When do we call it for what it is?
I’ve become increasingly frustrated that even at this late stage of the Trump presidency, the media seem unable to describe the phenomenon of Trumpism — treating it as one equal and equivalent half of the body politic. I submit that is not the case.
In Saturday’s Washington Post, in Marc Fishers ‘The end of democracy? To many Americans, the future looks dark if the other side wins’, the author does a very credible job describing the fears of both sides — how the right fear “that a Democratic win will plunge the nation into catastrophic socialism”, while the fear on the left is “that a Trump victory will produce a turn toward totalitarianism”. Both are presented as two, equally held positions — implying that there are two legitimate realities at play.
But what if they are not? What if one side’s position is wrong — recognizing that in asking the question, one can’t escape the subjectivity inherent within.
One side seeks out a diversity of information sources on which to inform their opinion, the other just a few — or more often than not, one. One side respects science, the other denies and derides it. One side has weaponized the workings of democracy, cynically looking to corrupt a system ultimately based on trust and goodwill, while the other largely shows up in Quixotic fashion to play with the hand they are accordingly dealt.
Let’s consider the two fears noted above by Fisher. On the right, a fear of ‘catastrophic socialism’, and on the left a fear of ‘totalitarianism’. The question is, what evidence is there to support either case?
First off, for any citizen traveler with a passing understanding of progressive/socialist politics in ANY country comparable to the US, it is clear that fearful Americans don’t have a clue what socialism is (thanks to Fox, OANN, and talk radio). While America may be a very wealthy country (though by no means the wealthiest), the grossly unequal income distribution means that most Americans don’t enjoy the prosperity or peace of mind that their Canadian and European peers do — whether it’s access to healthcare, education or a reliable safety net for when things go wrong. Not only are these ‘socialist’ countries as affluent as the US on a per capita GDP basis (or again, in many cases more), they are on the whole, a lot happier (the US coming in at 18th in the UN’s most recent World Happiness 2020 survey — below almost all of its ‘socialist’ friends/allies). If living longer, better and happier is socialism, then sign me up.
Secondly, if I were the Democrats, I would be referring to just these two data points over and over and over — courtesy of a June 2016 report of the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress. Going back to Harry Truman, annual GDP growth has been an average of 3.9% under Democratic leadership vs. 2.5% under the Republicans — a whopping 35% improvement. Likewise, private-sector job growth under Democratic leadership has been 2.5 times greater than under the Republicans (2.5% per annum vs. 1.2%).
It would appear then to be hyperbolic in the extreme to suggest pending catastrophic socialism awaits, especially given the blue-collar bona fides of Joe Biden and the centrist coalition he and the Democratic party has built.
What of the left’s fear of totalitarianism? Well, where to start? There is Trumps (yet to be explained) sycophancy not only with Putin but his fascination with autocrats around the world, children made orphans and caged, having the Attorney General represent him in a rape case, ramming through a Supreme Court nominee breaking a precedent set by Republicans just four years before or musing that he may not accept the results of a general election, electing instead to stay for ‘at least’ another term.
That many hundreds of prominent Republicans have joined the Biden coalition, from the Lincoln Project to RVAT (Republican Vets Against Trump), Cindy McCain, John Kasich, and over 250 of ‘alumni’ from the (George W.) Bush administration is unprecedented in American politics and speaks to the existential urgency with which this group and all Democrats view the threat to the US and global democracy. They think this threat to be very real.
Indeed, according to the University of Gothenburg’s 2019 Annual Democracy Report, the US under Trump had slipped from being identified as a liberal democracy, joining the growing list of countries experiencing a ‘third wave’ of autocratization — accounting for 2.3 billion of the earth’s population.
I’ve been asking myself the question — when was it a political act to challenge the Nazis versus it being a moral imperative? There is a point that one can view the debate as existing within the realm of politics — as a supporter of democracy may well have viewed von Hindenburg’s appointment of Hitler as Chancellor in January 1933. But at what point was citizen support of the Nazi’s an act of politics or an act of complicity — at best naive or worse, willful? Was it the banning of the Communist Party a month later (thus seizing a majority in government), or when the Enabling Act was passed giving Hitler almost unlimited power in March, or seizing all local governments in April, banning all trade unions in May, the banning of all political parties in July or withdrawing from the League of Nations in October? Or was it finally, on Kristalnacht (the Night of Broken Glass) in November 1938 when Jewish homes, shops, and synagogues were burned and destroyed — killing almost 100 Jews and sending over 30,000 to concentration camps?
At its simplest, democracy is a field sport where all participants may cheat and push the boundaries of the game from time to time, but for the game to mean anything at all, it is recognized and accepted that there are rules that must be followed. Otherwise, chaos ensues.
I submit that when democracy is co-opted and corrupted from within there is a point at which the perpetrators of the act are functioning outside of the realm of politics. They do not wish to play the game of democracy or to preserve it. They seek to pervert the nature of the game itself to assure that ‘they’ can’t lose — not unlike the casino ‘house’. The game can always still be played to some profit by some, but where ultimately, the ‘house never loses’.
By removing themselves from the game, by clearly electing not to play, but rather to corrupt, one can argue that the enablers and their supporters have lost the courtesy of respect — the right to the benefit of the benefit of the doubt.
This is not to suggest at all that retribution be sought against the 42% or so of citizens who voted for Trump, for as has very often been noted by many, the chord that Trump struck with predominantly white voters — on socio-economic issues especially — is a chord that is in urgent need of addressing by any new administration. It is to say though that this QAnon-infused cohort, in need of de-programming more so than convincing, can no longer be viewed ‘just’ as political adversaries — to continue to do so is to normalize a clearly exceptional situation.
I submit that next week’s US election is a referendum on democracy, the outcome most certainly impacting both friends and adversaries around the world — changing the very DNA of democracy for decades to come. Though they are on the frontlines to be sure, the challenge facing the citizenry of the US is not unique to them, they are at the forefront of a systemic global struggle, with November 3rd representing the most important battle of that war thus far.
No matter how it turns out, for those entering the political arena — from candidate to enabler to supporter — are we now at the stage where we finally have to call it for what it is? That this is not a political, but rather a moral struggle, and that our adversaries are no longer functioning within the body politic, but outside of it?
