Dark can bring light. Because Americans disrupt the status quo only after monumental threats to prosperity, prestige and stability, the greater Trump’s abuses, the greater the positive, anti-oligarchy movement.
We live in an unenlightened, badly-educated, materialistic, spoiled country vulnerable to political grifters, with DT atop the sinkhole as the crudest, marauding bully. Even vs. a hand-picked, unprimaried moderate, re-electing a certifiable, shit-disturbing, lame duck president, with nothing to lose, had to end badly. That aside from wacko lies, arrays of crimes, felonies and bankruptcies, scandalous ties to convicted pedophiles—PLUS the only seditious, bad loser who ignited a violent coup against a verified election. As Thom Hartmann headlined a recent piece, Trump proves that with enough money, you can sell anybody pretty much anything.
Alas, MAGA donors bought neither competence, nor success. Can any imagine a more disaster-prone ten months, not only dramatizing suicidal manias but shock and awe at what little DT has learned about popular governance? So, beset by historic popularity nosedives and failed policies galore, big surprise Trump today seizes the desperate, typically GOP way out—start an indefensible war against a phantom “enemy,” now Venezuela, as assailable as Gaza. Even better with huge oil reserves! How like the dodgy Persian Gulf or Iraq wars, let alone belligerent interventions in Panama, Grenada, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Falklands, Middle-east, Africa, Chicago, LA and Portland. That murderous Venezuela attacks stir strong resistance exposes MAGA ineptitude (making Dubya look good), an immoral war failing even before it gets rolling.
Wag the Dog on steroids
The good news: it’s only taken ten months for truly aggrieved voters to realize their folly—notable because the rightwing propaganda machine still poisons the bottom 80 percent from parsing self-harming lies or thinking for themselves. Because hatred of slandered federalism, liberalism and Democrats are knee-jerk modes, MAGA marks buy into meaningless arm waving without ever facing the real, entrenched powers that keep them broken and despairing. Indecent voters flock to indecent leaders. Of course, both parties serve special constituencies, but Dems minimize inhumane, abusive downsides while doing something for those in greatest need. Rethugs deny the undeserving needy are worthy, even fully human, no small difference.
That makes the presidency game predictable: find a newcomer, like an “outsider” with deficient federal experience (thus both untainted and unprepared). Say Reagan, Clinton, Dubya, Obama, or Trump, and make them sound genuine, even caring when dishing out high-flown, unfulfillable promises (like taming inflation instantly). Biden (a veteran with real legislative mettle) and HW Bush are exceptions. Really, who hires the top executive sans years of experience, critical know-how and special skills for the most daunting position?
Thus,shockingly broken systems (energy/conservation, climatic crises, educational, health, immigration, reproductive, housing, financial/taxation, and corrupt electioneering) are buried, trivialized, and wished away. Keep just enough paying jobs, consumer toy options and the economy humming, wave the flag to fuel the next imperial “adventure,” plus lean hard on wedge issues du jour on race, culture, birthing, and “freedom.” Voila! A thoughtless electorate turns a buffoonish grifter into the latest anointed messiah.
Only crises trigger structural reform
Facts: Only a Civil War disrupted the slave-plantation horror, for generations kicked down the road. And it still took a century before nominal civil, voting, housing, and job discrimination laws checked the bigotry of unfixable white racism. Then late 19th C saw decades of violent Robber Baron-labor wars before TR and progressives checked monopolies and the worst downsides of unregulated capitalism (though never delinked it from imperialism). Only years of Great Depression handed FDR the leverage to humanize federalism, recognizing that any popular, democratic government must serve the majority, not just rich people.
Ditto, when the conflicted ‘60s spawned progressive “Great Society” reforms on voting, housing and civil rights, Medicaid/Medicare, anti-poverty programs (Food Stamps), education reforms (Head Start), economic/job growth/training (Job Corps, VISTA). Agreed, like the New Deal, such moderate reforms did not reverse intact capitalistic excesses, partial fixes to the real American religion. But even incremental advances demand tectonic shifts for humane, measurable gains to afford less advantaged a shot at prosperity.
Next up, the Reaganomics backlash took on the New Deal, reinstalled tax-friendly, oligarchic domination and set up the HW/Dubya-Trump predation parade. Problem is, that scenario is looking played out, as obscene, overtly politicized super-wealthy, with far too much, scorn the hundreds of millions with far too little. Productivity gains accrue only to fat cats. Equally obvious is even greater unawareness by today’s ham-fisted oligarchs, like Musk, blind to massive disintegration and drawn to post-democratic abuses that jeopardize the very law and order backbone that defend their wealth. Even MAGAs now get that a sneering, uncaring, self-serving lout is a corrupt populist. Could tycoons not do any better than the farcical, dishonest Keystone Kops klutzes—Trump, Vance, Hegseth, Patel, Noem, Bondi, Ludnick and RFK Jr.? The edgiest satire would not have imagined this weird gaggle of feckless, mean-spirited, power-mad scoundrels.
How could arguably sentient citizens conclude what America needed was four years of a rogue presidency overtly committed to this hand-picked, lackey cabinet? Who could sensibly disregard that Project 2025 as the overriding blueprint, setting up the mortifying, popularity-killing horrors today? Non-college workers were not the only suckers. Various CEOs, however stuck keeping the Bully-in-chief at bay, hardly benefit from irrational, punitive tariffs or wholesale, know-nothing insults to key trading partners and alliances.
How many sane, loyal Yanks cheer on the treacherous pandering to the World Dictators’ Club? Or sacrificing Ukrainian “consumers” to Russia or smashing Gaza “buyers” to smithereens? Corporate billionaires, profiting from cheap, off-shore labor and predictable, “free-market” trade, pay the price for needless, global Trump disruptions. How many CEOs privately back an increasingly demented, impulsive bully addicted to micro-manage their businesses and industries, jeopardizing big planning or marketing commitments?
When does the pendulum shift?
Thus the critical question: how bad must Trump get to trigger even a modest New Progressive Era, advanced by genuine voices like Sanders, Warren, AOC, Jayapal, Mamdani, and Crockett? Of note, Maine voters easily passed a ballot measure that will challenge Citizens United in federal court and could per the Nation “Save Democracy From Big Money.” Let’s imagine, if the past ten months is prologue, what three more years of terrorist Trumpism presages, with amplified economic damage to virtually all and more shocks to social equilibrium, international prestige, dollar and stock market strength, even re Venezuela our demise as a civilized, superficially law-abiding world citizen.
Now that’s a tsunami of crises that demand direct political intervention and relief. We know Trump’s malignant narcissism won’t change, nor his hobby horse biases (like tariffs, insults and threats). Replacing his worst cabinet clowns won’t regain lost standing or keep catastrophes at bay. That’s what wrecks a party and shifts an entire electoral era to different values, goals and leaders.
Yes, a Dem House will inhibit the worst of Trumpism. Weekly impeachments and a slew of investigations would help. Psychic deterioration for Trump is a slam-duck prediction. The unsavory, discredited Vance lacks Trump’s charisma or one-liner pizazz, hardly the next, primed “maverick outsider.” When the permanently disgraced Trump departs, divided Rethugs will further disintegrate, jeopardizing their national party leverage. Even now, the right only weekly broadcasts its inability to govern, bereft of solutions on anything more complicated than a food cart—certainly not on health care, on job or economic growth, on fair taxation, on trade or foreign affairs.
Only when Trump, House speaker Johnson and fellow extremists are banished is the prospect open for adult leadership, structural reforms, even a return to truthiness and truth, what was once the muddling American way. Hey, unlike professional cynics, pundits can dream of something better, just like ordinary citizens.
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