In an oversized four-page essay in last Sunday’s Washington Post, columnist Robert Kagan’s headline is a dire warning: “A Trump Dictatorship is Increasingly Inevitable. We Should Stop Pretending.”
We can only hope that it will not wind up being cited in future history books as a signal inflection point on the road to the end of any even residual hints of democracy in the U.S. that will issue in with a second Trump term.
Yes, it is frighteningly close at hand, something that might be sewn up as early as the Super Tuesday primaries next March.
Kagan writes, “Can Trump win (the presidential) election? The answer unless something radical and unforeseen happens is: Of course he can… If Trump does win the election, he will immediately become the most powerful person ever to hold that office. Not only will he wield the awesome powers of the American executive… but he will do so with the fewest constraints of any president, fewer even than in his own first term.”
He then asks, “How will Americans respond to the first signs of a regime of political persecution? Will they rise up in outrage? Don’t count on it.”
His essay evoked in this writer’s mind the May 2016 essay in the New York Times by Frank Rich, in the months following Trump’s election, on how Roy Cohn was “the original Donald Trump” who, as a character in Tony Kuschner’s “Angels in America” described him, was “The polestar of human evil…The worst human being who ever lived…the most evil, twisted, vicious bastard ever to snort coke at Studio 54.”
Rich described “the uncanny overlap” between the figures of Cohn and Trump, who operated like a tandem for the ages in New York until AIDS caught up with Cohn. Rich noted that Cohn had survived, as Trump now is, “with indictments and scandals that included accusations of multiple bank and securities law violations, perennial tax evasion, bribery, extortion and theft.” Rich added, “Trump also flourished for decades despite being a shameless lawbreaker, tax evader, liar, racist, bankruptcy aficionado, and hypocrite notorious for his mob connections, transactional sexual promiscuity, and utter disregard for rules, scruples and morals.” And Trump has triumphed “despite having all of Cohn’s debits, wartime draft dodging included, but none of his assets – legal cunning, erudition, a sense of humor, brainpower, and loyalty.”
Despite all this well documented deceit and evil, Trump now all but has a lock on the GOP nomination and a clear shot to win the presidential election next year. Notifying the public about what a despicable person Trump is obviously has no effect on his polling chances.
It has become clear that morality, either personal or political, plays no role in how Wall Street, anarcho-populist and other elements of his support base react. They feel they have a winner for helping to advance their own greed or rage against the “establishment” forces they perceive themselves as arrayed against.
So, it does little good to further “expose” Trump at this point, to hyperventilate over his evil ways or to rail against him.
Where I take issue with the Kagan essay is where it comes to taking action in the face of all this. My optimism and hope lie in the capacity of the general American public, and in particular women, to do the right thing, and there’s no single issue where this is manifested greater than that of women’s control of their own bodies.
Lacking in the commentaries about our current state of affairs, including the one by Kagan, is the potentially explosive feminist angle. The failing of the typical male point of view is that it sees the abortion rights issue as just that: an issue. On the contrary, it is a matter of individual rights as personal and incredibly relevant and immediate as anything impacting the lives of all women.
It is the impassioned and fighting spirit of women that will prevail in this trying time to stand up and overthrow the heinous excesses of Trump and all he represents.
The campaign narratives of all opponents of Trump need to do a better job of identifying and reflecting this. We defeat Trump best by all becoming feminists.
Editor’s Weekly Column: Becoming Feminists To Defeat Trump
Nicholas F. Benton
In an oversized four-page essay in last Sunday’s Washington Post, columnist Robert Kagan’s headline is a dire warning: “A Trump Dictatorship is Increasingly Inevitable. We Should Stop Pretending.”
We can only hope that it will not wind up being cited in future history books as a signal inflection point on the road to the end of any even residual hints of democracy in the U.S. that will issue in with a second Trump term.
Yes, it is frighteningly close at hand, something that might be sewn up as early as the Super Tuesday primaries next March.
Kagan writes, “Can Trump win (the presidential) election? The answer unless something radical and unforeseen happens is: Of course he can… If Trump does win the election, he will immediately become the most powerful person ever to hold that office. Not only will he wield the awesome powers of the American executive… but he will do so with the fewest constraints of any president, fewer even than in his own first term.”
He then asks, “How will Americans respond to the first signs of a regime of political persecution? Will they rise up in outrage? Don’t count on it.”
His essay evoked in this writer’s mind the May 2016 essay in the New York Times by Frank Rich, in the months following Trump’s election, on how Roy Cohn was “the original Donald Trump” who, as a character in Tony Kuschner’s “Angels in America” described him, was “The polestar of human evil…The worst human being who ever lived…the most evil, twisted, vicious bastard ever to snort coke at Studio 54.”
Rich described “the uncanny overlap” between the figures of Cohn and Trump, who operated like a tandem for the ages in New York until AIDS caught up with Cohn. Rich noted that Cohn had survived, as Trump now is, “with indictments and scandals that included accusations of multiple bank and securities law violations, perennial tax evasion, bribery, extortion and theft.” Rich added, “Trump also flourished for decades despite being a shameless lawbreaker, tax evader, liar, racist, bankruptcy aficionado, and hypocrite notorious for his mob connections, transactional sexual promiscuity, and utter disregard for rules, scruples and morals.” And Trump has triumphed “despite having all of Cohn’s debits, wartime draft dodging included, but none of his assets – legal cunning, erudition, a sense of humor, brainpower, and loyalty.”
Despite all this well documented deceit and evil, Trump now all but has a lock on the GOP nomination and a clear shot to win the presidential election next year. Notifying the public about what a despicable person Trump is obviously has no effect on his polling chances.
It has become clear that morality, either personal or political, plays no role in how Wall Street, anarcho-populist and other elements of his support base react. They feel they have a winner for helping to advance their own greed or rage against the “establishment” forces they perceive themselves as arrayed against.
So, it does little good to further “expose” Trump at this point, to hyperventilate over his evil ways or to rail against him.
Where I take issue with the Kagan essay is where it comes to taking action in the face of all this. My optimism and hope lie in the capacity of the general American public, and in particular women, to do the right thing, and there’s no single issue where this is manifested greater than that of women’s control of their own bodies.
Lacking in the commentaries about our current state of affairs, including the one by Kagan, is the potentially explosive feminist angle. The failing of the typical male point of view is that it sees the abortion rights issue as just that: an issue. On the contrary, it is a matter of individual rights as personal and incredibly relevant and immediate as anything impacting the lives of all women.
It is the impassioned and fighting spirit of women that will prevail in this trying time to stand up and overthrow the heinous excesses of Trump and all he represents.
The campaign narratives of all opponents of Trump need to do a better job of identifying and reflecting this. We defeat Trump best by all becoming feminists.
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