Slouching Toward Dictatorship?
Trump’s 4th of July nonsense is another manifestation that Trump is threatening to drag us down to the level of the worst dictatorships in history. But here’s the thing. What drags us down to the level of the worst dictatorships in history is a feature not a bug for Trump.
Trump doesn’t actually think of himself as the President of the US, at least not as that office is constitutionally defined. The Presidency of Trump’s imagination and the one he mistakenly thinks of himself as occupying, is constrained by nothing but the Presidential Will.
The sad thing is that neither the Republicans, nor the Democrats, nor even the people at large are doing much about it.
The Republicans are straight out enablers. That is probably much too kind a word for them.
Oh sure we Democrats planning and posturing and organizing and crossing our fingers and hoping and praying to defeat him in the next election... which may or may not be “free and fair.” But in terms of constraining this would be dictator president, as a party, we have really hardly begun to fight. That thanks mostly to the strategic calculations of the duck and hide moderates and Pelosi’s perhaps entirely correct but still bitterly disheartening decision that she dare not resist that wing of our caucus, if we are to take down the monster.
And as for we the people, who supposedly are the ultimate sovereigns of this state, sure, many of our number watch in disgust. But as long as the trains run on time, the stock market hums, health care gets delivered, and its not our children who are locked in cages on the border, a little disgusted tsk tsk at the horrors of the passing political show, together with more hope and prayer that the next election will somehow save us, is about all we can manage. I don't mean to diss the activists who are giving sweat and blood and money to the cause. But they are not nearly a large enough slice of the people to take down the monster on their own.
It is wearying. I too am weary. And what do you expect, the weary will no doubt ask? What are we the weary people supposed to do? Take to the streets and grind the nation to a halt in the name of mere abstractions like democracy and the rule of law? Like in, say, Hong Kong?
No thanks! Democracy is nice and all, and so too the rule of law. But safeguarding them is not our job. It’s somebody else’s. Our job is to get and spend and fuck and feed.
And so it goes on and on and on ... as we tumble steadily down and down, to the level of the worst dictatorships in history.
= new reply since forum marked as read
