The Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party has returned! Let’s pretend not to be surprised when they start eating people’s faces again.
Here is what I wrote the week before the presidential election:
It goes without saying, but I support Kamala Harris for president because 1)Trump is a tax cheat, serial liar, racist, convicted felon who has failed to uphold the U.S. Constitution and rejects scientific experts to embrace conspiracy theories, 2)Biden/Harris has done an admirable job restoring global alliances, reinvigorating domestic manufacturing and clean energy sector with the CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act, 3)Harris is highly competent, a skilled arguer, careful about her language with a track record of respect for the rule of law, 4)Harris is more than likely to pass meaningful bipartisan immigration reform and implement it successfully (rather than just propose unworkable and colossally stupid ideas like BUILD THIS WALL). 5)Harris will continue a policy of transitioning towards a low-carbon clean energy future (rather than shouting meaningless slogans about it). 5)The U.S. economy under Harris would be likely to grow in a normal fashion, so Americans won’t have to worry about runaway deficits or politicized agencies or misuse of public office for personal gain or investigations into political enemies or improper use of pardons or a constant stream of profanities on the president’s social media. Finally, with Harris as president, I can sleep at night knowing that Harris’s team can handle national emergencies with more skill and speed than a team of officials under Trump. A number of Trump’s former staff have already said Trump is not fit to be president. The “Yes Men” that Trump likely would surround himself under a second Trump administration with would merely echo Trump’s worst qualities and fail to serve the American people. (I could go on, but you get the point).
Frankly I am both astonished and horrified that this reality has come to pass. The first time in 2016, I was worried, but inclined to believe that the American people would vote for the party which offered safety and security.
I knew Trump back in 2010 when he was spreading the lie that Obama wasn’t a U.S. Citizen and that he was a Muslim. A college friend who lived overseas kept forwarding me things Trump said about Obama and how global warming was a hoax. I knew all this stuff was malicious nonsense, but I couldn’t understand its staying power. I couldn’t understand how educated people could tolerate this nonsense.
I wasn’t that big a fan of Hilary Clinton (I liked Bernie Sanders more), but Clinton was rational and law-abiding. In contrast, Trump in 2016 stood for chaos and insults and corruption. He stood for flouting American political traditions of all kinds.
After recovering from the shock of Trump’s 2016 election, I followed national politics more closely than I ever had done. Some predictable things happened — exiting the Paris climate treaty, tax cuts, coddling up to dictators. I sort of expected the anti-immigrant policies –just not the ham-handed way it was implemented (or Donald Trump’s rhetoric about shithole countries). It seemed so apparent that Trump was violating the spirit if not the letter of the Emoluments clause in the constitution. Eventually I expected the courts to catch up with him. That did not happen. Cases just kept getting delayed until Trump just ran out the clock.
Luckily, the outright incompetence and corruption of the bureaucrats appointed to the EPA undermined Trump’s desire to dismantle climate and pollution legislation. By the time Trump found someone who was halfway ethical and competent, Trump’s presidency was ready to end.
There was evidence that Trump was misusing his office for personal and political gain. Surely at some point the details would come out — and in fact they usually did. Yet Trump was never held to account — officially or politically. Impeachments never were approved. Court cases were delayed, and Republicans almost never criticized Trump’s words or behavior.
During Trump’s reign, several devastating things happened but one thing did not happen.
What didn’t happen? After Trump cut corporate taxes, economic growth increased only slightly and jobs created and capital investments increased only modestly — while raising the federal deficit. (See Krugman’s column about this here and here).
Several weather events hit us — most notably Hurricane Harvey in Houston and Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
An unexpected pandemic occurred, with massive disruption to our society. Suddenly it became very important that the federal government operate with maximum effectiveness. In a way it did, but Trump’s press conferences about the pandemic were an embarrassment. If only Trump would keep his mouth shut! Instead he ended up making the problem worse — by talking up quack remedies, by blaming the Chinese, by demonizing Democratic governors who were simply combating a medical crisis. Luckily, the medical establishment continued to provide accurate information, and it seemed at least that we were on our way to a vaccination solution. (Little did we realize that the MAGA crowd would seize on mask-wearing and vaccinations themselves as the “real problem.”)
Finally, Trump and company did a lot to sow existential doubt in our electoral system. He spread a false narrative which Fox News and other right-wing media outlets were propagating. It was despicable. It was flooding the zone with disinformation and leaving most Americans confused about what was really going on. When on January 6, many of Trump’s thugs marched to Congress and destroyed things, it was obvious just how dangerous and norm-shattering all of this was.
The stress of Trump’s first term was hard to describe. Every day brought a new series of tweets and outrageous norm-violating misdeeds. Our best newspapers reported these things, and comedians ruthlessly lampooned Trump’s misdeeds. Many were feeling Trump fatigue, so the 2018 and 2020 elections would certainly bring political change.
They did, and Biden did catch us up a bit and restored a veneer of normalcy which has disappeared once again.
Yet, the Republicans continued to act as if this was just normal politics, and that Biden was the real problem. Biden had a hard time dealing with right-wing extremism, and yet he managed to restore the balance between parties and branches of government. To Biden I give enormous credit. In contrast, Texas was becoming even more Trumpy. The government was demonizing transgender people, blaming everything on CRT and DEI (4 years prior it was ANTIFA and Muslims and people from shithole countries), banning books, making their own immigration policy. It was horrifying — and yet the major cities like Houston and Austin and San Antonio seemed to protect Texans from the worst of it.
The 2024 election was vicious and full of drama and surprises. The thing I found most infuriating about the 2024 campaign is that Trump was just being Trump — and a significant portion of the voting population seemed to be fine with that. He was using the same playbook and not trying anything different. Yet opinion polls never went against Trump. Never mind that the U.S. economy was doing great, that unemployment was low, that Americans were rebuilding infrastructure and fighting climate. The American people were convinced that the high price of eggs was such a heinous offense against humanity that it justified the ascent of fascism. The American people believed that we needed to have tariffs to punish foreign companies and that the presence of billionaires on Trump’s side was a benefit to good government, not a hindrance.
In 2024, a lot of things changed. An overwhelming majority of Republican politicians became beholden to Trump personally. Post-election, a lot of tech giants have chosen to side with Trump simply because he holds the purse strings to the public coffer. Journalists hold a more precarious position in society, and Fox News, rather than being weakened by having to pay out libel lawsuits, is more powerful than ever.
Suddenly a political leader who has made a living out of scamming people and hawking products of dubious value for their alleged prestige has hit the jackpot. Trump no longer has to worry about conflicts of interest or emoluments clauses or disloyal cabinet secretaries. As the value of these dubious Trump products seem to increase, so does the actual wealth of Mr. Trump. Now foreign states and gigantic companies have a way to funnel wealth into Trump’s pockets without having to abide by quaint 20th century campaign finance laws.
I have no idea what will happen in the next four years. It might not be as bad as I expect, or it might be much worse. Trump and company now have better bureaucrats and a better sense of how to get things done. The legal structures that provide institutional stability have already been weakened; could they be dismantled altogether? American generals will be given loyalty tests, and the FBI is likely to have free reign to investigate political enemies. The flip side of accusing the other side of “weaponizing” federal departments is that when you gain power, you can do it more blatantly and make it seem more normal to those not paying attention. The U.S. now has a Supreme Court which has dismantled several important precedents (Roe vs. Wade, the Chevron deference, etc.) and seems likely to rubber stamp whatever Trump has decided. Already the Supreme Court has declined to intervene in gerrymandering cases and has said that a president is essentially immune from criminal prosecution for most crimes committed while in office.
So we have a demoralized Democratic side which seems unable to counter the fascist tactics of the Republican Party. Then we have social media companies with uncertain goals. Is TikTok truly an open forum for people — or does its algorithm show favoritism towards a certain political viewpoint? Is Facebook providing a forum where politics can be discussed? Or is it a place that needs Factchecks or certain disinformation to be blocked? Then we have online communities which amplify a single political point of view — and a university system cowered into compliance by pusillanimous leaders. Suddenly it seems that the “real” enemies of humanity are students protesting George Floyd or Israeli’s unrestrained massacres against the Palestinian people. Now, it seems the true patriots are actually the billionaires who cancel endowments whenever students start disrupting campus life with protests.
Then we have the ravages of climate change which become more deadly with every year — and the right wing establishment continue its myopic embrace of the same fossil fuel companies who are making the problem worse.
Then we have illiberal superpowers like China, India and Russia which lack commitment to democratic values or even human rights and whose influence and political power keep increasing. They are poised to take advantage of shortcomings or weaknesses of Western governments. Suddenly Hong Kong and Taiwan and Ukraine seem ripe for the taking.
Then we have allies in Europe and the Americas whose democratic values are also slowly slipping and whose leaders are losing ground in elections.
Perhaps all is not hopeless — and perhaps this void will be filled with a new and more robust set of political values. But all seems pretty bleak to this one blogger on January 20, 2025.
See also: Timothy Snyder’s 20 Lessons of Tyranny.
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