a retrospective
Trump’s election clearly threatens the end of American democracy. In spite of all its limitations and failures,
in spite of racism, exploitation, and imperialism, this country had, at least
up to this point, avoided military takeover and fascist dictatorship. There will be for the next four years a
leader who admires tyranny and cares for nothing but his own power. Immigrants, gays, and those who lack what
Trump called his “beautiful white skin” will suffer in particular, as will all
the poor. In fact the great majority of
Americans lost last night. All women and
all workers will find their rights restricted and their options narrowed. Everyone will suffer, in fact, except a few
billionaires. The voices of scientists
regarding climate change and vaccines will go unheard while charlatans and
know-nothings govern policy.
Knowledgeable foreign policy experts will be replaced by hacks. Politically neutral civil servants will lose
their jobs to the toadies in a return to the long-discredited spoils system.
During the Lyndon
Johnson administration I and others felt that the Republican Party was all but
obsolete. Democrats had held the White
House for a generation with the exception of the two terms of the basically
non-political war hero Dwight Eisenhower.
The New Deal brought together big city residents and many rural working
people into a consensus that recognized the positive role of government in social
problem-solving. The business tycoons
who had always powered the G. O. P. found through necessity that most
Democratic politicians were equally willing to accommodate their wishes, and
progressives began to condemn what was
called corporate liberalism. Both
parties followed the old Cold War assumptions in world affairs, with Democrats
sometimes feeling they had to be even more anti-Communist just to prove their
Americanism.
The critical
change in the American political balance of power during that period was
Johnson’s reluctant acceptance of the cause of civil rights, the passage of the
Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, and the shift in the South, on purely
racist grounds, from wholly Democratic territory to solid Republican, after a
transitional pause to embrace George Wallace.
The loss of the Deep South, combined with the disaffection of those who
opposed the war and felt outrage after the brutal repression in Chicago that
summer, was enough to elect Richard Nixon, whom everyone knew to be a shifty
character. The Tet Offensive led many to
think the conduct of the war by the U. S. should be even more violent. We now know that Nixon while only a candidate
was secretly interfering with peace talks to heighten his own political chances. Yet even Nixon, though, while personally corrupt,
supported the Equal Rights Amendment, the Environmental Protection Act, and a
sort of national health system, placing him far to the left of his party
today.
The formation of
Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority placed evangelical Christians in the service of
conservatism (in spite of Christ’s criticism of the wealthy and sympathy for
the poor and outcast) and then the seizure of the American embassy in Teheran in
1979 inspired a moralistic nationalism that ousted Carter and found a leader in Ronald Reagan
whose career as a movie star boosted his support among the
poorly-educated. His terms allowed him to crush the air traffic
controllers’ union PATCO, cut taxes for the wealthy, senselessly invade Grenada,
illegally aid the contras in Nicaragua, and appoint political activists to the
Supreme Court.
Though Clinton
had largely maintained center right policies and had managed to run the
government with historic surpluses, the scandal of his affair with Monica
Lewinsky tainted the end of his administration and then Nader’s campaign
(assisted by the Republican Leadership Council) and, in the end, a decision
from the politicized Supreme Court assisted Bush Jr. into office. (He and Reagan were surely the most
intellectually lightweight of modern presidents until the astonishing
incapacity of Trump.) Bush appointed
more highly partisan Supreme Court justices, leading to the egregious Citizens
United decision in 2010 which allowed big money even more of a say in American
elections.
And finally, the
stage was set for Trump, with his phony reputation as a successful businessman,
his widespread popularity as a television personality, and his willingness to
be overt about his prejudices. He
provided scapegoats for many working-class white voters who had genuine
economic anxieties and grievances. Racism,
sexism, and nativism gave them someone to blame, and old ideas of machismo led
many to admire behavior that was simply rude.
What revived the
Republican Party after it had seemed in my youth to be waning was a combination
of the old corporate wealth, always unsatisfied, with moralistic Christians, many
of modest means, old-fashioned male chauvinists, and ultra-nationalists. Trump’s contempt for women and for other
races unfortunately but undeniably held an appeal for just over half of
America’s voters. Now we are stuck with
Trump for another four years, a man who unashamedly promotes himself, insults
women, immigrants, and the handicapped, and who looks out for nobody but a few
ultra-rich friends. Perhaps his worst
characteristic is his erratic decision-making, based on impulse and whim and
without regard for advice or precedents.
There is, it is sad to say, no telling what the man will do. This country’s recovery from the 2024
election will be long and hard, if it can occur at all.
