Latest news with #Trumpocene
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Resistance to Trump's shock and awe takes root
As President Trump explained to a reporter after he imposed his historic tariff regime in early April, 'sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.' Trump's shock therapy treatment is having the opposite effect: the patient is getting much sicker and suffering greatly, pleading for relief. There is no guarantee that the patient will survive another 100 days of this 'medicine.' Surviving many more months or years of this shock therapy treatment is likely impossible. As shown by the large and growing number of polls, Trump's approval among the American people across almost every issue, most notably the economy and tariffs and inflation, his gutting of the federal government and defiance of the Constitution and the rule of law, is rapidly falling to levels not seen for an American president in the last 80 years. In a new essay at The Hill, leading Democratic Party pollster Mark Mellman describes this as, 'Trump is suffering a broad-based crash. Never before has a president presented so broad an agenda, so thoroughly rejected by the public. If you're a Republican who won by less than 10 points, you are either frightened or foolish.' Donald Trump is a high-dominance leader who is ruling as an autocrat with de facto near-unlimited power. He has no intention of pivoting or changing his approach to his shock and awe politics and shock treatment of the American people and their democracy and society. To that point, in a recent interview, Donald Trump told The Atlantic magazine that 'I run the country and the world.' Trump is in his personal glory during this second time as president: 'I'm having a lot of fun, considering what I do…. You know, what I do is such serious stuff.' As I chronicle and try to navigate the long Trumpocene and Donald Trump's return to power, I have been rereading Chinua Achebe's 'How Things Fall Apart.' So I keep returning to Achebe's reflections on the stool and trouble: 'When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.' The American people (and the mainstream news media with its obsolete norms, the centrists and hope peddlers, the corporate Democrats, and other 'respectable' leaders and members of the political class and elites) invited this trouble into their homes, twice, and gave it not just a stool but a comfortable chair and bed. In an attempt to gain a better perspective and insights on Donald Trump's first 100 days back in power, what may happen next, and what has already been lost, I reached out to a range of leading experts. I also asked them the following question: If these first 100 days of Trump's administration are indeed the good times as compared to what will come next, what do they want to prepare the American people for? This is the second part of a three-part series. Steven Beschloss is a journalist and author of several books, including "The Gunman and His Mother." His website is . I haven't been surprised that the unfolding horror of Trump, his second term regime and agenda, has been a hostile frontal attack on migrants, democratic institutions and the rule of law, driven by arrogance, cruelty and hostility toward anyone who does not believe in a white nationalist future. Nor have I been surprised that elected Republicans and particularly Republican senators would forsake their obligations to advise and consent, abandon the Constitutional separation of powers, and bow down to their ruler. But it has been sickening to witness the speed with which Trump — whose bad behavior and what appears to be a deeply troubled mind have only intensified with his near-total immunity to act without consequence — has demolished so much that Americans who believe in government, justice and democracy hold dear. That has surely been aided and abetted by a sycophantic Cabinet that fails to grasp that America is a nation of laws and has long benefitted from intersecting democratic alliances. Like so many Americans and other people around the world, I wake each morning with dread as I check what new thing Donald Trump has trashed today. I make an effort to spotlight the defenders of democracy and the good and decent people who oppose Trump's gleeful arson and the forces that applaud the flames. That's not easy with refugees and American citizens kidnapped and taken out of the country without due process, including to a heinous El Salvador prison; the blatant spectacle of a Wisconsin judge's arrest; the abandonment of meaningful foreign aid programs that kept people alive and provided soft-power respect for American values; insane tariff 'policies' that are untethered from factual reality and steal retirement savings and ignite unnecessary trade wars; the transformation in record time of an economy that was described by The Economist as 'the envy of the world' to one teetering on recession; the reckless and often illegal removal of tens of thousands of public servants who dedicated their lives to government and making lives better; the stripping away of funding for scientific research and education; and the immoral attacks on war-torn Ukraine and the dismantling of democratic alliances that have compelled former friends to abandon and gird themselves against Trump's America. We have every reason to expect that it will get worse with the bottomless, immunized Trump in the Oval Office. Trump is intoxicated on power and is acting to further enrich himself by securing his own Putin-style, kleptocratic oligarchy. We no longer hear, like we did during the first term, about people in the administration who provide guardrails. We are getting fully unleashed Trump, courtesy of the 77 million Americans who voted for him and all the others who stayed home, ensuring that we learn what 'mess around and find out' really means. The number of law firms, billionaires, and others who have capitulated to Trump is appalling, although the pushback in the courts remains a reason for hope. I also take strength from the rising tide of foreign leaders who are speaking out against Trump and his hostile regime and for democratic values and principles. And while I believe that there are far too many elected Democrats whose response has been tepid or, worse, non-existent, I am uplifted to see leaders like Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Sen. Cory Booker, Chris Murphy and Bernie Sanders, and Representatives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett grasp the urgency of this dangerous time. But the road ahead cannot rely on elected officials to stem this authoritarian spiral: I am looking to millions of Americans demonstrating in the streets to say they've had enough. That cannot be an occasional thing but an ongoing effort to ensure the survival of our centuries-old democratic experiment. Matthew D. Taylor is a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, & Jewish Studies. He is the author of '' Along with everyone else, I'm feeling overwhelmed from trying to drink from the Trump news firehose. I've spent most of the last two years warning about the growing problem of political radicalization among evangelical Christians and highlighting the danger of a second Trump term, so I think I was as emotionally prepared as anyone for what we're seeing, but it is still disheartening to watch so many of our American democratic and civil society institutions falling down on the job. Our democratic muscles have atrophied, and I hope they can be reinvigorated before it's too late. In terms of making sense of things, in the short term and the day-to-day, Trump is very unpredictable and an expert in media provocations and distractions. In the long term, he's actually pretty predictable: He wants to enrich himself, consolidate power, and 'win' according to his internal metrics. He is also a much more bitter and vengeful person than he was in his first term, because his interpretation of the interregnum between his two administrations was that he was unfairly victimized by the Biden administration and cultural elites. I've been reflecting a lot on how much Trump resembles the vast majority of kings, emperors and rulers throughout history: obsessed with unlimited power, fickle, self-absorbed, quarantined against reality. That might sound like cold comfort, but it helps me to remember that the freedom and rights we've had for most of American history — and especially for the past 100 years — are more the exception than the rule in human history. A lot of what I expected has come to pass because my expectations were shaped by listening to the actual promises Trump was making to his base at rallies and in right-wing media during the campaign. I was also closely watching his inner circle of religious advisors, so I anticipated many of the religious messages they've used to 'sell' Trump's agenda. The most surprising thing has been the pace of it: If you read Project 2025, a lot of what has transpired in the past three months was prefigured or suggested in there, but on a much more gradual timeline. Another surprising thing to me has been Trump's expansionist rhetoric around annexing Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal, etc. We got a little bit of that in the first term, but most of Trump's rhetorical mode in the first term was nationalistic. He was driving toward a sort of America First isolationism and shoring up the boundaries of the U.S., whether literal borders or conceptual boundaries of American identity. What's different this term is that Trump seems to have realized that he has the largest economy in the world and the most lethal military ever assembled at his command, so he's got a lot of weight to throw around internationally. I'm very concerned that he's gotten out of nationalist mode and unlocked imperialist mode, and that's a very dangerous sign. It is well within the realm of possibilities that Trump's provocations could lead to a war of expansion in the Western Hemisphere, not unlike what Putin has done in Ukraine. Here is a warning about this 'first 100 days' framework. It is a media construct that Trump and his people play along with because it's a Washington convention that they don't hate. But Trump and his people have no intention of slowing down after the first 100 days. I understand that Trump is currently demanding that his staff keep bringing him more executive orders every day because he finds handing down diktats from on high so gratifying. I've also noticed that Trump's own religious rhetoric (something I try to track pretty closely) has been ratcheting up. He's constantly referencing the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, and he talks about it with a constant refrain of 'God saved me to make America great again.' In doing that, he's playing off of many of the evangelical sentiments and literal prophecies about him that have built this quasi-messianic spiritual ethos around him. Go and read his Easter proclamation or listen to his remarks during the White House Easter Egg Roll, and you'll hear him communicating in a religious register that was not present in the first term. He seems intent on keeping the hard-right Christian coalition on his side, because they are his most diehard supporters. I expect we'll see him continue to ramp this up, blending church and state in ways we haven't seen in American history. At some point, I expect we will see widespread protests in the streets as Trump continues to bare his authoritarian fangs. At some point, I expect he will defy a Supreme Court order or precipitate another constitutional crisis, because that's just how his personality is bent. What happens then? Federico Finchelstein is a professor of history at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College in New York. His most recent book is "." I don't feel surprised at all about this clear authoritarian direction of this new, even more radical and vulgar form of Trumpism. No more 'adults' in the room. On a personal note, as a citizen, it is depressing to see (and yet not surprising) that American society, and many of its media and politics seemed to be numbed or accommodating. In other words, many are normalizing what is not normal at all. Trump's return to the White House is not surprising, but it is shocking. It has been so easy for a disruptor in chief with fascist ambitions, messianic leadership and outdated and highly ideological economic whims and practices to deform and attack the most basic principles of democracy. The result is the expected path from right-wing populism to authoritarianism and fascism that we are witnessing, but this, of course, can be stopped. Citizens need to prepare for more forceful attacks on their rights, namely on democracy, and they need to defend their principles via electoral decisions, peaceful protests, and support for universities and independent media sources. The fact that Trump wants unlimited power does not mean he will win. This is not a sprint, but Trump would like it to be. It depends on the American people to pause and delay these anti-democratic attempts.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's first 100 days will require a second Reconstruction
Donald Trump has been president for 100 days. He promised to 'Make America Great Again!' Instead, Trump and his administration and the MAGA Republicans have made the United States less democratic, less free, less safe, less prosperous, less respected around the world, and much more unhappy. Trump has been remarkably direct and transparent in his plans to become the country's first elected autocrat, a 'dictator' on 'day one.' He and his enablers are following through on this plan with reckless abandon. An avalanche of recent public opinion polls shows that Donald Trump is now the least popular president in 80 years at this point in office. Specifically, Trump's handling of the economy and disregard for the rule of law and the Constitution and general abuse(s) of power have caused the American people to turn against him en masse. Trump's MAGA voters, especially the Christian right-wing and other Christian authoritarians and theocrats, remain dedicated to him and the cause. They view Donald Trump as a type of prophet and god; they are fighting a type of crusade; Trumpism and MAGA are their religious politics. Legal scholars, political scientists, and other leading voices are sounding the alarm at a deafening level that the United States is quickly collapsing (or already has) into a state of authoritarian rule under Trump. In a new article in the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs, political scientists Stephen Levitsky and Lucan A. Way describe this collapse, as 'U.S. democracy will likely break down during the Second Trump administration in the sense that it will cease to meet standard criteria for a liberal democracy — full adult suffrage, free and fair elections, and broad protection of civil liberties….' Donald Trump's authoritarian push and his MAGA movement have encountered little substantive resistance from the Democratic Party, the news media and the Fourth Estate, civil society, big business, and other counterbalancing forces in American society. In the worst examples, these elite institutions are engaging in 'anticipatory compliance,' aka surrender and collaboration with Trump and the larger MAGA authoritarian populist movement. With few exceptions, such as the 'Hands off' protests several weeks ago, the American people have also been cowed by Donald Trump and his forces' shock and awe campaign. The American people appear to be vacillating between learned helplessness and mass disinhibition. Whatever may happen after Trump's first 100 days as the long Trumpocene further digs in, one thing is almost certain: it will not end well for the American people and their democracy and society. The question is now not if the disaster can be avoided but instead what level of catastrophe and horribleness awaits and how the American people can rebuild if that is even possible. Ultimately, the first 100 days of Trump's return and the long years of the Trumpocene were preventable. The American people — or at least enough of them in certain parts of the country — inflicted this disaster on themselves. Donald Trump is just doing what he promised and threatened. In an attempt to gain a better perspective and insights on Donald Trump's first 100 days back in power, what may happen next, and what has already been lost, I reached out to a range of leading experts. I also asked them the following question: If these first 100 days of Trump's administration are indeed the good times as compared to what will come next, what do they want to prepare the American people for? Barbara McQuade is a professor at the University of Michigan Law School. She is the author of the book '.' McQuade is also a legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, and a co-host of the podcast #SistersInLaw. At 100 days, my strongest emotion is sadness. I think we will get through these dark days, but not without some significant steps backward in our march toward a more perfect union. Trump's chaos and low approval ratings show that his authoritarian moves are not what voters chose in November, which gives me hope for candidates more interested in unity in the 2026 and 2028 elections, but it will take us a long time to recover from the harms of this administration. Damage to scientific research, public health, universities, diversity, and the rule of law will not recover overnight. I am most surprised by Trump's use of executive orders to target American institutions, such as universities and law firms. These orders are completely lawless, and yet, we have seen some of his targets capitulate rather than defend themselves in court. As I learned in my work as a federal prosecutor, appeasing the extortionist only invites more extortion. If these are the good times, then I don't want to see the bad times! I actually think that for all his bluster, Trump is unable to execute most of his plans because he surrounds himself with incompetence. I think that Trump wanted to create the illusion of action right at the start of his administration, but his choice of cabinet members and other leaders has stymied his success. It appears to me that many leaders were selected for their loyalty rather than for their expertise, and we are seeing the consequences of those choices in their blunders, such as the use of Signal to discuss military attack plans. Running the government like a business never works. I think most Americans see the foolishness of cutting government services without rhyme or reason. Trump's willingness to violate the rule of law and to traffic in disinformation makes him a very dangerous person to serve as president. He seems to be attacking any institution that can serve as a check on his power — the media, universities, judges, lawyers, and state officials. But so far, our courts have largely held him in check. The real question is whether he will obey court orders. I remain optimistic that the public will not tolerate a president who violates court orders. Trump may not care about many things, but he cares about his ratings, as we have seen from his repeated examples of backing down from unpopular moves, such as tariffs, cancellation of student visas, firing of federal employees, and the like. Public sentiment is everything, and the people still hold the power to shape our democracy. The 'Hands Off' protests seemed like a turning point when the public realized that Trump's tactics did not make his success inevitable. is a professor of religious studies and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Her most recent book is "." We are in authoritarianism, and things will only get worse unless everyone understands where we really are. I'm a black woman. 92% of us voted for Kamala. We did the work. Now it's time to take care of our own. is emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and co-author of the bestseller "." I am not feeling good. The pace of movement toward full-blown autocracy, greater than we saw with Orban and Erdogan among others, is distressing. More distressing is the collapse or shrinkage of the guardrails to prevent it, from the press to Congress to the business community to some judges. I am somewhat surprised by the level of incompetence combined with the lack of concern over missteps, blunders, destruction of critical health and safety safeguards and direct threats to national security. And the level of cruelty. Not that any of these things are completely unexpected, but it is all worse. We are seeing a backlash, and I expect it will grow as more Americans, including many who voted for Trump, feel the awful effects of policies and blunders. But Americans should not expect that all this can be ameliorated, much less erased. These are far from normal times for our country and voting and elections and politics as usual. For example, prepare for the possibility that Trump responds by invoking the Insurrection Act, provoking violence against dissent, and declaring martial law. Perhaps it will fall short of that. If it does, and we see a turnaround in the reins of power in 2026 and again in 2028, prepare for some very rough times. The destruction of much of the government and its infrastructure will take a very long time to overcome Eric Schnurer is a widely recognized expert on public policy and government effectiveness, efficiency and reinvention. His newsletter can be read at . I'm not really surprised by anything that's taking place now. I thought Trump would win from early in 2016. I also thought that Trump would win in 2024 back in January 7, 2020 onward. I have also believed that Trump would and still will seek and likely attain a third term. Trump will likely get his third term because of America's political and legal dysfunction. More crucially, I always believed he would encourage a violent insurrection to stay in power, would not leave office as long as he's alive, and that his time in office will culminate in something like the Troubles in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This has little to do with Trump — although he foments the worst in people instead of the best — and more to do with deeper factors like emerging technologies and a changing economy leaving most people out: Trump is the fever, not the underlying illness. But you don't have to have shared my views to be unsurprised by anything happening today: Trump promised every bit of this. The people running this administration published an entire book announcing what they planned to do and how they were going to do it. If you're surprised by anything at this point, you haven't been paying for how I'm feeling, anticipating the end of everything I've valued my entire life about this great country — the Constitution, mostly-civil discourse, a public ethos of decency to other human beings no matter how short we fall of our ideals in practice, political processes built on something other than violence, real-if-grudging progress on racial and other forms of discrimination and injustice, America as both a concept and a reality – doesn't make its actual disappearance any better. It all bothers me, every minute of every day. But the intentional inhumanity and cruelty being visited on individual human beings on a daily basis — not just the dissolution at a general level of everything that made this country great — is the truly depressing part, no matter how much it is to be expected of these people. The only things that have surprised me in the least are how quickly and comprehensively Trump and his forces have pressed ahead, while, at the same time, how grossly incompetent they have proven to be. Some of the incompetence is intentional — you don't intentionally destroy all trust in government without acting incompetently in it, and putting incompetent people in charge, to some degree — but you'd expect people who spent five years planning this in minute detail to be somewhat better on the execution. So, I'm actually more optimistic about it all than I expected to be. Relatively speaking. I don't entirely agree with the premise that these are the good times compared to what is going to happen next. Yes, things are going to get worse than they currently are. But I also believe, and have believed for a long time, that this is a fire that will burn itself out eventually, and what comes after will probably be better. However, I think the United States is now only about halfway through a roughly 30-year transition of tremendous magnitude, so we've reached roughly the bottom of the trough but there are still many more years before the dawn starts to break, and more than a decade before a real, and better, alternative emerges. I believe it will require a generational change in leadership at all levels to lead us out of this situation. This will be from people who did not grow up in the 'before times,' who can and will think completely differently about the brave new world we have entered. But I think alternatives will eventually emerge, as they always do, that look completely different from what this country has looked like for more or less the last 100 years, or before. Some will be good and some will be bad. I agree with Dylan Thomas that we must rage against the dying of the light, but the crucial work now is formulating what the eventual new dawn can bring, and how to build that. It is not to dash all our energy against a wave that's not yet spent, trying vainly to roll it back to yesterday.
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
America has a bad case of TDS
There are many different types of laughter. There is the good laughter caused by joy, surprise, happiness, or perhaps even ecstasy. There is laughter at the absurd when one cannot even make sense of what they are experiencing. There is also the laughter of rage and anger. There are laughs from emotional discomfort and anxiety. There is hysterical laughter in the face of death or other great peril when the danger is so extreme that you hear a person laughing and then realize it is you. Some people laugh during funerals and other times of great grief and sorrow. I experienced this once at an Irish wake for a friend who took his own life. One person started laughing while telling a story about our departed friend, and then another person laughed, and the laughter spread around the table. There has been a lot of laughter in America during the Age of Trump. With Trump's return to power, almost every day there is some new shattering of norms, one of those 'this should not be happening but somehow it is' moments where malignant normality and the spectacle somehow keep getting worse as the country collapses into autocracy and authoritarianism. The guardrails of democracy and 'the institutions' and 'the rule of law' have been laid bare and splayed open; they are so very weak. Germany's democracy collapsed in 53 days; America's democracy is still holding on, barely, but I am unsure it will make it to 90 days. As for the midterms in 2026? Good luck. But for all the laughter that has happened (and is happening) during the long Trumpocene, little if any of it is truly funny. I suspect that much of this laughter has been to keep from crying because of the grand tragedy. Trying to gain a better perspective, I have repeatedly returned to physician Gabor Mate's 2022 interview at Jacobin: In a social sense, we have really lost the way. There are certain human needs that are not negotiable. We can't negotiate them away. We can give up on them, but then we suffer when we do. When they're not met, there's going to be suffering and ill health in every sense of the word. They include having a purpose in life, having agency and authority in one's own life, and being connected to other people. Meeting all of these needs is required for full health, full wholeness. On a social level, that means that all the institutions and political structures and ideologies that undermine those qualities need to be either jettisoned or transformed. Both the Left and the Right have got these traumatic imprints that they enact. The Right very often consists of abused people who identify with power so they'll never be hurt again. That's basically it. You know, like a [Donald] Trump. Big Daddy will protect me so that I'll never be hurt again, like I was hurt by my real daddy. And they hate vulnerability. They attack vulnerable people because they hate their own vulnerability. So that's the thumbnail traumatic imprint of people on the Right very often. People on the Left, on the other hand, also suffered in their childhoods, and they take that anger that's not resolved in them and they project it into the politics, which makes them not very tolerant and much less effective. When they talk to people who just don't see it their way, who are not aware or maybe more ignorant, or not in touch with the real issues, there's a tendency to speak in a very hostile and very demeaning way. That's unresolved trauma on the part of the people coming from the Left, as it was in my case. Self work, particularly for people who want to make a difference, is really important. To the degree that people don't do it, they might attract some followers with a certain degree of charisma, but they will not convince anybody that doesn't already see it their way. Last month, five Minnesota Republican state senators introduced a bill declaring that 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' exists and that it is a type of 'mental illness.' As The Independent reports, "symptoms include 'Trump-induced general hysteria,' where a person struggles to distinguish between 'legitimate policy' and 'psychic pathology,' which is expressed with verbal hostility or acts of aggression against Trump and his MAGA supporters." This attempt to declare 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' a mental illness per Minnesota law was widely met with mockery and derision. Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy described the bill as "wasteful, frivolous and the worst bill in Minnesota history." Murphy continued, "If it is meant as a joke, it is a waste of staff time and taxpayer resources that trivializes serious mental health issues. If the authors are serious, it is an affront to free speech and an expression of a dangerous level of loyalty to an authoritarian president. The authors should be ashamed, and the citizens we're hearing from are rightfully outraged." The liberal schadenfreude and mockery grew louder when one of the bill's sponsors was recently arrested for allegedly committing a crime that further reveals the hypocrisy and absurdity of a Republican Party that claims to be the great defender of 'family values' and 'morality' in America. In reality, there is nothing funny or humorous about an Orwellian thought crime law that in effect punishes dissent by declaring critics of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement to be mentally or emotionally sick. This is a standard tactic of dictators and other authoritarians where those who are 'mentally ill' and 'sick' because of their incorrect thinking are removed from society and put in prisons, reeducation camps, 'mental hospitals' or worse until they are 'cured.' To that point, Donald Trump repeatedly attacks and slurs his critics and perceived enemies, both as individuals and as a group, as being 'sick' 'deranged,' 'crazy,' 'lunatics,' 'mentally ill,' 'mentally impaired,' and/or 'retarded.' Trump has also promised to purify and purge the 'blood' of the nation from 'the enemies within' and other human poison. In all, the proposed Trump Derangement Syndrome law in Minnesota is an example of how the Trump administration and its allies' war on multiracial, pluralistic democracy and society is national. The states are being used as testing grounds and the leading edge of this revolutionary project. For example, among its many actions — some of which appear to be clearly illegal and violations of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights — the Trump administration has issued executive orders de facto declaring 'DEI' and 'gender ideology' and teaching the real and complex and challenging history of the United States to be a thought crime. The Trump administration is systematically targeting the country's educational system, including private colleges and universities, if they do not agree to comply with this ideological regime. The Smithsonian museum system was recently ordered to purge exhibits and other material deemed to be 'anti-American' (this echoes events in another country during one of the darkest times in human history when 'politically incorrect' art, books, and other material were purged for being 'degenerate'). The Trump administration recently gutted funding for the country's libraries and museums through the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Scientific and other research deemed not to be in accordance with the approved ideology of the Trump administration has also been terminated. The Trump administration's thought crime and larger anti-democracy program is an amplification of such laws and policies in Florida, for example, where 'critical race theory' was banned and educators and institutions that taught 'divisive' history and concepts were punished under the 'Stop WOKE' Act and other laws. Georgia has also passed a law banning the teaching of 'divisive concepts,' i.e., the truth and facts about racism and the color line and its enduring role in American society. Texas, Oklahoma, and other red states have enacted draconian laws that take away women's reproductive rights and freedoms. These laws include making it illegal to help a woman leave the state to terminate a pregnancy and basically putting bounties on medical professionals and other people who help women to exercise their reproductive freedoms and rights. North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and other parts of the former Confederacy and Jim Crow terror regime are engaged in systematic voter nullification and voter purges targeting the African-American community and other members of the Democratic Party's base. In a 2021 interview with historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, attorney David Pepper explained the relationship between these state-level laboratories of autocracy and the larger national-level right-wing anti-democracy project: I think it's a huge blind spot. If we looked at another country and we saw the combination of steps that are taking place in our states, what would we say? Here we have attacks on independent courts, rigged legislative elections, laws that make protests by the opposition harder, laws that create immunity for people who run over protestors with their car or attack independent election officials. All of this adds up to a dramatic turn away from democracy towards autocracy. Some states don't meet almost any definition of a functional democracy at this point, and in places like Texas and Ohio, statehouses have a huge amount of power over national elections. These states resemble what we call "competitive autocracies": they look and feel legitimate, even though the results of their elections are essentially predetermined and rigged…. Once you tear away at the protections and pillars of a democratic system, things can convert very quickly, and you start getting truly unhinged legislatures. Statewide elections in some states are still relatively competitive, although voter suppression and purging have taken a toll. Yet in the statehouses there is a system that Vladimir Putin would be impressed with. For example, in Ohio, even if a majority of people voted for a Democrat, the Republicans would still be in the majority or super majority in the statehouse. When outcomes are guaranteed, there is zero accountability. In total, Trump's shock and awe campaign as detailed in Project 2025 and Agenda 47 is a revolutionary project to take control over all areas of American private and public life. The White Christian Nationalist 'Seven Mountains' strategy is a parallel and complementary plan to remake American society into a White Christian Authoritarian theocracy by taking over government, the military, religion, education, family, business, the arts, entertainment and the media. In a recent post on his Truth Social platform, Trump declared himself above the law like some type of Caesar or Napoleon. The United States Supreme Court has given Trump sufficient reason to confidently make such a declaration when it deemed him outside and above the law and able to do whatever he wants as long as he claims the cover of 'presidential acts.' The German word for this control over the entirety of society is 'Gleichschaltung,' which means 'synchronization' or 'bringing into line.' On this, historian Terrence Petty warns in a recent essay at the Forward: Now, it's American democracy that is in peril. As Trump takes a sledgehammer to the rule of law, intimidates and bullies those who stand in his way, hacks away at press freedoms, guts government agencies, and continues to demonize those whom he sees as 'woke,' who will dare to stand in his way?... In Trump's America, how far are we down the road to Gleichschaltung? Americans can still preserve the democracy we've enjoyed for 249 years, but only if we want to. As has been widely reported, historian Timothy Snyder and philosopher Jason Stanley have both decided to leave Yale University and move to Canada where they have accepted professorships at the University of Toronto. Snyder and Stanley are leading scholars of authoritarianism and fascism who, since at least 2016, have been among the loudest public alarm-sounders and critics of Trumpism and the MAGA movement. They correctly warned that it is an existential threat to American democracy and society. Neither Snyder nor Stanley is sick with Trump Derangement Syndrome. During a recent interview with PBS, Stanley summarized his reasons for leaving the United States as 'I think the probabilities are not in the favor of U.S. democracy.' When the likes of Timothy Snyder, Jason Stanley, and other leading experts of authoritarianism have concluded that it is time to leave the United States, all Americans should be very afraid. The American people have been warned. Again.
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
MAGA left dizzy by Trump's "shock and awe" spectacle
It took one of Europe's democracies only 53 days to succumb to fascism. America's already ailing democracy feels like it will reach that horrible moment much sooner. The Trumpocene is a surreal, disorienting spectacle that has conquered so much of American culture and politics. Donald Trump and his MAGA movement's shock and awe campaign against American democracy and society is moving very fast. It's left the American people, their responsible leaders, the mainstream news media and the so-called Resistance spinning and dizzy. In an aptly titled Associated Press news story 'Trump moves with light speed and brute force in shaking the core of what America has been', Calvin Woodward recounts the last six weeks: President Donald Trump is moving with light speed and brute force to break the existing order and reshape America at home and abroad. He likes the ring of calling himself king. No one can absorb it all. By the time you try to process one big thing — he covets Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal and Gaza; he turns away from historic alliances and Ukraine; fires many thousands of federal workers, then brings some right back; raises doubts whether he will obey laws he doesn't like; orders an about-face in the missions of department after department; declares there are only two genders, which federal documents will henceforth call sexes; announces heavy tariffs, suspends them, then imposes some — three more big things have happened. Trump's core supporters are thrilled with what they see. Those who don't like him watch in horror. The nation is far from any consensus on what makes America great and what may make it sink. What's undeniable is that Trump has ushered in the sharpest change of direction for the country at least since Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Great Depression. But the long-term implications of Trump's national reset, and by extension his own legacy, cannot yet be determined…. 'The last month has been entirely distinctive in American history,' said Cal Jillson, a constitutional and presidential scholar at Southern Methodist University. 'We have never had an American president who moved this decisively in the face of the law and the Constitution. We are in a dangerous place.' Those voters who put Trump in office for a second time should have expected such an outcome. Moreover, that is exactly what many of them desired from an elected autocrat-authoritarian who literally promised to be a dictator on 'day one' of his 'presidency.' What many of Trump's voters may not have expected is that they too — not just the Democrats, the news media, the Black and brown people, the LGBTQ community, feminists, the 'takers' and other so-called enemies — would be left spinning, made to feel vulnerable and hurt by their president and his MAGA Republican Party's policies. Public opinion polls show that Trump's voters wanted a leader who would shake things up and break the rules for people like them. The first part of their dark wish came true; they have earned everything that comes with it. However, they erred in believing that Trump actually cares about anyone other than himself and his pursuit of corrupt and absolute power in all its many forms. In a very sharp and insightful essay at the London Review of Books about the Trumpocene and its main character Donald Trump, T.J. Clark observes: It's not news that Trump is a creature of the society of the spectacle. Creature and master, emanation and accelerant. He is the image. The mugshot. He's the picture of himself on Fox he sits watching for hours each day – rightly understanding that doing so is doing politics, politics as our society now practises it. Governing? We leave that to our servants. (What a lovely bygone sound there is to Michel Foucault's term of art 'governmentality'. Only ascendant powers think the state is for governing. Leaders of empires in decline look across at Xi Jinping and wonder if he can be serious about infrastructure and censorship and party discipline and the size of the army. Wasn't that yesterday?)…. The spectacle knows itself, after a fashion. It likes to nod and wink at its subjects, including those in on the joke. The fact that Trump is absurd is part of his mastery; the fact that he knows he is – knows what his absurdity is for – another…. The politics of an empire in decline are invariably a mixture of the cruel and the ludicrous. (Ask the Brits.) Nonetheless, the American case is distinctive, and its special character worth examining, if we're to understand the kind of imperial disintegration that might take place over the next fifty years. We're at the beginning of the end of American hegemony. A preponderance so crushing will resist to the last. Clark continues: Trump is an early warning signal. He's a phenomenon of transition, only half adjusted to emerging reality. Of course, he's not such a fool as to believe that he will, or anyone could, Make America Great Again; but his politics has to steer a course between those in his audience who do believe it, or make-believe it, and those, perhaps the majority, who are there for fun. They're as cynical as he is. Or rather, they are serious about spectacle. About the chanting, the hats, the latest insult. They know that's what politics now is. They know what politics is not allowed to interfere with: that is, everything just described about empire. The point often made about MAGA voting to worsen their own condition may be correct (for most if not all of them), but it has no bite when voters are persuaded that the other party has no intention of bettering it. Shallow state, deep economy. On Trump's style. His mixture of insult, ressentiment, and buffoonery is a work of genius. A series of new public opinion polls show a growing wave (albeit modest) of disapproval for Trump's policies and behavior. More Americans also appear to finally be orienting themselves and realizing that Trump's existential dangers to democracy, the institutions and norms, freedom, the Constitution, the rule of law, and the civil and human rights of the American people are very real — and not just partisan bluster by the Democrats and others who oppose Trump. Trump and his advisors view politics through the lens and framework of existential battle. As a military strategy applied to American politics, the success of 'shock and awe' and 'blitzkrieg' (lightning war) is measured in large part by how the target(s) will be left so disoriented and confused that once they recover (if at all) it will be too late to effectively regroup and reorient themselves on defense and then counterattack. Among their many failures of imagination, corporate Democrats, centrists and other establishment voices refused to accept that they were in such a personal and societal struggle. These failures are some of the main reasons why, for example, they have been so easily outmaneuvered by President Trump and the architects of Project 2025. But American democracy is not yet terminal. The Democratic Party is finally beginning to act like an opposition party — albeit a weak one that does not know what 'opposition' truly means. Still, there are some signs the Democratic Party is finally finding its steel. The Democratic Party's leaders are refusing, at least for now, to cooperate with passing Donald Trump and his Republican Party's budget that will take trillions of the American people's tax dollars away from the neediest and most deserving and give it to the millionaires, billionaires, and other kleptocrats and plutocrats. Challenges to Trump's unconstitutional and other apparently illegal executive orders and other diktats and commands are being successfully made in the courts (by CNN's count 80 legal challenges have been filed). The question is now how and if the Trump administration will abide by the rulings. The Resistance movement that took to the streets during Trump's first term appears to have decided that such a strategy is obsolete and is trying to figure out what effective opposition looks like in 2024 and beyond. But there are encouraging signs that the Resistance is finally waking up. The Washington Post reports: Little by little, after an initial phase of stunned confusion, the broader resistance to Trump is beginning to wake up. 'There is a lot more anger building, such that we are seeing in deep-red Republican-held districts that people are coming out,' said Faiz Shakir, Sanders's chief political adviser. 'They are surprising those [Republican] members of Congress who don't expect that when they try to defend Elon Musk they will get aggressive booing. You couldn't manufacture this if you tried.' Ezra Levin, co-executive director of the progressive group Indivisible, said it has grown roughly from 1,000 local groups to 1,500 since the election. Activists from MoveOn organized 60 events last week, including protests outside the offices of Republican House members, some drawing several hundred participants. The opposition to Trump arose immediately after his election, Levin said, but it has become far more visible in recent days. 'We have been seeing a surge of energy we haven't seen since 2017,' Levin said. 'It is now becoming more visible beyond the community centers, the living rooms — it's now in the public eye.' This year's resistance is taking a different form than it did in 2017, when celebrities issued emotional statements and opponents launched mass street protests. This time, the president's adversaries are aiming their fire more selectively, directing political and legal attacks against specific Trump policies they believe are both damaging and unpopular. What about the mainstream news media? Out of fear and self-preservation and maximizing profits, the mainstream news media, as an institution, has mostly chosen some version of preemptive surrender and anticipatory compliance that involves normalizing President Trump and his administration and the larger antidemocracy movement. For example, journalists and other voices who are considered to be 'problematic' by the Trump administration and the larger MAGA movement and right-wing are being forced out. Columnists and other voices are being both actively censored by management and learning to quickly adapt to the boundaries imposed on them — even if those boundaries and muzzles are not explicitly communicated. Perhaps most troubling for what it will ultimately mean for America's democratic culture and the First Amendment, media outlets are censoring themselves to avoid the wrath of the Trump administration and its allies who view them as 'the enemy of the people.' 'If Democracy dies in the darkness' too many of the country's elite news media have chosen to dim their own lights. The American people will be left groping in the dark. Donald Trump and the right-wing propaganda and experience machine will be there to illuminate it with their own version of reality and the approved 'patriotic' truth and facts. A few weeks before Donald Trump's (second) inauguration, I asked leading media critic Dan Froomkin for his thoughts about how the news media was responding to Trump's return to power. Froomkin told me the following: I'm disgusted with how the mainstream traditional media failed to convey to the American people that Trump is an extreme danger to our national security as well as any number of core American values. I'm disgusted with how the media refused to give the Biden administration credit for the roaring economy and allowed so many people to believe that crime was up and immigration was an existential threat. I'm also disappointed that the media was misled so easily and so long by White House officials about Biden's fitness to run for re-election. All in all, it was a wildly horrible year for the mainstream media. I was surprised by Trump's election. I remain surprised. I still cannot believe so many Americans got suckered so badly. I despair. I'm preparing myself to work harder. In addition to my work as a media critic, I am starting a newsletter about the resistance. The newsletter is called Heads Up News. I don't think we are even vaguely ready for what's coming. I anticipate a full-scale attack on the government by the people who will soon be leading it, and I expect catastrophic results in terms of legions of good people getting fired, justice being weaponized, and life-saving government regulations being effectively abandoned. I worry that civil society isn't up to the task of effectively resisting, but I hope I'm wrong. Weeks are like years now. Donald Trump has been president for 36 days. Matters are now far worse.
