Exiting Democracy
The novelist Philip K. Dick captures today’s GOP and the zeitgeist we’re in with uncanny accuracy:
A psychotic world we live in. The madmen are in power. How long have we known this? Faced this? And — how many of us do know it? Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane. Or you are becoming sane, finally. Waking up. I suppose only a few are aware of all this. Isolated persons here and there. But the broad masses — what do they think? All these hundreds of thousands in this city, here. Do they imagine that they live in a sane world? Or do they guess, glimpse, the truth. . .?
What profit it a man if he gain the whole world but in this enterprise lose his soul?
Dick wrote this in 1962 in his novel, The Man in the High Castle, an alternate history in which the Allies lose World War II and the United States is carved up between the Third Reich, under puppet rule, and the Japanese Empire.
Most political analysts do not rule out Trump’s potentially winning a second term in the White House, a damning reflection on today’s American voter, to say the least. And he has made no bones about making “retribution” as his centerpiece policy. Two primary targets for authoritarians are the judiciary and the news media — because both are democracy’s bulwarks for upholding facts and truth. “Any country or government which wants to proceed towards tyranny starts to undermine legal rights and undermine the law,” noted Margaret Thatcher.
So, surprise, surprise! Trump, facing an avalanche of litigation, and with his pusillanimous Republican presidential contenders in tow like a chain of baby ducklings, has placed the American justice system in the bullseye for dismantling democracy:
I will totally obliterate the deep state, we know who they are.
I am the only one who can save this nation.
Justice will be done, we will take back our country.
And, following the fascist playbook, he projects his own crimes onto his opponents:
I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family.
Not to be outdone, the baby ducks fall into line.
The American people have lost confidence in the Department of Justice. And if I’m President of the United States, on day one, we’re going to clean house on the top floor of the Department of Justice and bring in a whole new group of people.
No I would not keep Chris Wray as director of the FBI. There’d be a new one on Day One. I think that’s very important.
Republican presidents have accepted the canard that the DOJ and FBI are independent. They are not independent agencies. They are part of the executive branch. They answer to the elected president of the United States.
This is what I’ll tell you, two things can be true at the same time: One, the DOJ and FBI have lost all credibility with the American people, and getting rid of just senior management isn’t going to be enough to fix this. This is going to take a complete overhaul, and we have to do that.
Fascism scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat calls the GOP “an authoritarian party now. . . a far-right party that has exited democracy.”
In his fascist America, Philip K. Dick aptly captures the key to the system’s success with iron rule: “You don’t need anybody to keep you down because you got your own little inner fascist right there telling you what you can and cannot do. That’s how you let them win.”
What Trump’s Amerika Would Look Like
Trump’s inauguration has the “highest turnout ever. Period.” His Soviet-scale military parade featuring scores of tanks, missile launchers and infantry fighting vehicles tear up Washington’s streets, resulting in millions in damage. The Blue Angels roar overhead in a “T” formation.
On Day One, President-re-elect Donald J. Trump’s first official act after being sworn in is to pardon himself of the myriad federal crimes with which he had been charged. His second is to pardon the January 6 stormtroopers. Challenged in the courts, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately rules in Trump’s favor by a hardly surprising vote of 6-3. Georgia Fulton County DA Fani Willis is fired under Georgia’s new legislation establishing the GOP crony-packed Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission. The charges are then dismissed. Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg suddenly and inexplicably drops all charges against Trump and quickly moves with his family to an undisclosed foreign territory in the Caribbean. In a surprise ruling, the New York State Supreme Court deems AG Letitia James’s civil suit against Trump unconstitutional. She resigns in disgrace. And, finally, E. Jean Carroll drops her follow-on defamation lawsuit, citing the effects of inordinate stress on her health.
These actions, on top of unprecedented voter suppression and constitutionally questionable nullification of election results in Blue districts by Red states leads to public outrage and mass demonstrations.
Backed by GOP majorities in both houses of Congress and a Cabinet of boot-licker marionettes, Trump employs the 82nd Airborne, Customs and Border Patrol, the National Guard and federalized “people’s militias,” including the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, to suppress the protests with the liberal use of tear gas, rubber bullets, water cannons, brass knuckles and powerful low-flying military helicopters.
Trump’s Enabling Act is rammed through Congress, followed by a draconian Official Secrets Act, the Ashley Babbitt Patriot Act and Responsibility in the Media Act. Attorney General Jeffrey Clark establishes a new “Freedom Division” in DOJ to oversee enforcement. Protests are outlawed, news media are prohibited from disseminating information “harmful to the national interests,” and anyone caught leaking government secrets faces life imprisonment, or even public execution in cases involving “dire threat to the public welfare and national security.”
Citing past “rampant voter fraud,” Trump uses his new emergency powers to nationalize control of the election administration under the new “Elections Czar,” Gen. Mike Flynn. A Joint U.S.-Hungarian Commission on Illiberal Democracy proposes “legal measures to prevent political parties from endangering democracy.” Democrats huff and puff, then return to drafting more doomed legislation on LGBTQIAXYZ+ and reproductive rights.
In a Fox interview, Trump offhandedly lets out, “Under the normal rules, I’ll be out in 2029, so we may have to go for an extra term.” Later, at CPAC’s annual conference, he muses, “President for life. . . maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.” These comments spark a “spontaneous grassroots mass movement” to amend the Constitution to do away with term limits.
His charge over Truth Social that the news media are “are both a disgrace to our Country and the Enemy of the People,” sends a chill through newsrooms. Trump furthermore declares, “These people should be executed. They are scumbags.” These and the aforementioned legislation ratchet the chill factor down to Arctic levels. Self-censorship is the watchword among journalists.
Without delay, the Murdoch’s accept an offer they can’t refuse by Jared Kushner to sell Fox News Media to him, with a financial package including Saudi and Russian oligarch money. Headed by Kash Patel, the network broadcasts 24/7 hosannas to President Trump, while viciously attacking the Democrats and the “Biden Crime Family,” now facing a tsunami of federal indictments. The reinstated Tucker Carlson enjoys ratings that put Axis Sally to shame.
AG Clark and DHS Secretary Jim Jordan are given carte blanche to “investigate all the investigators” who helped “weaponize the government” to go after conservatives during the “illegitimate Biden regime.” Trump cryptically tells Newsmax, “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”
Looking up to the sky with arms raised at Mar-a-Lago, the president bellows out to guests, “I am the chosen one!” He holds religious rallies on the South Lawn at which hundreds of Pentecostalists speak in tongues, praising their new “American messiah” in incomprehensible gibberish. Franklin Graham declares Trump “the Second Coming” after making his father Billy Graham’s birthday a national holiday (after rescinding Juneteenth). Trump peremptorily pronounces “an end to the separation of church and state” and tasks new Secretary of Freedom of Religion Marjorie Taylor Green with dismantling measures keeping religion out of schools and other public institutions.
Trump appoints and Congress quickly approves Lauren Boebert as Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. And Florida’s voodoo health chief Dr. Joseph Ladapo as U.S. Surgeon General. Enough said.
Telling an interviewer, “I’m proud to have that German blood — there’s no question about it,” Trump introduces legislation that turns the clock back to the Immigration Act of 1924 with national origins quotas favoring European countries. “No more murderers and rapists from shithole countries!” Trump promises a rally of retirees at The Villages.
“Top of the line. Top line. They’re all top of the line,” Trump says of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un as he signs the Executive Order to cancel the United States’ membership in NATO. At the earlier summit with Putin at Sochi, the president declared an immediate halt of all military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine after announcing, as promised, “a deal within 24 hours” with Moscow to end the conflict. The United States, he added, will resume selective humanitarian assistance “to both Russia and Ukraine” once a new government in Ukraine revealed dirt on Joe Biden and his son. Secretary of State Richard Grenell praises the deal as “Peace in our time.”
Yes. Voltaire was right:
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
Things as they are now, I don't think that Trump can get elected. As long as Biden's health holds, I think that he will handily beat Trump. But there is a nightmare scenario that supports the horrible future that is laid out above.
Trump get the Republican nomination, as does Biden, with Kamala Harris as his VP. With only a month or two to go before the November 2024 election Biden dies or is incapacitated. Kamala Harris becomes the Democratic presidential candidate. The statistical danger of this scenario is one reason that I wish that Ms. Harris were not the VP. Sadly, a white man would be less risky.
Although Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, she did not win by a margin large enough to beat the Republican structural advantage in the electoral college. Unfortunately the United States does not seem to be ready to elect a woman, much less a black woman. Especially a black woman with the poor political skills of Ms. Harris. She is one of the few Democrats that Trump could beat in the election. Sadly the voters would rather elect a twice impeached, multiply indited, corrupt Trump than a black woman. At this point there is no question that Trump is the worst president in US history. No other president comes close. And yet given the choice between Ms. Harris and Trump, the US voters would probably vote for Trump.
There is one factor that might be missing in the dark scenario above. The US is a very large country. The West Coast, the East Coast and parts of the Midwest may not quietly go along with Trump's fascist takeover. There could be civil war. The Green Mountain Boys of Vermont will rise again!