Facing the Dark Turn of Trump's Presidency Head On
So, over the past few weeks, faced with plummeting poll numbers, one would have imagined the President would have changed course, ending a period of historic fecklessness, and attempted to work with Congress on tackling one of America’s many problems. He could have easily reached out and worked to finally adopt a national strategy to tame the virus; advanced a next round of economic support and stimulus; found ways to honor the protests and promote racial reconciliation in America; discussed the best paths to reopen our schools this fall; improved the ACA, and ensured access to all during a pandemic; countered and challenged China’s swallowing of Hong Kong, stopped Russia’s attacks on our soldiers, people and interests; adopted a next generation approach to climate change; supported long term investments in improving our aging infrastructure……
Instead, the nation has been subject to an extraordinary, relentless and extended screed from the White House about the existential threat posed by the President’s perceived domestic political opponents, much of it imagined and fictional. The performance of the President, the White House and its allies these past few weeks has been reprehensible and dangerous; the rhetoric we’ve been heard is outside what one could ever expect or accept in a democracy.
If you haven’t read or watched the President’s speeches on July 3rd and 4th – just do it. The language, the hyperbole, the violence will shock you. You will find phrases like "there is a new far-left fascism," "this left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution," "radical assault" "the radical view of American history is a web of lies," "unleash a wave of violent crime.” The Washington Post reported: "He celebrated Independence Day with a dystopian speech in which he excoriated racial justice protesters as “evil” representatives of a “new far-left fascism” whose ultimate goal is “the end of America.” "
The single most poisonous passage came from his July 4th remarks: "American heroes defeated the Nazis, dethroned the fascists, toppled the communists, saved American values, upheld American principles and chased down the terrorists to the very ends of the earth. We are now in the process of defeating the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters, and people who, in many instances, have absolutely no clue what they are doing."
Friends, we know the guy is loose with his words, but this is the President of the United States conjuring up some dangerous domestic enemy who needs to be fought the way we fought Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, ISIS and Al Qaeda, with the American military, with death and assassinations. This wasn’t a campaign speech, and the President wasn’t talking about politics or the 2020 elections. It was an official speech by the President, from the White House, on the 4th of July, and it is was a call to arms by the leader of our government to kill and hunt down a dangerous domestic other.
These words were not spoken in a vacuum. A few weeks ago the Trump campaign bought ads on social media which screamed “Dangerous mobs of far-left groups are running through our streets and causing absolute mayhem. They are DESTROYING our cities – it is absolute madness.” And in some ads the Trump campaign added a symbol used by the Nazis to “identify Communists, and was applied as well to Social Democrats, liberals, Freemasons and other members of opposition parties incarcerated by the Nazis.” Like in the President’s July 4th speech what the Trump campaign is clearly floating here is an authoritarian crackdown against domestic “enemies” and using to a Nazi symbol to do it – how in the world did we get here?
Finally, the President has made these calls in a time of dangerous growth of a new international white supremacist extremist movement, one with clear ties to Russia. In the last few weeks right wingers assassinated two law enforcement officers in Northern California, have been arrested on terror charges in Las Vegas, and an active duty Army private was arrested on terror charges for conspiring with an European Neo-Nazi group to kill American troops stationed there. The President is using language and symbols these groups would understand as allied with their aims, and warning after warning has come from the FBI/DHS in recent weeks about the growing threat of these groups here in the US.
What we have been worried about now is that the President really appears to be exploring, in word and deed (his gassing/shoot of unarmed protestors, use of the US military in DC), some kind of sustained violent assault against his domestic political enemies. The language of his government and allies has grown far more apocalyptic and violent, and in recent days the President called on his supporters, some of whom are well armed, to take up the fight. It feels as if we are the edge of something truly dangerous, illiberal and dark.
We know, we know, it just can’t be that bad. Trump doesn’t want Americans to die from COVID, lose their jobs and health insurance; doesn’t want the planet to burn; isn’t allowing Putin to kill American troops without challenge; isn’t really using Nazi symbols, encouraging domestic terrorism, threatening to hunt down and kill other Americans. But, yes, of course, it is that bad; and our job is to stop pretending otherwise. We’ve run out of innocent explanations.