The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.
The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.
As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.
- Abraham Lincoln, 1862 annual address to Congress
In the previous post, I set out some principles of what I call “ideological literacy.” Those ideas might serve as a kind of moral and conceptual gyroscope for navigating the rough and uncharted seas in which we Americans – we “dissatisfied fellow Americans,” in Lincoln’s words – now find ourselves. We are all lashed to the same mast, and our democracy is in shoal waters.
If (as I hope) Part One was intellectually provocative, Part Two is morally provocative, so parents, beware. I’ve refrained from labeling it “Fascism and the Liberal Arts.” But make no mistake – we’re talking about raw and widely-shared emotions of sadness, fear, loss, and moral outrage. It’s sort of like how the white supremacists felt when we elected a black guy with a funny name; but that’s where the parallel ends. The underlying feelings and their causes are antithetical.
Now for Trump. Millions of words have been spoken or written on the subject, and hundreds of books, with thousands more to come. (I asked GPT-4 how many books have been written on Trump so far, and the wisdom came back: “a significant number.”) In my view, that sagging shelf only begins to describe the scale of what has happened. Some semblance of a consensus may form about Trump after a few more decades have passed – but I don’t have that kind of time. So here’s Part Two of how I see the historical moment, dressed up in the school uniforms of critical thinking and liberal learning.
First: let’s set aside the epic – in fact, epochal – moral depravity of the man, his psychopathy and narcissism. Let’s not recount his crimes. What matters most is this: anti-Trumpists are for democracy, and he is against it. This isn’t an ideological issue for polite discussion. Democracies cannot have reasonable debates about whether to remain democracies.
Trump is paradoxically both a creature of the far-right and altogether uninterested in political ideology of all kinds, as described in Part One. But that paradox disappears when we distinguish the dignified right wing of the American spectrum (which included Dole, the Bushes, McCain, Romney, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, and at best one or two of the current Republican presidential candidates) from the anti-democratic rightwing movement that Trump leads.
Trump is all about power, and doesn’t much care how he wields it. But (even more corruptly) he is all about money and attention, and staying out of prison, and political power is merely his route to those ends. Swaying the American far-right into fascism is what got him there. From McConnell and McCarthy to DiSantis and all the other mini-Trumps whom he has co-opted, it’s been the deal of the century with the Devil.
This is no longer a left-right issue. Left-right issues don’t have a moral side and an immoral side, or a democratic and an authoritarian side. Americans who care about democracy are appalled at what he has already done, and what he or his followers might yet do. I suspect that Trump doesn’t stand a chance of re-election; but I’m not here to prognosticate. In any case, the problem persists: what to do about the politicians, and the millions of American voters, who have bought into Trump.
In our history, only slavery and the oppression of Native Americans came close to matching our current moral crisis. And if you think Trump is just a terrible passing anomaly, think again because you are off by eighty-four million votes. (Do I have “Trump Derangement Syndrome”? You bet. And Fredrick Douglass had “slavery derangement syndrome.”) If you think Trump’s attack on democracy isn’t a cause for total moral outrage, check your moral compass.
True, he’s no Hitler or Stalin – but that’s a rather low bar for comparison; it’s like saying that COVID-19 wasn’t an extinction event. (Trump’s ineptitude and political calculation caused several hundred thousand of the million-plus COVID-related deaths). On the American historical scale, no one else comes close.
To whom can he be compared? Sen. Joseph McCarthy ruined a lot of lives, but he wasn’t nearly the systemic threat to democracy that Trumpism is. The same goes for J. Edgar Hoover. When Andrew Jackson killed and brutalized Native Americans, our republic was deeply diminished but not derailed. Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee were run-of-the-mill traitors who stood for slavery.
Thus, when it comes to qualifying as “Worst American Ever,” it’s hard to find Trump’s equal. But one name that keeps popping up (in my mind at any rate) is Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest was, among other things, a prominent and highly successful slave trader; a brilliant Confederate cavalry general, who raised a Tennessee regiment with the slogan “Let’s have some fun and kill some Yankees!”; and a war criminal, whose troops massacred several hundred (mostly black) captured Union troops at Fort Pillow, Tennessee in 1864.
He capped off this distinguished career by becoming the first elected Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan – and then lying to Congress about his involvement in the Klan. Forrest County, Mississippi and Forrest City, Arkansas are named after him. The South just loved him.
Later in life, Forrest said some conciliatory things about African Americans, but not before compiling the despicable record I’ve just summarized. Worse than Trump? A more lasting detriment to our wobbling and deeply imperfect democratic system? I can’t say for sure. There have been a lot of small-time Forrests: white supremacists and other haters, fascists including Ezra Pound and Charles Lindbergh, and assorted neo-Nazis. But for my money, Forrest deserves at least second place in our Hall of Infamy.
All of this would be okay – or at least survivable – if Trump’s tyranny were to pass without doing lasting damage. Forget about that. The damage – to Congress, the courts, the media, law enforcement, our political discourse, and on and on – is everywhere. Most of all, there’s the incalculable damage that we have done to ourselves, as a people and as a democratic society. It will only loom larger as the decades pass. Trump will live on (hopefully forever) as our worst-ever leader. And George W. Bush is one lucky guy because of him.
The questions remain: what to do about it, and how to deal with the millions of Trumpists in our midst? (And don’t just blame the Electoral College, an offense against democracy so absurd as to render our political system incapable of dealing with it. I won’t deal with it here.)
We should talk to Trumpists, I’m sometimes advised; we should try to understand our fellow Americans who are responsible for this nadir of depravity; it’s the democratic way – the way of decency, critical thinking, and citizenship. But wait – after centuries of slavery and lesser oppressions, what’s left to be understood about white supremacy and authoritarianism? About assaulting Congress and lying to overthrow elections? Fascism is not a legitimate democratic ideology. It’s an ultimate moral evacuation. It cannot be talked to.
Yes, the Trumpists should be acknowledged as human beings. And yes, they should be understood, as a political science exercise. But talking to them won’t improve anyone or change anything. I confess I’m too limited to see the point of it. Talk to slaveholders in 1860 while you’re at it. Talk to Tsarists or Stalinists. They won’t be democratic conversations.
By all means, talk to them if it makes you feel good – there’s no law against it; but don’t expect it to be a meaningful exercise of your citizenship. Don’t let it make you feel fair or democratic or broad-minded. Don’t think for a minute that talking to them puts them on the democratic spectrum. When Hitler came to power, the Germans who opposed him didn’t talk to the ones who voted him in. They kept quiet, went to jail, were killed, or fled the country.
So no, the moral high ground isn’t talking to Trumpists. It’s treating them with basic decency and due process of law, while calling them what they are, working to defeat them, and – a task for my grandchildren – waiting for them to pass into history.