Mendacity: A True Existential Threat to Democracy
It has been constant refrain from unhinged Democrats that Trump will become America’s “first genuinely autocratic (not to mention vindictive and deranged) president.” Others regularly insult the dictionary by labelling Trump a Fascist. We have been more recently entertained with a new libretto, Trump as existential threat to democracy.
Yet, reason and common intuitions judge people upon how they have habitually conducted themselves in past in whatever capacity. Reason therefore concludes that any resumption of governance by the same prior governor shall be similar in temper.
Whatever else one might reasonably say about his first administration, there is scant evidence that Trump aggressively sought autocratic power. Even if Trump entertained such secret fetishes, it was evident from the get-go that Trump lacked the necessary disposition to accomplish such a feat in a constitutional system designed to inveigh against usurpation. It would require a coherent strategy, discipline and steadfastness of intent, ability to curry and retain a coterie of loyalists.
But as evident in his tempestuous Twitter belches in the wee hours of the morn, Trump’s concerns and initiatives were all over the cosmos, little of which was actuated. The White House was a revolving door, spun out of control, not exactly a milieu that inspires loyalty to the leader.
There has never been a demagogue or general in history (that I know of), over the age of 60, who successfully overthrew a free civic polity. Roman general and dictator, Sulla, was 56 years of age. Marius, who defied republican precedent by serving contiguous years as Consul, was nearing 60. Trump will be 78 if he should become re-elected.
We are on the brink of going down the road of a dictatorship. . . by the way, his syntax has a group of psychologists, psychiatrists thinking he has dementia.
Nor can anyone argue that Trump is showing signs of cognitive decline while simultaneously insisting that he has the vitality and wherewithal to overthrow the Republic. Polemicists should stop arguing from both cheeks of their buttocks.
The Charge of Fascism
The fascist variant of authoritarianism has distinctive attributes. Among these is the subordination of the individual to the goals of the collective community, as determined by the “will of the people,” embodied in the genius of their national paterfamilias. One cannot envision Trump as strongly concerned about the Common Good, let alone Far Right collectivism.
Fascism usually includes imperial aspirations premised upon the natural right of racial superiority (i.e., Lebensraum). Trump is clearly inclined towards geopolitical retrenchment, even abdication of America as the world’s policeman, inclinations that these same critics excoriate.
The Charge of Existential Threat
Many, if not most, Democrats do not genuinely and privately believe that Trump is an existential threat to democracy. Nor evidently does Biden, the chief cheerleader of this scurrilous aspersion. Otherwise, the wisdom of maturity might have given way to another candidate. One’s beliefs are indicated by what one does, not by what one espouses.
While Trump may be full of sound and fury, it is largely for effect. The fear that Trump instilled in other NATO partners has successfully compelled those allies to pony up their fair share of the cost of Western defense. The U.S. had long been justifiably, yet vainly, complaining about this parasitism. Give the man credit where credit is due.
According to Jennifer Rubin, “We’re in 1933, we’re not 1938.” Even if Godwin’s Law was valid here, which it is not, it would be more accurate to locate America in the late 1920s. MAGA is, at worst, the equivalent of the German National People's Party (DNVP). Neither party retained a private militia at their disposal.
Autocracy or Civil War
A drift towards autocracy has been a persistent and gradual dynamic. The office of President is currently far afield from that envisioned in the Constitution. The sweeping nature of Executive Orders increasingly bears the image of monarchial edicts, such as Biden’s frequent bids to forgive student debt, which clearly violates Constitutional separation of powers.
Yet, the immediate threat to liberal democracy is not autocracy, but civic conflagration.
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
– George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796
The Threat to Liberal Democracy
Having twice studied the Weimar Republic, once in my late teens and again recently, I reached similar conclusions concerning the causes of its easy demise and succumbing to autocracy. One cause, common to free civic polities, is the pre-existing discredit of all its institutions (and potential rally points of resistance) due to the prior antics and abuses of those who were each institution’s ambassadors.
Even before Trump descended the escalator in 2015, I was increasingly appalled and irked by the prevarications and sophistries practiced by pundits of MSM. After 2015, there was no longer artful subtlety to the dissembling.
For truth has stumbled in the public square, and honesty cannot enter.
By engaging in advocacy, instead of analysis; in promulgating one’s conception of the “ought,” instead of accurately reporting about the “is”; these ambassadors of journalism have critically undermined their moral authority and legitimacy. When the real authoritarians arrive on stage, few from the public shall come to these pundits’ defense. By the late Athenian democracy and late Roman Republic, there is evidence of much disdain towards the sophists, who boasted their ability to speak from either side of their mouths. Their noetic descendants did not have that luxury.
A mea culpa confession and a decimation of the mendacious among their ranks is urgently required in order to recover any legitimacy. Yet these folks give every indication of doubling down on their addiction to prevarication.