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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.
I think you're right that Trump has a unique effect. He has done on me. I would say in my case he has utterly shattered what used to be an (okay, probably patrician) sense that the average Joe is a basically well intentioned person who is smarter than sometimes estimated and is a canny judge of character. The popularity of Trump has really changed that and made me significantly less confident in the average person's judgement. That so many people can be enchanted by the most naked sociopathy I have possibly ever seen has changed my view of human nature.
If, prior to his first candidacy, you had showed me 100 hours of video of Trump speaking, I would have thought it was some kind of satire.
Politics being a contest of character is a fable. It's good you were disabused of it, Trump or no Trump.
Yes, that's right, people do not give a shit about the decorum of personal virtue of their political leaders. What they care about is if those leaders are their friends, and if they can take from their enemies to give to them. You can be the most distasteful of human beings and that does not matter. What matters is that you're looking out for me and my own.
America is not special. It's not more magical or anointed than other places. Much more ridiculous, venal, megalomaniacal have ruled over men than Donald J. Trump, and much more will still. You should have believed it. It can happen here. You are not immune to politics.
Now that you've left the poetic notions aside and joined us in pragmatic reality, please consider your feeling seriously and listen to Cicero when he says that contracting Tiberius Gracchus derangement syndrome is a bad idea for your Republic. The rift between the plebs and the patricians will not be mended by the death of their Tribune. Figurative or not.
In some ways it feels to me like the previous system was a weird biumvirate between the patricians of the Blue Team, and the patricians of the Red Team. The plebs cheer on their favorite color of chariot racing team, and have their own division, but everyone knows that despite their, well, uncouth plebian political aims (mass deportation, tariffs, reparations, abolishing law enforcement, depending on the tribe) that the patricians, at least, all agree are beyond the pale, but to which they will give lip service to solidify their grasp on their team voters.
To some extent, and without trying to definitively draw out the exact sequence of events, we've found ourselves at a point where Trump represents that the Red Team patricians have completely lost control of the chariot teams, and the patricians generally are realizing that they've lost control of the team. For a bit in 2020, it seemed like this might happen to both teams (maybe aping the other team thinking they had a winning strategy? Maybe just general pleb unrest in all corners?), but the blue patricians are now pretty solidly back in control and want to shout about the dangers of the other team.
From where I stand as a contrarian probably assumed to side with the patricians, I see the point, but I wonder about the entire apparatus that seems, from this angle, purpose built to dangle red meat in front of the masses offering a modicum of control, but, like, not real control. It plays to the sentiments and economic battles of the elites without really much regard for giving the plebs what they're shouting for, and that seems almost exploitive. On the other hand, someone needs to prevent a democratic spiral into voting for exclusively bread and circuses (maybe with AGI).
So I'm not sure what to make of it. Maybe there is space for a cooler heads "maybe we should think pragmatically and build a better system that actually cares about the needs of non-elites, rather than paying lip service, while also keeping the budget in check", but that doesn't seem to currently be on offer.
I can't find it again, but I remember reading years ago a short passage from an interview with a never-Trumper Republican campaign strategist, which was being passed around online because he got a little too honest with the interviewer. Specifically, in the passage he said — albeit in less blunt language — that the job of Republican politicians is to, as you put it, convincingly dangle enough red meat in front of stupid flyover plebs to get them to vote for you, despite knowing you're never going to deliver for them, but only for the donor class instead; and that his job as a campaign advisor is to help those politicians lie to those low-class rubes more convincingly.
Multiple people have pointed out that our Republic, like most others, began with a very narrow franchise, the vote limited to a fairly small, elite fraction of the population; and, further, every time there was a (nigh-inevitable) movement to expand that franchise, it was accompanied by a movement to transfer some measure of power out of the hands of elected officials and into unelected ones — whether judges, or (temporary) appointed officials, or eventually permanent technocrat "experts." Further, that while most countries managed to make this transition, and keep real power out of the hands of the plebs, we have a few clear examples of states that failed, and made the mistake of letting the masses elect who they actually wanted to offices with actual power, the most notable — the type specimen, if you will — being Weimar Germany.
The patricians all agree that what the plebs want is beyond the pale, because what the plebs want is fascism. The average MAGA voter wants fascism, and Trump is comparable to Hitler because he's honestly appealing (rather than disingenuously baiting) to the same portion of the population that Hitler did to take power — the sizable fraction of the electorate that will go fascist if given any opportunity. Hence why so many on the left have long warned about the grave and looming threat of fascism in America — because there are millions and millions of would-be fascists in this country, and it was the tacit agreement of elites from both parties to maintain a cordon sanitaire keeping these people disenfranchised and powerless that served as the bulwark holding it back. And it is Trump who — even worse than George W. Bush threatened with his "compassionate conservatism" — breached this essential political barrier, and gave those previously disempowered plebs enough of a taste of what they were denied for so long, that it's going to be an immensely challenging political project to put them back into containment.
I'm curious, what exactly do you think the word "fascism" means in this context. Can you define it?
I've posted on this before here.
Set up a two-axis "political compass." Let the horizontal axis be the social/cultural axis: "socially conservative"/"right wing" vs. "socially liberal"/"left wing." Let the vertical be the economic axis, with upwards being increasing government intervention in the economy, and downwards being towards laissez faire — "fiscally liberal"/"socialist" vs. "fiscally conservative"/"capitalist" (and with the actual space of interest being confined to a much smaller window somewhere in the middle between those far extremes).
In the lower left, we have the Libertarian Quadrant: "fiscally conservative but socially liberal." Low taxes, low redistribution, low regulation, but left-wing social politics. Above that, we have the Progressive Quadrant: high taxes, high redistribution, high regulation of markets, and left-wing social politics. (The trend of the past decade has been for the Democratic party electorate to actually move closer to the Libertarian/Progressive border on economic issues as they move left on social issues.) Over on the bottom right, we have the Conservative Quadrant of the GOP establishment — the people who think the best way to promote traditional values is to lower taxes, reduce regulations, unleash the free market, and "shrink government until you can drown it in the bathtub." (I could go on about this group, and how they respond to tensions between market forces and right-wing social values — but the tl;dr summary is that "low taxes, small government" must always come before "social conservatism" because having it the other way around is fascism.)
Now, what about the fourth quadrant, above the Conservative Quadrant? People who are socially conservative, but also in favor of wealth redistribution and business regulation? Who want to use the government, particularly over the market, as the Progressives, only for right-wing social ends instead of left-wing ones?
Again, I've had people in all four quadrants label that corner the Fascist Quadrant.
To reiterate from that post I linked:
And:
More than once, I've seen Democrat voters argue that a key reason not to elect Republicans is that the GOP is so solidly anti-government, so determined to "shrink it until it can be drowned in the bathtub," that when placed in charge of the government, they're incapable of running it competently. Well, once in my college days, I responded by asking what would happen if the Republican party stopped trying to cut government, and focused instead on how to run it when in charge. Would that, therefore, be less objectionable?
The answer was not just no, but hell no. That would be the worst-case scenario. Because no matter how bad the "cut taxes, cut regulation, kill the government" GOP was, any socially-conservative right wing party that didn't embrace this, which actually wanted to run the government, and use it toward right-wing ends, would be a fascist party.
I don't remember the context, but in an argument at SSC, I remember someone replying to me that Imperial China, across the millennia from Qin to Qing, was "basically fascist," for similar reasons.
There's the GOP establishment, particularly the never-Trumpers. Dedicated first and foremost to cutting taxes, cutting regulations, cutting spending that doesn't go to big politically-connected firms, cutting anything that gets in the way of corporate profits. Whose support of social conservatism is limited to fighting attempts by the left to use the government against it. Who are in favor of Burkean incrementalism, moving things in the same direction as the left, just much more slowly.
Why was the party elite this way? Because it's the only acceptable form the "right wing" can take, particularly in a modern, Western country. Because any socially-conservative right-wing that isn't this way (particularly when its supporters are mostly white and/or Christian) is definitionally fascist.
Again, you can find people both left and right, with a variety of economic views, who agree with this definition. Again, I know people who fall into this quadrant who agree with this definition, and thus accept the "fascist" label.
Setting aside that that's a whacky-ass definition of facism, would you really describe Trump as 'socially conservative, but also in favor of wealth redistribution and business regulation'? AFAICT he's diametrically opposed on all of those things.
He doesn't really fit the actual definition of fascism per Mussolini/Hitler/Franco either, so when the left says that I assume they just mean "popular person that we don't like".
Trump is a social conservative in wanting to protect socially conservative groups to allow them to grow, which is the true long-term threat to social progressivism.
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