Indecision 2024- America's future is in the hands of stupid people
We're at the mercy of the uneducated, reactionary, easily manipulated, and heavily propagandized
Demons are like obedient dogs; they come when they are called.
Remy de Gourmont
I am incapable of mediocrity.
Serge Gainsbourg
It’s one of the most overused quotes in the world…but also one of the truest. Georges Santayana once said, “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” Since Santayana’s original, many great people have uttered versions of it, but the meaning remains the same- history is circular, and those who don’t know history will inevitably repeat it, usually not for the better
Donald Trump represents yet another iteration of this problem. For Americans who either don’t know or don’t care about what has come before, they run the risk of destroying American democracy and handing us a modern-day version of Adolf Hitler (yes, I went there). Trump is no more a “gift from God” than he is an honest, benevolent, and compassionate leader.
The question of whether Trump would be a dictator seems almost quaint in its naïveté. We’ve moved so far past that point that the only remaining question seems to be how many of our rights we’d lose and how quickly we’d lose them.
Let’s stop the wishful thinking and face the stark reality: There is a clear path to dictatorship in the United States, and it is getting shorter every day. In 13 weeks, Donald Trump will have locked up the Republican nomination. In the RealClearPolitics poll average (for the period from Nov. 9 to 20), Trump leads his nearest competitor by 47 points and leads the rest of the field combined by 27 points. The idea that he is unelectable in the general election is nonsense — he is tied or ahead of President Biden in all the latest polls — stripping other Republican challengers of their own stated reasons for existence. The fact that many Americans might prefer other candidates, much ballyhooed by such political sages as Karl Rove, will soon become irrelevant when millions of Republican voters turn out to choose the person whom no one allegedly wants.
Yes, no one allegedly WANTS Donald Trump, and yet, in all the available polls, he appears to be running even with or slightly ahead of President Joe Biden. You can take polls for whatever they may be worth, which isn’t much, but in the aggregate, they indicate that Donald Trump, the candidate, is far stronger than he deserves to be.
A man facing 91 felony charges STILL (allegedly) has the support of roughly half the electorate. How is that even possible? Nothing remotely close to this has ever happened before. If it were to happen to a Democrat, that person wouldn’t even be registering in the polls; they would’ve been written off long ago…and deservedly so. Democrats would never acquiesce to a moral reprobate like Trump carrying the party’s banner.
For many months now, we have been living in a world of self-delusion, rich with imagined possibilities. Maybe it will be Ron DeSantis, or maybe Nikki Haley. Maybe the myriad indictments of Trump will doom him with Republican suburbanites. Such hopeful speculation has allowed us to drift along passively, conducting business as usual, taking no dramatic action to change course, in the hope and expectation that something will happen. Like people on a riverboat, we have long known there is a waterfall ahead but assume we will somehow find our way to shore before we go over the edge. But now the actions required to get us to shore are looking harder and harder, if not downright impossible.
The magical-thinking phase is ending. Barring some miracle, Trump will soon be the presumptive Republican nominee for president. When that happens, there will be a swift and dramatic shift in the political power dynamic, in his favor. Until now, Republicans and conservatives have enjoyed relative freedom to express anti-Trump sentiments, to speak openly and positively about alternative candidates, to vent criticisms of Trump’s behavior past and present. Donors who find Trump distasteful have been free to spread their money around to help his competitors. Establishment Republicans have made no secret of their hope that Trump will be convicted and thus removed from the equation without their having to take a stand against him.
Sadly, nothing has changed over the past year or so…and it appears nothing will likely change between now and Super Tuesday, when Trump will almost certainly lock up the Republican nomination. Barring trans fats wreaking revenge on Orange Jesus, he’ll be on the ballot against Joe Biden next fall, and we’ll face the real possibility that a convicted felon might become President-elect.
Ah, the soft tyranny of low expectations….
And what then? What if we’re staring down the possibility that our next President is wearing an orange jumpsuit in a federal lockup? I’m not a Constitutional scholar, but I can’t imagine anything in the Constitution even comes close to addressing what happens in that situation.
Trump is about to become far more powerful than he already is. The hour of casting about for alternatives is closing. The next phase is about people falling into line.
Republicans have already begun falling into line behind Orange Jesus. Why, because they’re terrified of what might happen to them if they stood up and honestly spoke their mind. So much for having the courage of your convictions, eh?
Then again, when you know the families of other Republicans have been harassed and threatened by people you know are seriously unbalanced, what are you going to do?
Nice family you got here. Be a shame if anything were to happen to them….
Once Trump has locked up the nomination, and keep in mind this will be almost eight months before the general election, donors and rivals will fall in line…if they haven’t already. Those who backed others in the GOP field won’t want to be tarred as having backed losers; they’ll want to be seen as faithful and obedient servants.
Even those like the Koch brothers, who’ve thrown a lot of money at Nikki Haley, aren’t going to want to be seen as outsiders. Even if they don’t donate directly to Trump, they’ll be careful not to be perceived as adversarial- the GOP in general, and Trump in particular, values- nay, demands- lockstep loyalty. Anything perceived as stepping outside the lines will result in instant excommunication and exile to the hinterlands of irrelevance.
And why not? If Trump is going to be the nominee, it makes sense to sign up early while he is still grateful for defectors. Even anti-Trump donors must ask whether their cause is best served by shunning the man who stands a reasonable chance of being the next president. Will corporate executives endanger the interests of their shareholders just because they or their spouses hate Trump? It’s not surprising that people with hard cash on the line are the first to flip.
The rest of the Republican Party will quickly follow. Rove’s recent exhortation that primary voters choose anyone but Trump is the last such plea you are likely to hear from anyone with a future in the party. Even in a normal campaign, intraparty dissent begins to disappear once the primaries produce a clear winner. Most of the leading candidates have already pledged to support Trump if he is the nominee, even before he has won a single primary vote. Imagine their posture after he runs the table on Super Tuesday. Most of the candidates running against him will sprint toward him, competing for his favor. After Super Tuesday, there will be no surer and shorter path to the presidency for a Republican than to become the loyal running mate of a man who will be 82 in 2028.
For much of the GOP, this is about playing the long game. Donald Trump isn’t getting any younger, nor is his mental state becoming any sharper. Those with ambition understand that Trump is well past his prime, and though they’d never say as much publicly, the question of his successor is very much an open question.
Hitching their star to Donald Trump makes sense for those in their forties or fifties. Even if Trump wins, there’s no guarantee he’d be able to finish a four-year term. That being the case, the palace intrigue would be EPIC. If our democracy has already been dismantled, the jockeying for power could be a literal bloodbath. And the autocrat who rises from the ashes could be even worse and more bloodthirsty than Trump.
While I’m certainly not one to cry about anti-democratic Right-wingers killing themselves off, such a situation doesn’t speak to the stability (nor the soundness) of American governance.
In the end, Americans will get exactly the quality of leadership they deserve. If a plurality of Americans vote for Donald Trump, or if he wins the Electoral College again with fewer popular votes, America will deserve whatever happens next. Americans will have no one to blame but themselves.
As for me, if that happens, I’ll hope for the best while expecting the worst. I’ll fear that my ability to express myself freely in this format may be curtailed before long. Our 1st Amendment rights may be the first to take a hit. What that might look like is anyone’s guess, but my freedom to write something like this might disappear.
For now, though, I’m not going to obsess over something that hasn’t happened. I remain concerned about our future because it’s largely in the hands of those who (as arrogant as this may seem) are too stupid to be allowed to vote. Then again, America’s future has always been in the hands of the uneducated and the poorly informed, so perhaps there’s still hope.
I never feel confident relying on the uneducated and poorly informed when my future hangs in the balance, but here we are, eh?
All we can do is vote like our right and lives…and those of our children…depend on it. Because that may well be the case.
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