The elevation
of Donald J. Trump to the presidency—for the second time—is both absurd and
obscene. Absurd, for the very presence of this cartoonish jokester, which is a
sick parody of the low-brow culture that he personifies. It is as if Marshal
Mcluen’s dictum that the media is the message got processed through Neil
Postman’s classic, Amusing Ourselves to Death in the elevation of an
utterly uncouth TV reality host to the highest political position in the land. Interpreted
through Postman’s lens, Trump’s appeal to the lowest common denominator among
those who are inclined to be persuaded by right wing media outlets, is a
structural phenomenon that uncannily mimics the absurdities of a constitutional
republic which has been corrupted by the multitude of forces that push the
nation in the opposite direction. In short, it is absurd to the nth degree that
this ridiculous individual, and his group of election denying cronies that he
is promoting to the uppermost offices in the land, will be placed in positions
of the highest authority for the singular purpose of enacting his nihilistic
agenda. As the years will inevitably grind on, unless something fundamentally
changes, the joke will be on the collective us.
More
fundamentally, it is the obscene nature of what Trump—the exact counter-image of
our founding president, George Washington—is likely to foist on this nation
over the next four years that is the more troubling matter. At the core of this
burden for us all is his mendacious corruption and criminality, which seems on
track to debase our body politic and broader national discourse. Whatever else
one may say, it is a fact that more voters than not opted for a convicted
felon, to say nothing of the several indictments with which he was charged, two
of which were aimed at his nihilistic effort to overturn the 2020 presidential
race by both legal and not so legal means. That is, Trump sought to remain in
power in 2020 even as the voters determined otherwise, while often resorting to
illegal and morally dubious means of doing so, the republic be damned.
Trump’s claim
that the Democrats “stole” the election built on a conspiratorial mindset that
has been a hallmark to his approach to politics since his “birther”
insinuations that Obama was born in Kenya and, therefore, was not legally
serving as president. That he has
persuaded half of the voting public and those he nominates to high office to accept
this stolen election lie is to transfer his own malignant narcissism to the collective
us so that his private psychopathology becomes permeated throughout the public
square. The price of this for We the People is incalculable. As we move to the
implementation of policy under his administration, the collective impact of
Trump’s corruption, criminality, lies, bigotry, and general ignorance of what
high quality government consists of, will likely have a profoundly negative
impact on the body politic and the broader health of the nation, the extent to
which is difficult yet to calculate.
The only hope
for the U.S. is that he finds a way of fulfilling his fantasies by governing
through more constructive frames of reference that translate into tangible accomplishments
as this nation moves through the third decade of the 21st century.
That would require a transformational mindset of an order of magnitude
difficult to fathom, which, hope against hope, is the only chance we have of
coming out of this administration relatively unscathed, at worst, and with
substantial achievements at best, which I would be more than happy to
acknowledge if they do materialize.
Shortly after
the closing of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was
asked whether the founders created a monarchy or a republic. “A republic,” the
sage responded, “if you can keep it.” As an ongoing experiment in
constitutional governance, we are about to find out whether a republic, in any
meaningful sense, will endure during the next four years, or whether the United
States of America will increasingly move toward the pathway of “illiberal
democracy” that one of Trump’s role models, Hungarian Prime Minister, Victor
Orban, has implemented over the past decade.
There is no
inevitable arc of history bending upward toward greater democratization and a
great deal of actual history pointing toward increasing authoritarianism
throughout the world, including the United States. To riff off Sinclair Lewis’s
novel about the rise of fascism in the United States, It Can’t Happen Here,
I contend that it most emphatically can happen here, and very well may be occurring
in our very presence.
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