% Invisible podcast episodes are the remarkable Robert Caro book The Power Broker.
The series host Roman Mars is joined by the incredibly funny and articulate writer and comedian Elliott Kalan to dissect the massive book about New Yorker Robert Moses, the man who made or remade New York City from the 1930s to the 1960s.
Caro published The Power Broker in 1974 and won the Pulitzer Prize for his examination of how Moses, with the innocuous sounding title of parks commissioner, amassed vast political power and used it, at times, viciously, to create the Big Apple.
The series is extraordinarily interesting. Here’s a link to the website.
Thanks for reading. Take this political moment very seriously. All the best.