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I think that in reality if elected Trump would probably just spend all day tweeting and failing to implement his promises. However, to many Democrats it is almost as if Trump is a Lovecraftian god the mere mention of whom leads to insanity. Such Democrats view him as some sort of annihilating force the very presence of which in the universe warps and endangers the sane, wholesome building blocks of existence itself. Meanwhile I just see a fat old huckster sociopath who talks a lot of shit but is effectively restrained by checks and balances. Not a savory person, maybe even a rapist, pretty certainly a bad guy, but not some sort of fundamental essential threat to the entire being of American democracy or to sanity.
It is not that I do not believe in evil. But I do find it odd when liberals perceive demonic evil in Trump, yet make excuses for vicious violent criminals (at least, as a class if not always individually) who are enabled by Democrats' soft-on-crime policies.
Would Trump do many harmful things in office? I am sure. Harris would as well. Which one would do more, who knows? I do not see a clear-cut answer to that question. He certainly would be no angel, I am sure of that. But it also seems to me that often, vehement anti-Trump sentiment has little to do with a clear-eyed assessment of the possible harms that he would cause.
What explains the particular mind-shattering power that Trump somehow inflicts on so many of his political opponents? Interestingly, it largely do not seem to be his actual political counterparts among the Democrat elite who view him as an eldritch destroyer of worlds... the Democrat elite may hate him, may despise him, may say that he is a threat to democracy, but I don't think I can remember any time that any of them acted as if he was a threat to one's very psychological foundation. Maybe their power and their close understanding of American politics generally inoculates them against such a reaction.
Lest someone think that I come only to shit on the Democrats, unfortunately no. Would that I actually supported either of the two main parties... my political life would be easier. But the Republicans, too, deserve some questioning on this topic. Republicans' reaction to Bill and Hillary Clinton, at one point, was a sort of precursor to the mental shattering caused by the concept of Trump. Interestingly, despite often being accused of being racist, from what I recall Republicans did not actually react to Obama quite as hysterically as they reacted to the Clintons. Sure, there was a lot of vitriol against Obama, such as Birtherism, but it was probably half as vehement as what was thrown at the Clintons.
Yet even though Republicans were in many ways mind-melted by the Clintons, including to the point that Republican forums back in the day teemed with theories about the Clintons literally being a murderous and pedophilic crime family, I still do not think it quite matches up to the new standards of psychological devastation that Trump has wreaked. That might sound weird, given the murderous pedophile thing, but to me supporters of those theories generally just seem like they are stupid and prone to weird fantasies and LARPs but have always been that way, whereas people who are existentially shattered by Trump seem like they might have been different at one point, but then suddenly Trump appeared in the corner of their reality and traumatically inverted it into some new configuration of dimensions.
Why does Trump have this effect? Is it just that there is a large number of people in this country who fail to agree with me that Trump's chances of becoming a dictator are extremely small, that a man who has most key institutions against him, has the top military brass against him, and lives in a country where the military rank and file are probably not about to try to overthrow civilian authority, has very little chance of ending American democracy?
I am not sure. The idea of Trump being the curtain call on American democracy is certainly one of the main things behind his psychological impact on people, but I have seen plenty of people who seem existentially horrified by him for completely different reasons. Some people seem to be driven out of their wits' ends just by the very fact that Trump is crude and vulgar rather than sounding like an intellectual.
Democrat here.
I actually mostly agree with you that Trump would spend the majority of the time doing nothing and passing whatever Republicans put in front of him. From a D perspective that's bad of course, but not unexpected. Though expected or not, his court nominations have had lasting consequences. I think a lot of it is his propensity for impulsive or poor decisions, such as trying to pull out of NATO.
I think a lot of it is his norm-shattering ability to be a complete and utter hypocrite and/or corrupt and for it to be excused. He's a "Christian" that cheats on his wife and no one cares. He calls for locking up Hillary over emails, then has a bathroom full of classified documents and no one cares. Hunter must be punished over corruptly using family connections, but Trump businesses getting a bunch of business and business deals in other countries is a nothingburger. Let's also not forget Jared Kushner.
I expect to see counters about how the entire government is corrupt, and I don't even disagree with all of it. But he is so incredibly blatant about it that he doesn't even try to create plausible deniability.
I think his false elector scheme was a massive attempt at overturning democracy. I don't know how he could do it again since a two-term limit doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room. But I also don't want to give power to the kind of person who seems to love trying to see how he can lawyer his way out of anything, especially when Republicans seem to go out of their way to excuse him.
"Norm-shattering" is a good description, but incomplete. What trump is is the first person to recognize and reify a wholly new strategy for executing politics. That being: to organize his supporters not as interest groups, not as a cult of personality, not as ideological compatriots, but as a fandom.
Recently, we've been seeing a lot of ink spilt on the subject of the social media-depression link. Particularly where it concerns children, but I hold that the problem extends universally across age groups. Ubiquitous smartphones with social media is (so far) the ultimate realization of the "bowling alone" trend-- where the world inside the screen becomes so addictive that people lose social links outside the screen. Consequently, in-person social links become scarce despite being just as valuable as ever. More valuable, perhaps, because in-person interactions retain all their old benefits while also making you a high-priority person to someone who has potentially valuable virtual contacts.
People on some level realize this, so they still optimize for some level of in-person contact. And they do that by engaging in fandoms. Large, energized masses of people with a shared understanding of a universe easily gel together when they meet in person. That fact that these universes are fictional doesn't matter. In fact, the very fictionality of these universes is what makes them so effective. They can optimize for being interesting and pleasurable over being true. (See: epistemic minor leagues). And unlike traditional social groups that performed the same function (e.g., fraternal societies, religions) they demand very little from you personally outside what you were already willing to give: the free time you already wanted to spend doing something fun, and the opportunity cost of spending time with people who aren't into the same things you are anyways.
Trump is the first modern politician to truly realize the power of fandoms. I want to say, "unwittingly" because I think he's an idiot, but given his success with TV and branded enterprises I can't rule out genuine epiphany. He's creating a shared universe than his fans can all be passionate about, with interesting characters, noble heroes, and evil villains. And in organizing his political supporters into a fandom, he's invalidated all the usual tools of traditional politics. Fact checkers; negative news coverage; research papers-- none of that stuff is effective against a fandom. In fact, it's actively counterproductive. Every youtube video about how star wars physics aren't realistic just keeps people interested in the star wars fandom.
Indeed, the only thing that can successfully oppose a fandom is an equal and opposite hatedom. Whether his enemies deliberately organized themselves into one, or were simply forced by selection pressures to fit the mold doesn't matter. What matters is that when someone says, "Drake and Josh are amazing singers," you don't bother telling them that they're overproduced corporate slop. Instead, you go out and create a powerful social group of your own, by telling them, "look at all these idiots that love something Dan Schneider, a pedophile, created!"
The hate against the clintons for being slimy, the "bush is stupid" people, and the the obama birtherism were essentially prefigurement for this. They cultivated proto-fandoms with their charisma that made traditional policy attacks less effective, and therefore were subject to proto-hatedoms. Bernie came the closest to emulating trump with his own dedicated online fandom, but he definitely didn't consciously understand what was happening, and in any case failed to take advantage of his devotees like trump did.
Until technology dramatically changes the social environment again, I predict that every future president will act like trump and be treated like trump. He is to social media as Kennedy was to television as Coolidge was to radio-- laying out the path for every candidate after.
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