So far Lincoln is right: predatory influencers can fool enough of the people enough of the time
Only the benighted spurn the truism that you don’t know who you are and where you are going unless you know where you’ve been. The old saw applies, “those who ignore the past do so at their own peril.” At any single moment, we are the sum of our time on earth: experiences, choices, responses, values, genetic markers, and childhood (family, status, opportunities, range of freedom). Second assumption: over time a national identity roughly captures the consciousness of its citizenry. The macrocosm mirrors its assembly of microcosms.
So does a country that doesn’t embrace its history not lose its way, rather like lost individuals? To defy decent standards when choosing leaders – their known (moral) character, honesty and truth-telling, evidence of career competence, knowledge of laws and legacies, confidence in majority sovereignty and rules – is to shake foundations. To invoke Faulkner, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
To elevate lawless immorality – or a resume riveted with career failures, willful defiance of expertise and the values confirmed by experience – is to put all at risk (exactly Trump’s agenda). To treat the Constitution, let alone legal strictures, are mere conveniences betrays what we have all inherited from others. To choose a defective, over the hill leader, who traffics in lying, manipulation, celebrity and shock entertainments, speaks either to desperation, fear-mongering or media dominance. Who can distinguish whether chosen leaders represent the people or whether the populace then expresses the suspect qualities of those they elect.
What voters knowingly rejected
When expertise and knowledge, if not evidence, is scorned, if truth is just make-believe, voters will embrace unwise, disruptive values just like those who reject life-saving vaccines, medical advances or worsening climate threats. To reject out of hand what is still working (without legitimate alternatives), while denigrating faith in democracy (and elections), is to jeopardize the valuable past once celebrated, the sacrifices forebears made to sustain the jewel of majority rule. To reject American history, like whitewashing slavery or the spirit of Constitutional amendments, is to betray our inheritance, as demoralized individuals turn on themselves .
When democracies defy their own hard-won identity, they invite damaging “personalities” and values to pilot our future. Trumpism lacks the substance to be a genuine reform movement, more an emotional backlash to a maddening present, a collective tantrum that asserts minority rule, contempt for law and order, denial of the past and the values of modest unity that allows for mutual, adult decision-making. However unsatisfactory is the past, or frustrating the present, we lose bearings when depreciating the historic context that explains how we got where we are. You can’t be guided by what you don’t know. To endorse change for change sake, on the dubious assumption what emerges will be better, defies our history and world history. Revolutions are not about overwhelming negativity.
Evidence of weak majority consensus bedevils European history, littered with countries even more fractured, arguably more dysfunctional than our own. How does one run anything complex without sufficient consensus on goals and strategies? The best defense of our tarnished two party system is the transient consensus they force when big problems surface.
How big is today’s earthquake?
So it’s nip and duck in the pundit world how badly a double dose of Trumpism will devastate the world we know. The Donald is only about means and has neither the desire nor skills to achieve unifying majority ends. Hatred is married to divisiveness. Based on early picks, what in Trump’s second term will lower inflation, spur job growth or offset the huge instability of grievous income disparity? If Trumpers seek positive change, they’ve latched onto the least stable non-genius ever to win re-election. But then again, who ever said democratic elections under mammoth demagogic pressure can’t blunder badly?
The larger question is whether democratic values and institutions can survive a radical break from historic standards, especially with suspect leaders addicted to chaos. Because our system depends on trusting leaders, if not fellow citizens, what happens when a country twice chooses a disruptive president out for himself, with nary a care about the welfare of others? Trust depends on confidence that 1) elections work so that voters confidently determine their fate (now in question); 2) that leadership at least attempts to shore up besieged institutions for the good of the many, not the few (the opposite of today’s oligarchy); and 3) that our empowered judicial system protects entrenched rights and holds villains to account (ain’t happening).
As Thoreau wrote 175 years ago, the “mass of men live lives of quiet desperation,” and desperation makes for abandonment of tested principles, even what used to pass for basic civics knowledge. If Trumpers think the defiance of law and order, especially the tragedy of incomplete trials after justified indictments, will not put their freedom in jeopardy, they are drastically misinformed. Common sense and common folks diverge when a loudmouth celebrity promises a new, noxious world order, echoed by infinite rightwing media venues.
What will likely come to pass when self-righteous, self-entitled (white) people are drawn like a magnet to the icon of perpetual, selfish entitlement? If Trump voters think another slice ofs slick, self-serving pretend populist will share his upper-crust wealth with them, they need to have their heads examined. When there’s a painful gap between high expectations and perceived misery, the desperate forego being quiet – and suck up to the Pied Piper who pledges a way out. If the desperate readily substitute conspiratorial delusions for reality, even prudent politics, they will certainly find extremists that suit their needs.
In America, with its harmful addiction that willpower overcomes all adversity, one is a failure, if not loser, when seeming success escapes one’s grasp. Contrary to the interests of the many, what Trump voters did is certify that those with greater money, cult loyalty, ambition, organizational force remain in full charge. The “little people” verified diminished brain power by buying into truly astonishing fables, conspiracies and outright deceptions. Immigrants are not pouring over the border (and total closures demand a police state).
What if things were really bad?
Serious crime by any measure is down, not up (except by top elites), and getting mugged, burgled or attacked in most (white) neighborhoods remains a long shot. Unemployment is historically low and, by conventional standards, American economic might is going strong. Secularism does not threaten true believers, schools are not doing violent sex changes between classes, and no one (minority or not) is eating pets. Russia wants to demolish western democracy, no friend of ours, and handing even more arms to Israel will not bring peace.
In short, the Trumpian frameworks are riddled with nonsense, and his proposals to “fix” so many ill-defined problems are doomed from the start. Trump is a fat cat mesmerized by money (corrupt or not) who serves the oligarch class – and now the lame duck who never needs another election win. We are about to find out how much damage electing a willful, fascist-oriented demagogue can do to basic American values, inscribed in explicit laws, documents and institutions. No one should be ambushed by Trumpism. This looks to be our greatest test since the Civil War – indeed as “enemies within,” all but Trumpers will be treated as if WE threaten America. Reversals are loaded with irony but nonetheless both still apply. When you define your opponents as nefarious enemies, all bets are off and no strategy, including violence, is off the table. What’s in high jeopardy is our stated declaration favoring “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
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