“Ghost of the Future, I fear you more than any spectre I have seen”

 

I borrow from Dickens to express a foreboding, in particular one that will culminate with this year’s Presidential election.

 

The December 5, 2023 New York Times carried a front-page article, “Second Term Could Unleash Darker Trump.”  I fired off a brief letter to the Editor to add my opinion and was surprised it was immediately published online and then in print under the rubric “Trump Unbound: An Autocrat in Waiting?”

 

To the Editor:

 

A second Trump presidency not only would be more radical, but also seems inevitable. Donald Trump and his handlers have learned to exploit every weakness in our democratic system of government.

 

Our founders must have assumed that those who gravitate to government service would essentially be people of good faith, and the rotten apples would be winnowed by our system of checks and balances. But here we are less than a year away from the election, and while Mr. Trump’s transgressions have drawn 91 criminal charges, there has been no justice yet.

 

He has proved to have a serpentine instinct to capitalize on weak links ranging from the Electoral College to our justice system, gathering strength every time he flouts the rule of law.

 

Perhaps the Times published my laconic letter as it encapsulates a sad truth: our form of government was never designed for the unthinkable. The greatest existential threat to us is, well, us. 

 

It’s simplistic to blame Trump for all of this, but he taps into popular discontent like none other before.  His brand of anti-intellectualism and affinity for reality TV and social media are in perfect sync with his minions.  Those "attributes," and his ability to exploit the weakness of our justice system, are a perfect storm for 2024.

 

Since I wrote that letter there have been further key developments, with certain States trying to keep him off the primary ballots, citing the 14^th amendment (lots of luck with that) and SCOTUS rebuffing special counsel Jack Smith’s request for an expedited ruling on whether Trump can claim presidential immunity from prosecution for crimes “allegedly” committed on January 6.

 

We all saw it -- suggested, aided and abetted by him --  and here it is three years later!  It should not be a presidential immunity issue but one of special presidential culpability.

 

A handful of States will again determine the 2024 Presidential election and Democrats are still making arguments about what has been accomplished, as if that reality will decide the forthcoming election.  President Biden, who has done what he intended, deserves our gratitude, should now be thinking of the greater good, and recognize his age and undeserved lack of popularity should be major factors in deciding whether he should run.  He could be the first incumbent president to substantially win the popular vote but lose the election by a few Electoral College votes (yet another seriously flawed factor in our Democratic system). 

 

Can democracy survive while Justice is further postponed?  Or will Justice be foregone by fiat in 2024?

 

This is not my first New Year’s message of cheer.  It is remarkable to read the New Years’ entries from 2021 and 2022 while we were all mostly COVID bound. It’s like mirrors in mirrors in mirrors: 

 

Saturday, January 9, 2021

The Revoltingly Horrid Year Continues….

 

Wednesday, January 5, 2022

A Ground Hog Day New Year

 

And so, with a little editing, as Tiny Tim observed, “God HELP Us, Every One!”

 

The Continuing Political Piñata of the Pandemic

 

It was one of my better Op-eds, “Freedom” for the Few at the Expense of All (August, 2021)

 

The impetus for writing it almost exactly two years ago was DeSantis’ response to Covid at the time.  It was when he retreated from his original response (which was tempered by some sobering data), and he went rogue for political reasons turning Dr. Fauci into the enemy of the “freedom loving” people of Florida.

 

I walk into restaurants, theaters, or just down the street now and wonder, was it all just a bad dream?  Not really, the dream has morphed into yet another bad dream.  Maybe a worse one?

 

We now have more reliable data, but with the engine of conspiracy theories, abetted by social networking, it filters into the self-serving grab for political power, and we fail to learn from experience. The anti-intellectual vein of the American psyche goes deep, and populists very effectively tap into that.

 

One only has to read the July 22 New York Times article The Steep Cost of Ron DeSantis's Vaccine Turnabout, and then the lead editorial in the July 26 Wall Street Journal, The Real DeSantis COVIDRecord

 

Nowadays, an alternative reality is easy to “prove” and the WSJ does a pretty good job at that.  I’m not going to dissect the two, but my article from two years ago makes some of the same points as the NYT.

 

I will however quote the concluding paragraph of the WSJ article as it is so emblematic of how we can choose to look at this horrible episode in American history: “The lockdown damage continues, but progressives can’t admit they were wrong.  Nor can Mr. Trump.  So they are trying to take down Mr. DeSantis for being right.”

 

There was no “right” or “wrong” when we went through the dark Covid tunnel.  There was scientific advice about responding to the rapidly moving target of the pandemic, and that advice was based on informed experience. However, I don’t recall anyone claiming that it was a hard and fast “truth.” It was thought to be the best advice at the time.  Who was closer to the “truth”, Dr. Fauci or Dr. MyPillowGuy?

 

Trump’s “Evita moment,” ripping off his mask, after climbing the steps to the White House balcony (gasping for air), following his Covid treatment at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, was clearly a high point of his political narcissism.  Look at me!  Look at me! Mr. Tough Guy!  But he received the experimental monoclonal antibody treatment not available to most of his fellow Americans who were dying from Covid.  He did not opt for the "miracle cures" he advocated (and probably killed some of his cult supplicants) such as hydroxychloroquine or injecting disinfectants.  No, he listened to health experts.

 

So would have DeSantis with his own life on the line. Instead, he surrounded himself with hand-picked health advisors who supported his views, all calculated to put him in the White House in 2024.  Lots of luck with that Governor; you didn’t count on the increasing popularity of your indicted adversary.  Trump or DeSantis: demagoguery is their commonality.

Our Continuing National Nightmare

One of the last times I wrote about politics in this blog (having made the futile promise to myself to stay clear of the topic to preserve my sanity), was after the midterm elections:  “I had only one wish for the Midterms: gain the House, although like most moderate progressives, I was rooting for Beto, Gillum, et al.  Still, I sleepily emailed ebullient messages to a few friends at 3.00 AM declaring ‘victory’ with the subject heading ‘bring on the subpoenas.’”

How naïve I was.  We now all know the effectiveness of subpoenas when the Attorney General is a shill for those under scrutiny.  Instead, investigate the investigators his boss suggests.

For a while I fantasized that maybe indeed Biden might be the best qualified candidate to “unite” the nation and make nice with the Republican Party so things can get done.  It was a dreadful, misplaced hope I now think.  Remember the Merrick!  (Merrick Garland, that is, the Obama appointee to the Supreme Court who was kneecapped by Mitch McConnell.) 

The critical nature of winning the 2020 election is no better spelled out than in a recent article in The Nation by Edward Burmila, “Empty Calls for Bipartisanship Could Doom Us All.”

 

Among his salient points are the following:

*Joe Biden’s assertion that President Donald Trump is an “aberration” in the Republican Party is naive at best and revisionist at worst

*Birtherism and Tea Party rhetoric about taking back “our” country were a product rollout, a test marketing of Trump’s politics of white identity

*The Democratic Party seems unable to recognize the seriousness of the moment. It is only luck that the right has not yet found a skilled autocrat

*Imagine what that person could accomplish with the support of a pliant Republican Senate and conservative-packed federal judiciary

*The Democratic Party has an opportunity to influence what happens next. It will not do so with empty promises to unite Americans.

*It is imperative that the eventual Democratic nominee articulate a worldview based on the belief that public policy, not markets, can address social and economic problems, with specific proposals to that end. If ever there was a time to be bold rather than to play it safe, this is it. Without a compelling alternative, ideologues like Trump will succeed by filling the vacuum with a simple—and vile—worldview.

OK, then, what kind of public policy?  We are dealing with a populace who is anti government everything.  Bring on chaos is their mantra.  They have it with their leader. The conventional extreme left progressive “wisdom” of promising to take care of everyone from cradle to grave is not going to sweep Trump and sycophant Republicans out of office.  This is where I disagree with the implication of Burmila’s argument.  There must be a place for “markets” or progressives will merely defeat themselves.  But I agree with the urgency of Burmila’s call to action.  Boldness is required.

This is underscored by Bret Stephens’ opinion column in the New York Times this weekend, “How Trump Wins Next Year” 

He argues that around the world recent elections have ushered in Trumpian populists or have solidified ones already in office, in India, Australia, the Philippines, Israel, Brazil, and Italy – and what is about to happen in the UK.

The core of Stephens’ line of reasoning is:

The common thread here isn’t just right-wing populism. It’s contempt for the ideology of them before us: of the immigrant before the native-born; of the global or transnational interest before the national or local one; of racial or ethnic or sexual minorities before the majority; of the transgressive before the normal. It’s a revolt against the people who say: Pay an immediate and visible price for a long-term and invisible good. It’s hatred of those who think they can define that good, while expecting someone else to pay for it.

When protests erupted last year in France over Emmanuel Macron’s attempt to raise gas prices for the sake of the climate, one gilets jaunes slogan captured the core complaint: “Macron is concerned with the end of the world,” it went, while “we are concerned with the end of the month.”

Stephens accurately accuses the left of being their own worst enemy: … it self-consciously approaches politics as a struggle against selfishness, and partly because it has invested itself so deeply, and increasingly inflexibly, on issues such as climate change or immigration. Whatever else might be said about this, it’s a recipe for nonstop political defeat leavened only by a sensation of moral superiority.

He makes the point, and here is where my thinking and his especially conjoin, that moderate liberals of the past, a Tony Blair or a Bill Clinton -- and while neither could be held up as perfect politicians (in particular Clinton’s moral failures) -- that neither would ever have been bested by someone like Trump.

So where is that person?  Far be it for me to speculate who that should be.  Perhaps as the primaries develop that person will emerge, but I fear that if it is someone from the far left or a reach-across-the-aisle placater singing 'Kumbaya', we will have missed our opportunity to turn back this wave of populist, know-nothing, nihilism.   

A Gathering Storm

We seem to be watching the slow motion creation of a dystopian plutocracy. Obfuscated by the administration’s contrived crisis of dealing with undocumented immigrants and horrific scenes of families being separated, is an alt-right agenda of dismantling the so called social net.  Stories such as a recent one in the New York Times are hidden by other events of Trump’s creation. 

Highlighted here are some salient points from the New York Times article of a few days ago, “Behind Trump’s Plan to Overhaul the Government: Scaling Back the Safety Net”.

I have depended on the Times for the Truth all my life and I see no reason to disbelieve any of this about “a small army of conservatives [who] have produced dozens of initiatives like the cabinet reshuffle proposal, with the goal of dismantling the social welfare system.”

·       *Among the most consequential ideas is a proposal to shift the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a subsistence benefit that provides aid to 42 million poor and working Americans, from the Agriculture Department to a new mega-agency that would have “welfare” in its title — a term Mr. Trump uses as a pejorative catchall for most government benefit programs

·        

          *Mr. Trump, for his part, joked on Thursday that the plan was “extraordinarily boring” before TV cameras in the Cabinet Room.  But being boring in an all-too-exciting White House has provided cover for a small army of conservatives and think tank veterans who have been quietly churning out dozens of initiatives like the proposal to reshuffle the cabinet, with the ultimate goal of dismantling the American social welfare system from the inside out.

·         

          *Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s former adviser,…believes the attack on social programs will be one of Mr. Trump’s most enduring policy achievements.

·        

          *Philip G. Alston, a New York University professor and the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, agreed with Mr. Bannon’s assessment. “My sense is they are making very considerable progress, even though no one is paying much attention,” he said.

·          

      *As president, Mr. Trump would become so bored with the details of domestic policy that aides long ago stopped sharing all but the most top-line specifics of their plans — including the reorganization, according to several people who have worked closely with Mr. Trump.  If Mr. Trump is fuzzy on policy, he is acutely attuned to the perils of offending his base, especially older voters.

·          

      *The core of Mr. Trump’s safety net policy is an expansion of work requirements to foster self-sufficiency among recipients of food assistance, Medicaid and housing subsidies to reduce dependence on the government. “Our goal is to get people on the path to self-sufficiency,” Mr. Bremberg said. Its real purpose, advocates for poor people claim, is to kick hundreds of thousands of the needy off the federal rolls, to cut taxes for the rich

·          

      *By early 2017, Heritage produced a government reorganization plan that served as the initial template for Thursday’s announcement. They also drafted a list of 334 policy recommendations, about half of them aimed at domestic programs for poor people or Obama-era regulations protecting low-income consumers.

The first part of the plan, cutting taxes for the upper 1%, has already been implemented.  What remains to be seen is the long term impact of those cuts on the deficit; most economists agree that GPD growth will not offset those cuts. This leaves an ever growing national debt, something the Republicans staunchly opposed before and now seem to be content with.  When cries of deficit spending reach a crescendo in the future, their “Trump card” may be to throw the neediest 42 million Americans under the bus in the name of fiscal responsibility.