I start the writing of this post in the early hours of 6 November 2024, a date that shall, I’m quite certain, be studied for many decades to come. While the vote totals are not all in from the election balloting the previous day, it looks as if Donald Trump will return to the Presidency for a non-consecutive second term. This may yet be overturned, but seeing where things stand with him leading in the returns of all the remaining states, it seems he and his supporters have put together not only an electoral college win, but also, for the first time ever, a popular majority win. A truly stunning turn of events.
In 1787, as the constitutional convention was closing, James
McHenry, in his published journal, records a conversation between Mrs.
Elizabeth Powell and Benjamin Franklin (styled as Doctor Franklin in the
foregoing): “A lady asked Dr. Franklin ‘Well
Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy’ – ‘A republic ‘ replied the
Doctor ‘if you can keep it.’” (https://blogs.loc.gov/manuscripts/2022/01/a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it-elizabeth-willing-powel-benjamin-franklin-and-the-james-mchenry-journal/). To be succinct, we are at a moment where that
latter part will be in question. The
return of Trump to the presidency will stretch and challenge whether the
republic can and will hold. This is not
a question of if or if not this is true, we have the evidence of his previous
four year term to show it is true. The
question is to what degree and how badly will it be.
And that is the state of affairs that the
American voters appear to have been willing to risk, if not outright
endorse. Back in the summer of 2016, I
wrote about the phenomenon of Trump (http://backusec.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-trump-phenom-abridged.html),
which has remained evergreen in its assessment of the nature of the supporters
of Trump. The exception being that the
“feeling” aspect that drives the movement is increasingly, and almost entirely,
divorced from facts or realties. It is
instead built on a set of perceptions and mythology that is repeated
incessantly and through unfiltered mechanisms based on the pomposity of Trump. Despite his being held liable for sexual
assault and rape (to the tune of tens of millions of dollars) and being convicted of a felony, his spin of
it being a sham court, unjust persecution, and election interference (all of
which are fundamentally untrue) are believed by a significant number of people. Many of which are parroting or even going
further in embellishing the fantasy that’s been spun out, that he not only gets
away with it, people feel aggrieved with him.
The depth of how well this has permeated was brought to full relief to
me when a friend commented a few months ago in response to one of my
posts. In her mind, the republic was
already dead and there was nothing left to salvage from it (despite the fact
that she lives in a world, which is clearly taken for granted, where the entire
economy is backed by the full faith and trust in the republic she calls dead). And the apparent result is self evident, the
American voter is either wired into this dystopian version of the world or at
least tolerant of it enough that they voted to put him back in office (despite
well knowing the likely result).
As the first term of Trump’s presidency ensued,
I prognosticated that it was going to be a chaos driven mess that was going to
pull us in the wrong direction, as we had to contend with serious and
potentially devastating challenges as a country both domestically and in
foreign policy. After I retired from the
US Army in early 2018 it was clear that the direction was not good, but the
guardrails were holding to keep the republic from failing in spite of the chaos
that was beginning to be the signature of the administration, with policies
issued by tweet and showmanship being the modus operandi over and against any
sense of statesmanship. There were
significant accomplishments made, from the MAGA point of view: a massive tax cut and reordering of the tax
code, the appointment of a majority of solidly conservative (arguably
reactionary) US supreme court justices along with scores of federal judges, a
“phase 1 trade deal with China”, a bromance between Trump and Kim Jung Ill,
etc. Nevertheless, despite efforts to
make our foreign affairs into a transactional system, our alliances were not
fully abandoned, NATO held, and we did not fully concede to an isolationist
position. At home, repeals to the
American Care Act (aka the health care act passed during the Obama presidency) failed,
efforts to dismantle the civil service were thwarted, and within the Whitehouse
itself, there were many who were reigning in excesses like trying to shoot
protestors in the knees or using the military in domestic law enforcement.
This was, however, a serious period of back
peddling and failing to address the big issues of the day, all in favor of creating
political theater for entertainment sake at an unprecedented scale. There was no infrastructure bill or serious
effort. There wasn’t any real effort to contend
with entitlements in a serious way.
There was zero effort to curb spending on nice to do things and even a
doubling down on wasteful efforts like the boondoggle that was and is “the
border wall.” The Afghanistan conflict
continued, and instead of negotiating to leave on terms that would bolster what
we had invested in that place, the Afghan government had to deal with an
agreement between the US and the Taliban that put them in a horrible position;
leaving the conclusion our involvement to be decided in the next administration
without a real way to fix the problems. There
was no tangible effort to curb the effects of a changed global economy, and
instead it was imposition of tariffs, a retake on NAFTA renamed USMCA that
didn’t change the paradigm, and an era of easy cash that had hyperactive growth
in the economy making it primed for a massive burst. And, boy did that house of cards tumble in
the face of a once in a century event, a global pandemic.
To avoid going on forever on the history of the
first Trump presidency, it ended in devastating fashion. Millions of Americans lost their lives to the
COVID-19 outbreak, never minding the numbers globally. The economy which was flying way to high for
its own good, tanked massively putting many out of work resulting in Trump
being the first president since the Great Depression who left office having
lost more jobs than had been created. The
problems at the southern border never got solved (and arguably were left to
fester), instead of quelling unrest and uniting the country, protests had only
increased and gotten increasingly violent, and we had done nothing functionally
to build a bulwark to deal with a rising China, stop Iran from getting the
bomb, keep autocrats from getting their way, or strengthen our stance with
allies so as to have a joint vision for security and prosperity at home and
abroad. People in America voted clearly
that he had failed, and it was time to end the madness. However, then, came January 6th,
2021, when he incited an armed insurrectionist mob to storm the Capitol of the
United States, carrying his banner, to stop the certification of the election
that unseated him. Unwilling to ever
concede or acknowledge his election loss, this was all fueled by a massive lie
that perpetuates to this day. He was
impeached for the second time for this traitorous effort (the first was for his
acts pertaining to Ukraine and the 2016 election), but as the machinations of
the Senate allowed, he was not removed mainly on a technicality (making him
eligible to run again).
Because of that, despite the facts and the realities
of the failures of the first term of office, again he is most likely to be
making residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC in January
2025. Yes, the republic had not failed,
but it was haggard and beaten. Again,
despite the post presidency revelations (e.g. mishandling and concealing his keeping
of classified documents, efforts to get the Georgia election results
overturned, and the details of his part in the January 6th attempted
insurrection, among other things), the American people have elected for the first
time a traitorous felon to the Whitehouse.
I have heard it many times that we need to trust the “wisdom” of the
American people as the express their will at the ballot box. I’ll be blunt, I absolutely do not, because,
increasingly, it has nothing to do with wisdom.
Rather it has much more to do with the feelings and myths that we tell
ourselves over and against realities we too often do not want to see. As I wrote on social media, the election of
Joe Biden in 2020 to the presidency was merely the first step in fixing the
underlying problem we have in America (an important one, but still only the
first step). As is in evidence now, it
was not enough to remove the head from the snake that is Trumpism. No, we needed to address, head-on, the
grievances of the electorate with a straight talking, clear and truthful effort. Biden did some of that, in that we finally
got an infrastructure bill, we took action on high tech industry efforts, we curbed
the results of the post-pandemic supply chain and Ukraine war driven inflation,
but it was not enough. Biden needed to anoint
his successors to keep the work going well before the spring of this year. He needed to find a way to confront the lies
and fabrications being spewed by the Trump machine. He needed to recognize he couldn’t be the
front man for any longer than the first two years and that he needed to bring
home traditional republicans to a coalition that could weather the upsurge of
the MAGA-ites that was inevitable to occur.
Yes, there are problems in our republic that need fixing, but Joe didn’t
get at those core issues, at least enough and with the plan to get through the
long slog it needs to take to get to the other side.
So now, we are looking at the question asked
akin to that of Elizabeth Powell. America
will we become something other than a republic?
Massive deportations, destruction of our institutions, and much more is
promised by Trump. Those that served
within his last administration, who provided some sense of guardrails, have eschewed him and what he stands for.
Loyalty to him and his fantasy world is the only mark used to judge who
he lets into his circle. So who will be
the voices of reason? It is absolutely true
that Trump poses a potentially unfettered risk to the republic, he demonstrated
that before and has now promised to exact revenge on any that dared to have stood
in his way. This is what was voted for,
this is what we were promised. Are we
ready for the republic to end? Can we
keep it? I have deep fears that we will
not. I have sworn to protect the
constitution of the United States, and I can do no other. Today is a day where historians will look
back and ask why we chose this road. More
so they will see it as an inflection point for the unfolding story of what
American became rather than what it was.
