Highway to Hell

”Every time they chose Trump. Learn their names. Remember their actions. And never ever trust them again! “

Lincoln Project Political Ad

National crises provide perhaps the most compelling contrast between democrats and authoritarians. The politician understands and usually embraces the leadership opportunities such situations afford; after all, they present the unique circumstance where calling for constituent sacrifice is far less difficult to justify. The term “never let a good crisis go to waste” means simply that electorates already primed by events to accept more draconian measures in the short term may stay open-minded to sacrifice for longer-term priorities. Ronald Reagan was all out to rally support to attack Grenada, after 9/11 the check for US adventurism was blank; W and Cheney were glad to fill in the zeroes.

Conversely, strongmen, particularly the tinpot variety with little confidence in their connection to those they impose themselves on, are wary of legitimate causes for pushing further the patience of their subjects. Since most everything they do comes at the majority’s expense, a cost often extracted for purely self-serving purposes, the occasion to demand still more is fraught with danger. Any opportunity autocrats find in such situations generally pertains to sowing further divisions between groups among the nation’s general populace, promoting the disunity despotism thrives on, or tapping the xenophobia well of outside threats. In North Korea, Kim already starved his legions as a function of his totalitarian reign; there isn’t much left to take for any purpose. Whatever he does demand will always come accompanied by the threat an outside enemy represents.

It’s hard to imagine anyone better positioned to benefit politically from the coronavirus crisis than Donald Trump and the Republican Party at his beck and call. After more than three years of the anemic approval ratings his brand of polarization guaranteed, rallying the nation around a united effort to stave off a pandemic couldn’t have been more tailor-made to broaden MAGA’s appeal. Essentially, all Trump had to do was get out of the way and help rally the country to follow expert advice and observe best practices to flatten the curve. Even after his Administration had failed miserably at preventing Covid from spreading rapidly within our shores, it was clear the fear it caused rendered most Americans desperate for central leadership and a calm reassuring presence at the bully pulpit. Not rocket science by any stretch.

Scholars often enjoy arguing about how much history’s worst tyrants actually felt they were securing their nation’s national interest versus other corrupt and sociopathic impulses they acted upon. Since victors do indeed write the epilogue of conflagrations they helped create, Stalin emerged from WWII with ugliness such as his nonaggression pact with Hitler, his initial infantile responses to Germany’s invasion, as well as amoral dictates such as for party apparatchiks to murder any Stalingrad fighters they declared in retreat, obscured to an inappropriate degree by the understanding we may all be speaking German but for the Red Army.

Witnessing Trump in real time it’s impossible to deduce he has the least concern for America’s well being as it meets his rabid paranoia and narcissistic predilections. Forget an authoritarian bent, our President is flat out off his rocker, with ample proof provided on the hour via tweet and retweet. In fact, Trump has relinquished most all power and worth of his office, becoming nothing more than a waddling barometer for GOP cowardice and criminality. That he refuses to recognize this, deluding himself with worthless proclamations of imaginary executive authority, only confirms his addled perspective. Only future accounts written by servile propagandists of an unrecognizable totalitarian entity will describe what we now endure as anything other than a nadir of US governance.

Since the Reagan Revolution, the Republican Party has steadily mixed a cocktail of equal parts the worst frailties of democracy and authoritarian sensibilities. A corporatist bitch, it plunders the US Treasury with tax relief theft and subsidies for one percenters whenever its numbers allow. Relentless attacks on consumer and environmental regulations are another requisite for such craven stewardship. Once Roger Ailes set up shop, Republicans embraced Fox/AM culture war resentment, complete with its authoritarian requirement to repel natural demographic forces a melting pot nation is supposed to harness. Tea Party grievance set the stage for racist populism and an unhinged demagogue nobody should be surprised it produced. Make no mistake, each services the other and neither now allows for selective half-hearted support.

In 2016, on the GOP Presidential primary debate stage, the party’s “finest” squared off before a base looking for blood after two Obama terms. Of course all were dedicated to plundering in the name of the upper brackets, but most had trouble sinking their teeth into the other part of the equation. Only one of the contestants was glad to yell white power without hesitation, and he made the rest look like weaklings for their indecision.

Now he leads nobody but our worst, and hisses at the top of his lungs doing it. Worse, after the trauma of two plus months of cabin fever, far too many now hear what they want to hear, the part that absolves them of civic responsibility. The wretched core won’t wear masks or distance because they are awful and ignorant. But many more won’t do it because they are thoughtless and malleable, ever determined for normalcy even if it kills them. They have tuned out MAGA for three years wishing it would just go away. Now, within a complete leadership void, like him, they’re up for ignoring disease, at least until it won’t let them. They may blame Trump then, but for now he hasn’t gotten sick yet, has he?

Thirty years ago Republicans began to double-step down a road hoping for the best of both worlds: receiving the blessings of the White working man to rob him blind for gilded class donors. They got their wish and then some. Now, after following Trump off a Covid cliff, assuring it will bear full blame for unprecedented American death tolls in November, even as it makes not a peep about the pardoning of one of the most despicable creatures any swamp has ever belched, a reckoning is at hand for the GOP.

Yet and still, there was never any chance it would do otherwise because long ago it gave up on democratic inclinations as part of its deal with the devil. Since Trump’s election the paramount question has been would they honorably accept suicide to preserve what they haven’t damaged, or burn it all down and wear jackboots without explanation if they rose from the ashes? We are sick and getting sicker – with millions enraged at the inconvenience of wearing a mask – poor and getting poorer, divided at home and ever more estranged from allies we used to lead; America is faltering as never before. Their answer is clear. The ruin of the Grand Old Party. BC