On the Brink of National Suicide?
Photo: flag amidst flames, from USA Today.
Are you alarmed? You should be.
NPR keeps interviewing Republicans debating about the presidential primary. Objections to Trump run along the lines of “he has an obnoxious personality” or, as Nikki Haley puts it, “rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him,” as if describing a kind of passive weather condition.
It’s like they are still living in 2016, when it was possible to believe that the problem with Trump was a bad personality.
Don’t vote for Trump because he is uncouth and rude? No, don’t vote for him because he tried to overthrow the government.
To those of us for whom this is obvious, those of you who think this is an ordinary election are incomprehensible. Its like you let an acquaintance give your kids a ride, the acquaintance got drunk and crashed the car, and since your kids wore seat belts and weren’t actually hurt in the crash, the next week you’re saying “Sure, you can give my kids another ride.”
“I mean, Trump did leave office when he realized he didn’t have a choice, right? No harm no foul!” Can these people even hear themselves?
People keep weighing Trump against other politicians as if he is a normal candidate. Trump tried to stop the rightful president from taking office but… inflation! What Trump did was not comparable to unfortunate rhetoric, bad fiscal policies, poor diplomatic choices, or even corruption and incompetence. Those are flaws that any president can have. Trump uniquely betrayed his fundamental duty to the Republic: When you lose an election, you leave office. You don’t
- make up stories about winning,
- invite thugs like the Proud Boys to the Capitol,
- sic a crowd on Congress,
- egg them on when they chant about killing the vice president,
- watch with glee as they battle with cops and break into the chambers,
- and say “I love you, you’re very special” when its over.
Does any of this stuff from 5th grade civics even need to be said? In America today, apparently it does.
The second most scary thing about a likely Trump nomination is how, step by step, it keeps getting worse. In 2015 Trump was just a buffoon who garnished his inherited wealth with a variety of cons. By 2017, he was a politician successfully riding a wave of hatred and lies to the White House, but his actions was not as extreme as his rhetoric. And then came January 6, when he tried to end almost 250 years of the peaceful transition of power.
With each step he takes, Trump looks around, sees what he can get away with, and then goes a step further. What do you do for an encore if the nation tells you its okay to use a riot to reverse an election you lost? Close unfriendly newspapers? Gun down your political opponents? Install your kids in office to succeed you ?
Some Scenarios
It’s easy to see a number of dire scenarios that another presidential Trump campaign could produce.
He could lose the election and get his followers to riot again. Only this time maybe he – and they – would amp up the amount of violence they were willing to use against the government. Mike Flynn, guerilla leader. Or he could call on the military to mutiny.
Trump and his followers are hard at work searching for ways to bypass vote counts he does not like. Some techniques include
- placing election deniers in charge of election administration, as Republicans have done in AL, IN, SD, WY and some local offices in NV (a swing state),
- deterring the “wrong” people from voting by making it harder for selected groups to vote
- harassing and intimidating voters,
- harassing and threatening election officials (45% of whom said they fear for their safety, according to a recent poll), and
- getting states to replace the national Election Registration Information Center (ERIC), a resource for checking voter roles, with one that excludes large groups of voters.
He could narrowly lose the election, but get some legislatures to declare him the winner in their states. Then he would claim to have won, and point to “electors” sent by the states as proof. Where that would lead is unclear, but would be the worst constitutional crisis since 1860, and could cause an even bloodier outcome.
He could cleanly win the electoral college, which Democrats would feel obligated to accept. What would a second Trump term look like? Nobody knows, but after January 6 we should know to not dismiss his threats as bluster. When he makes cute ha-ha-kidding-not-kidding statements, we know that he could be signaling to potential Brown Shirts and other allies to join him in mayhem.
“We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” –Donald Trump, November 2023.
“”We love this guy. He says, ‘You are not going to be a dictator, are you?’ I said, ‘No, no, no, other than Day 1.’ We are closing the border and we are drilling, drilling, drilling. After that I am not a dictator, OK?” –Donald Trump, December 2023.
“Mr. Trump has said he would use the Justice Department to have his adversaries investigated and charged with crimes, including saying in June that he would appoint ‘a real special prosecutor to go after’ President Biden and his family.” –New York Times, December 2023.
“Politically appointed lawyers sometimes frustrated Mr. Trump’s desires by raising legal objections to his and his top advisers’ ideas. In a potential new term, Mr. Trump’s allies are planning to systematically install more aggressive and ideologically aligned legal gatekeepers who will be more likely to bless contentious actions.” –New York Times, December 2023.
The Scariest Thing
Earlier I mentioned the second scariest thing about a Trump nomination. What’s the scariest thing?
The scariest thing is Trump’s followers.
The majority of the Republican electorate loves Trump so much that they will repeat any lie, argue any absurdity, justify any behavior on behalf of their Great Leader. Though a shameless liar, Trump was probably not far from the truth when he said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters”.
If Republicans are enthusiastically voting for Trump after he tried to overthrow the government, is there any action too extreme for them to back?
I’ve discussed politics with many of his supporters and some themes emerge. The problem is not that they are all stupid, because it doesn’t take a genius to see through lies about things we all watched together on TV news (yes, even Fox). It’s not that they don’t have access to information, though many people do not know how to check their facts and do not bother to correct their mistakes.
I believe that the bottom line is hatred.
Different ideologies can attract all sorts of people. But the problem with Trump isn’t that he goes against things people believe as liberals or leftists, it’s that he violates things we claim to believe as Americans and as human beings. And when we see the spectacle of (for instance) “Christian Values Voters” looking upon Trump as The Anointed One, we have to wonder if its because they don’t notice the bad behavior, or because they welcome it.
If you hate 21st century America so much that your chief goal is to tear down the system, then Trump’s bad behavior can be attractive to a range of ideologies.
One libertarian told me that since government was too big, any mayhem Trump caused was good because it threatened big government. He didn’t seem to mind that government had not gotten any smaller under Trump.
When I tried to get a conservative to explain to me how he thought Democrats were a bigger threat to democracy than a guy who tried to cancel an election, what he came up with was a hostile press and “the administrative state” ruled by bureaucrats. He did not have a response when I pointed out that if people didn’t want regulations, they could vote for politicians who change the laws.
For others its “invading” foreigners, social justice warriers, PhDs telling them they are harming the environment, people with different religious opinions, or people with dark skin. Much of the hatred is stoked by right wing media, which for years has been telling people that Democrats don’t just have wrong opinions or disagree about policy; Democrats are evil, un-American, a threat to humanity.
It’s not symmetrical. I gave Republicans the benefit of the doubt until they tried to convince me that January 6 was really the fault of Antifa or Nancy Pelosi. Republicans were describing Democrats as demonic Stalinists because of… Obamacare.
And if Democrats are evil enough, then everything a Trump does to win is justified. And so his fans justify everything he does.
Alarm is Not Despair
If Trump becomes president again, his second term may not be any worse than the first. However there are plausible scenarios that would be unprecedented disasters for the United States of America, including the possibility of national suicide.
Trump does not have to become president. No one knows how the election will play out. A big chunk of the electorate is probably incurably wedded to the Make America Great Leader, but an even bigger chunk is not. A plausible disaster is not the same as an inevitable one. If we love our country we are not allowed to give up on it. The magnitude of the danger does not absolve us of the responsibility to do what we can to avert it.
In a future post, I hope to write about some ideas for preventing the return of America’s most popular wannabe dictator.