OK. Do you want to amplify?
Yes. Much of the damage is beyond repair, much of the rest involves people who have died or left the country, and rightists who are now embedded in the government. Made worse because it’s a given that the Democrats won’t do more than paper over the damage; actually removing all those Trumpists from government positions would be “violating the norms”, and the Democrats would literally* rather die than do that.
*As demonstrated by their unwillingness to do anything of significance about a literally murderous attack on Congress; on them. The next fascist to take power will probably just kill them all right off and be done with it.
Hard to do if you’re a dead child. Damn near imposible.
The real damage is the USA’s standing in the world. It will take decades for anyone to trust us again. All because of a bunch of morons that voted for Trump. Voted even against their own interests.
It’s a “Fool me once” situation. The world does not like that, and is responding by turning to others. Not the USA.
Narcissists feel entitled to approval, or at least submission, but they don’t generally chase it by appeasing people except for sucking up to authority, and in fact they often react to disagreement with dismissal, insults, and threats, a pattern which anyone who has followed the political career of Donald Trump (and even his business career before that) will recognize. Trump has never tried to win broad approval across the political spectrum or be seen as “reaching across the aisle”, and in fact expresses satisfaction for how reviled he is by the ‘libs’ and even mainstream Republicans. He has attacked Democrats and even moderate Republican leaders with viscous insults, threats of legal action and even physical harm, and regularly denigrates a broad swath of Americans, sometimes even his own supporters whom the tells that he doesn’t even need their votes. He literally told the public that he intended to be a dictator (“…only on Day One,” because autocrats routinely give up power once having achieved it), and the entire idea that his “authoritarian impulses” will be reigned in by “his narcissistic desire for approval” has no evidence in view.
Trump doesn’t really give a fuck about Project 2025 (and probably doesn’t even really understand it) except that it creates outrage among his opponents, and while he made the politically absurd claim of never having heard of it despite major figures in the architecture of it having come from his first administration he’s happy to let people within his current administration pursue those goals as long as it coincidentally also makes him richer and has greater authority. That he is not an ideologue—and is clearly not managing the day to day functioning of the Oval Office or even mentally cogent much of the time—is actually more worrying because as much as Hitler monomaniacally dominated the leadership of Nazi Germany, he also constantly micromanaged, interfered, and dismissed (and often executed) dissenting figures within the regime which ultimately crippled its ability to achieve its stated aims and ended up scoring more ‘own goals’ than the Allied Powers did early in the war. Would it be that Trump—a terminally inept buffoon who has constantly failed in business and only incidentally succeeded in politics at a time that the public was well conditioned to accept his ‘swamp-draining’ politics—would actually take an active interest in governance he would run his own administration into the ground faster than he doest waterfront casinos in Atlantic City.
All of this talk about Trump being ovedone and not capable of dismantling what remains of democratic norms (which, to be honest have been eroded by decades of subterfuge and indifference by both major parties but Trump has taken it to new lows) smacks of all of the claims that he was done after 6 Jan 2021, would never have a voice in American politics again, fur sure could never be re-elected, et cetera, all of which have been fundamentally obtuse to the reality that a substantial number of American voters don’t really care about democracy and have been primed to enthusiastically adopt fascism in the guise of “saving America”. The claim that “a fool like Trump has no chance at all,” is by default wrong from the simple reality that he was, in fact, re-elected after brazenly encouraging an insurrection along with MAGA-compliant Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. For fucks sake, how can anyone look at the last five months and still say, “I could never happen here?” because it is fucking happening in real time.
Stranger
Ah. Yes, I noted that’s what Trump does.
Maybe I phrased things poorly.
Mostly agree except the “Americans in general” part. I mean, that’s true too in its way, but it’s clear that Trump does care about approval ratings. He wants to be loved in the aggregate. Now, he’s stupid and doesn’t calculate well how much he can troll and disrespect various groups (which he definitely enjoys and feeds on) but still retain the love of the majority.
Yep.
I didn’t say that, but I agree with you. I think Trump is poor at putting all in his head and following an optimal path. He self-indulgently believes that, whatever he does, people will love it, and things will work out.
Interesting. Will read, thanks!
Europe and other places have elected many RWNJs in the past decade, but we tend not to have a resentment toward those countries. I think it will be the same situation. Also, I think people in general and politicians in particular understand that Trump is a once in a century demagogue. We are not going to elect another like him in our lifetimes. Dubya did much, much more damage to the US and the world than Trump has (so far), but other countries did not seem to hold that against us much in the Obama years, etc. Finally, we are not creating more victims in other countries under Trump than we were under other recent presidents, so other countries don’t have any particular reason to resent us or fear us. (Yes, the USAID thing sucks, but that’s a withholding of a good, not an attack. Though it’s evil either way–I get it.)
Doesn’t every democracy have this issue?
Trump is not another Hitler. But he could end up being another Anton Drexler.
I would say he’s somewhere between the two right now.
It’s a disgrace to our country that he was reelected, but dismantling democracy is a different job than getting elected. Trump has to fight the courts (and has been doing a poor job of that), as well as various seats of Democratic power in the country, such as California and other blue states.
So are you advancing the thesis that Trump is succeeding and will ultimately succeed? I don’t see it and will be happy to argue against that further.
In my opinion, Trump is failing and the Republicans are succeeding.
Trump is not the leader of the Republican party the way that Hitler was the leader of the Nazi party.
So who is?
Somebody intelligent enough to understand that he doesn’t benefit from being a public figure while he’s setting things in place.
Hitler “succeeded” because Germany was an economic shithouse when he the Nazis won federal elections in 1932 and then became chancellor the following year. German democracy was also a fledgling. It wasn’t perceived as institutionally useful in solving Germany’s crises of the Versailles treaty, hyperinflation, and significant unemployment. Then there’s the easy scapegoating of people who had for, oh, about 1000+ years been considered outsiders in their own country, denied citizenship for most of that time.
I’m not so sure how well they’ll fare after Dear Leader is gone. I don’t think they, collectively, have the power to establish their own permanent control either, nor do I think the current shitshow is going to help them in 2026 (I don’t assume a Blue Wave either, however).
I think you’re right about that. I think most of the GOP doesn’t like Trump very much and is just going along with him now because, as bad as he is to deal with, they see it as more in their interest to do so than not.
And that’s because their value system is wealth, power, and domination, which is the same as Trump’s. It’s the same as the American corporation’s value system, and since the American corporation, through its special interest proxies, has taken over the American political system, our political system’s ethos reflects that of the corporation: a fiduciary interest to be as sociopathic as possible.
I’ve said before that I believe part of the Republican plan will involves stabbing Trump in the back. Right now, he serves a purpose. His stupidity keeps public attention focused on him and away from the rest of the Republicans. People talk about how Trump is destroying democracy rather than how the Republicans are destroying democracy.
When things are in place, the Republicans won’t need Trump anymore. So they can turn on Trump and express shock and dismay at the terrible things Trump has done. And people will be so happy that the Republicans are finally seeing the light, they won’t notice that it was the Republicans not Trump who was doing all those terrible things.
And the magas will get tossed out with Trump. When the Republicans control elections they won’t need the magas anymore. To keep up with the Nazi analogy, they’ll go the same way that Ernst Roehm and the SA went.
Basically agree!
You may be correct in terms of their intention, but I don’t think that this crew is going to pull it off!
I do agree that they will ditch Trump when convenient. Actually, his croaking would be the easiest thing for them: attend the funeral, say some platitudes and then… Trump? Oh we’re so beyond him now. We’re the new Republican party! Mmm hmm…
You think they won’t be able to outsmart Donald Trump?