I have a selfish reason for writing this column. The thought of another four years of the orange face with dead noises emanating from it fills me with existential dread. Since I predicted Trump would win both the Republican nomination and the presidency, I’ve earned the voice to say what’s needed to get rid of the scoundrel.
Some pundit fools say the way to defeat Trump is to mock him. Sure, Mussolini was a joke…until he wasn’t. Humor keeps the decent sane; it doesn’t stop the indecent from perpetrating their insanity upon us.
The first and most urgent thing for decent people (and I don’t just mean Democrats, but Republican citizens who still have an auricle beating in their chests) to do is to disabuse themselves of the idea that Trump has been an anomaly, and that, in Biden’s words, “This isn’t who we are.”
Continuing to believe that illusion will ensure that this slow-motion diabolical drift into tyranny will continue into 2021 and beyond.
‘Autocratic’ is too nice word for Trump. A boss can be an autocratic sob, but still be good at his job. A tyrant however, which is what Trump aspires to be (aspirationally kissing Putin’s and Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s asses) is what the Donald intends to be, inciting his mob to shout “12 more years” at his zombie rallies.
Michelle Goldberg hits the nail on the head: “Trump is an aspiring fascist who would burn democracy to the ground to salve his diseased ego.”
She then exhibits the fatal flaw of Democrats and rationalists however. “A rushed Supreme Court confirmation is unlikely to help Trump electorally, because in polls a majority of Americans say the winner of the election should make the appointment.
The idea that “a majority of Americans,” as measured by scientifically based polls, matter at this point is ludicrous. Has the commentariat learned nothing from 2016?
Apparently not, for Goldberg doubles down. “Much attention is paid to Trump’s fanatical supporters, but far more people hate him than love him,” she says.
For God’s sake, this isn’t a referendum on how many people love Trump vs. how many people hate him, but whether the American people as a whole see this malignancy in the body politic for what it is and cut it out.
Just as it doesn’t take a ‘majority’ of cells in the body to produce a malignancy, it only required enough of them in the body politic to produce the cancer of Trumpism. That turned out to be about 44%.
I’m not saying that decent Americans need to irradiate the sick cells in the body politic. After all, Democrats are also infected by the same malignancy of the psyche and soul that produced the Covid and chaos-loving Trump.
Roger Cohen comes closest in the MSM to telling the truth and conveying the real and present danger of Trumpian tyranny. He quotes a friend and fellow naturalized American:
“I am baffled. I am shattered. I question my entire belief system, my trust in America, my darling adoptive country: Was I too naïve? Too idealistic? Too young? Too stupid? The hardest part for me to understand is not the one lunatic, not the one certifiably, wickedly twisted mind, but all of his enablers, all of his supporters. Who are they? How are so many of them even possible?”
That is the question. Having been a voice in the wilderness addressing it long before Trump was elected (not by fluke but by fait accompli, since the underlying cause was ignored and denied), I don’t take any pleasure or pride in having predicted that Trump would win the presidency and that things would come to this.
Once again then, before it is too late, here is my diagnosis and prescription for eradicating this cancer.
Every person and every people have an essential intactness from their birth as a person or a people. Call it essence, or soul, or simply indivisible wholeness. We can commit many mistakes and do many wrongs, but if we lose this ineffable quality, we are dead as people.
Once that happens, as it did nearly 30 years ago in America, the only way to regain our soul is to fully acknowledge and mourn its loss, and want its recovery more than our lives themselves.
Therefore the truth goes beyond Trump’s minions and millions of supporters. Our essential intactness as a people was lost during the first Bush Administration, and we ran on the fumes of triumphalism over the USSR through the rest of the decade, until 9.11 brought it all literally crashing down.
Even then nationalism and militarism, rather than an intelligent response to global terrorism, carried the day for another 15 years, through the Obama interregnum.
In short, leave out the spiritual dimension, as Christian evangelical supporters of Trump have most ironically and calculatingly done, and the metaphysical evil of Trumpism “will be a continuation.”
If just 50 Americans take this truth to heart, Trump will be defeated. But even if 50 million Americans march in the streets without minding the heart of the people within themselves, Trump may well win another term and consolidate despotism in America.
Martin LeFevre
