Daddy's Mad

One more full week of madness to go, presumably followed by several more weeks of madness. After that, a potential further four years of insanity, followed by who the hell know what? The longer I hang around these parts, the more depressed I get about who we are and what the hell we’re doing with ourselves.

Trump has been waxing nostalgic on the campaign trail, apparently saddened that his decade-long presidential campaign is coming to an end. The larger question is whether Trumpism will be coming to an end in the event of a Trump loss. Can a cult of personality survive without the personality?

I’m obviously no historian but when I think about the long-term success of mass populist movements, it seems like the historical bag is mixed. Both Soviet and Chinese communism survived the deaths of their initial leaders. So has North Korean fascism. The mullahs in Iran have also held onto power over the last several decades despite growing unrest. Naziism died out after WWII but appears to be making a small comeback in Germany and in pockets around the Western world, including the US. Latin America continues to see populist leaders pop up now and again until they mutate into autocracies or get overthrown in various military coups. British fascism also sparks up now and again but has, thankfully, never taken hold, perhaps because it never had a dynamic movement leader. Nigel Farage? About as charismatic as a damp sponge.

At home, we’ve had our own flirtations with regressive populist movements in the past, but none have been as successful as Trumpism. Like all of you, I’ve spent the previous decade watching, with horror, as about half of the American population has been taken in by this horror show. A movement based on fear, anger, hostility, and hatred. A movement that promises the world but whose adherents expect it to deliver nothing beyond vitriol and retribution.

What were the great Trump policies of his first term?

It’s true that he rode a good economy for three years – an economy he inherited from Barack Obama – but it’s also true that he bungled the covid crisis so badly that he destroyed every job created during his term. It’s true that the United States didn’t launch any new wars during the Trump administration, but it’s also true we haven’t launched any during the Biden administration. Yes, Putin invaded Ukraine and we have supported Ukraine. Yes, Hamas attacked Israel and we have supported Israel. Trump’s argument that neither of those wars would have started if he’d still been in charge rings hollow for me. He doesn’t know what would have happened and neither do I. What’s almost certainly true, though, is that Putin would now be vacationing in Kiev.

Would an ascendant Putin be preferable to the slog currently underway in Ukraine? Not according to the Ukrainians. I don’t pretend to have enough knowledge about geopolitics to offer a cogent opinion on how the US should, or should not, respond to Moscow and Tehran’s aggressions. I am, however, somewhat sympathetic to an anti-Western alliance; from their point-of-view, the US is too big, too powerful, and too influential. Messing with us and our allies probably makes strategic sense. Our adversaries have seen how much we love fighting with each other; anything they can do to exacerbate domestic tensions they will do, particularly because modern technology allows it to be done for practically free.

Trumpism sides with the authoritarian because Trumpism is an authoritarian movement. MAGA has never found an authoritarian it doesn’t admire. From Putin to Xi to Orban, Trumpists admire “strength.” You don’t need any further proof than Tucker Carlson’s bizarre and creepy introduction to Trump the other night when he tortured a spanking metaphor past the point of coherence and into the territory of the fetishist. With his exhortation of Daddy Trump doling out “vigorous spanking” to a naughty nation, Tucker cast Trump as America’s punisher-in-chief. In Tucker’s telling, Trump doesn’t want to lay down the law to his misbehaving children, but they’ve left him no choice. No mention of why children often act out in the first place, which is that they’re in an emotionally and/or physically unsafe environment.

Like authoritarians everywhere, Trump attempts to turn the criticisms leveled against him against his opponents. It isn’t him with the fascistic tendencies, but the Democrats. “Marxist communist fascists” he calls them. “The enemy within,” he calls them. Trump’s latest hype-man, Elon Musk, told supporters yetereday that Americans who question Trump’s commitment to democracy “are themselves a threat to democracy.” Never mind that it was MAGA that staged an insurrection. Elon told the crowd that “The media tries to characterize Jan. 6 as some sort of violent insurrection, which is simply not the case.” In case you need reminding, that actually is the case.

The Republican party apparatus is now a subsidiary of Trump Enterprises, Inc. Does anybody think he will relinquish its reins? His family is now so integrated into Republican party politics that I don’t see how the party extricates itself from his pasty grip. Liz Cheney has opined that a new political party may have to be formed. That may be true, but how does that party ever gain any traction? The last significant new political party that emerged in the United States were the Whigs in 1836. Since then, a few independent candidates have made inroads, but the last serious challenger we’ve seen to the two-party system was Ross Perot, who never achieved more than 19% of the vote and didn’t win a single electoral vote. So, how does this “new party” succeed?

Instead, we’re likely to be left with a gutted Republican Party long on hatred and short on good policy. Who winds up leading that party? I have no idea, but I can’t imagine any rational Republican will be able to garner the kind of support needed to become the party’s standard bearer without winning over the MAGA faithful. How does somebody do that without embracing MAGA hatred? The result – at least in the short to medium-term – is likely to be an embittered minority party hellbent on obstructing any and all Democratic or “RINO” policy proposals. They will, as they have been doing, continue to undermine every American institution. They will, as they have been doing, continue to race bait, leading to continued political tensions and, potentially, political violence. And that’s if Trump loses, which is a best-case scenario.

If Trump wins, I don’t even know.