The Democrats and much of the media are allowing Trump to play them like cheap pawn shop guitars
For the love of God, America, do better.
It is a desultory time in national U.S. politics. Not since the dark year of 1968 have Americans felt a more palpable sense of dread when it comes to a presidential election. The contest features two profoundly unlikable, unstable, unfit men whom a solid majority of Americans donāt want anywhere near their ballots, much less the Oval Office. Yet these days the two major parties are so deeply, probably irreparably broken, so beholden to their worst clickbait fringes, that they are offering a choice between a hopelessly corrupt, cultish charlatan with a penchant for Nazi terminology and fascist rhetoric, and a hopelessly corrupt, fast fading octogenarian wannabe tough guy who often forgets the names of people standing next to him. Both are products of insular, corrupt political machines the likes of which are normally associated with central African dictatorships and failed former Soviet republics.
Allegedly, somehow, this remains a first world country.
While there is plenty of blame to go around, we have to start with the institution that once was entrusted to shine a light on malfeasance and incompetence. One of the most consequential consequences of the modern mediaās plummeting collective IQ is a lack of curiosity. The double tap kill shots of cable news and social media have reduced our most venerable outlets, from The New York Times to the CBS Evening News, to rote redundancy. On the other side, Fox News sounds like Breitbart sounds like Tucker Carlson. A perusal of morning headlines reveals a shocking degree of similarity on news and editorial pages alike. Often the stories appear in the same order and invoke the same themes and even language.
Over time, the result is that news becomes a sort of white noise, a vague and vaguely irritating buzzing of insects. It’s no exaggeration to say you barely need to read the stories anymore; you already know what’s in them. The actual content recedes in significance in the face of mindless repetition. The most complex issues are reduced to simplistic, solipsistic binaries that leave no room for nuance, much less compromise and progress. We are all stuck in that same quagmire.
It isnāt just similarity, itās verisimilitude. Which is to say, the shockingly similar stories and treatments orbit a chimerical Helios, a cosmos whose organizing principle isnāt the gravity of truth but the entropy of rank opinion. Spin substitutes for facts, to the point that reality becomes impossible to divine through all the gaseous emanations. For that matter, to glean the truth on any given topic one is well advised to read the MSNBC version and the Fox News version, reading both with an attitude of extreme skepticism and filling in the myriad blanks with reasoned inference. Both outlets will deliver facts just sufficient to bolster their chosen narratives, and neāer the twain shall meet. But at least youāll have a puncherās chance of navigating your way to the general proximity of the underlying story.
In a moment of global hot conflicts, unchecked mass immigration, spiraling crime rates, and a country that often feels on the brink of the next civil crisis, a lack of curiosity among those who are entrusted with telling those stories is more than a bit disconcerting. It’s actually terrifying.
The media’s laziness has led it to miss the actual threat Donald Trump poses
These days, the biggest of the big repetitions, the ones that sit at the top of every news organizationās Top 40 hit list, are that Trump is a Fascist Aspiring Dictator and Threat to Democracy Itself — or, depending on who youāre listening to, that Trump is the Only Person Who Can Save Democracy Itself, Bidden by No Less Than God. For reporters and editors at Left-leaning outlets the framing reflects the nonstop sugar rush of writing about the end of political times. It’s heady stuff, the feeling that you’re responsible for informing the nation at a moment of historic inflection. Over on the Right they’re getting the exact same dopamine hit declaring that it is indeed end times, and the only savior is Trump.
I don’t buy either story, nor should you. Trump no doubt harbors bonkers ideas about the presidency he wants to reclaim. He has consistently demonstrated the many ways in which he’s uniquely unsuited for the job he again seeks, far more so even than the first time around. Last week he released a thoroughly unhinged video entitled, “God Gave Us Trump,” which may well mark his final lurch into a full cult of personality.
Which brings us to the real threat he poses, one that is far more immediate and tangible than clickbait allusions to the next Hitler, which even for Trump is overwrought, not to mention irresponsible.
Irresponsible because the breathless haymakers obscure the far likelier possibility that, should he become President again, the government will devolve into chaos and faction beneath him, tearing asunder the institutions upon which the country for better or worse (admittedly often for worse) relies and risking the collapse of the entire edifice. For all the awesome power of the United States presidency it remains subject to constitutional checks and balances that frustrate attempts to concentrate power in one branch, much less one individual. Donald Trump couldn’t persuade Congress to finish building his cherished border wall, and Joe Biden hasn’t been able to get them to expand the child tax credit or pass a parental leave law. Those issues may seem like small potatoes compared to Revelation, but they are important indicators of our democracy’s and government’s overall resilience. Congress, the judiciary, and the states remain powerful bulwarks against tyranny. Americans should be able to trust them. They held strong during Trump’s first administration. They have held during world wars, depressions, assassinations and attempted assassinations of presidents and national leaders, through crises like Watergate, Iran Contra, and the 2000 presidential election. They held even in the face of the mass popularity of Le Croix.
The reason those checks and balances held, until now, is that there was consensus between Democrats and Republicans that in the face of true crises we are still all on the same team. “We’re in this together” was the theme of the COVID-19 pandemic. And despite a few incidents at airports and exclusive Napa Valley restaurants, we were. My conservative friends masked up along with everyone else, albeit while much grumbling about Anthony Fauci.
While I continue to have deep faith in our constitutional institutions, nevertheless I worry that that sense of unity, or at least mutual tolerance, could fail us the next time around. That is my biggest fear when it comes to Trump: For six years he has been held up as nothing less than evil incarnate, against whom all means are justified. Trump being Trump, for six years he has returned fire and then some. Both sides are now locked in a relentless political arms race with no end in sight, each escalation answered in kind. Suffice it to say, that’s not good for the long-term survival of a constitutional republic. The summer of 2020 and January 6, 2021 gave the country a taste of no holds barred national politics. No one except the lunatic fringe wants to go down those paths again.
The problem is, the lunatic fringes increasingly are calling the shots.
All of which brings us to the real threat of Donald Trump, that he will lose the thing he prizes above all else: Control. During his first term he appointed actual professionals and grown-ups to key positions, from Chief of Staff John Kelly to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. Even the failures were adults, like Rex Tillerson. There will be no grown-ups in Trump Administration 2.0, no one who can talk to the other side and reach compromise. No one to check Trump’s own worst impulses, which increasingly are on display on the campaign trail. He has referred to Kelly and Mattis as among his biggest mistakes, going so far as to call Mattis “the worst general in the world,” and boasting that he himself can do better. To say the least it’s disconcerting to imagine him trying to prove as much during a second term, surrounded by simpering toadies and enabling yes men.
The military will be a wild card, which is disconcerting to say the least. It’s hard to imagine the officer corps following Trump to war, much less allowing him to use their assets on the domestic front, even to secure the border. That in and of itself could be enough to trigger a constitutional crisis. What happens if the Chair of the Joint Chiefs refuses a direct order from the President? Conversely, what if the military turns on itself, a schism between and even within branches as political loyalties come to outweigh oaths to God and country?
In short, it’s not Trump the Nascent Dictator that should worry Americans. It’s Trump as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Only instead of unleashing uncontrollable armies of brooms the result will be the unleashing of actual armies. Many of which, incidentally, possess nuclear weapons and hypersonic missiles. Remember “fire and fury?” The greatest concern is that Trump will at last and finally unleash forces and chaos that he himself cannot control.
There is much to criticize in Joe Biden’s presidency both in terms of policy and personal conduct. I have long and loudly railed against the overreach of government at all levels, and his Inflation Acceleration Reduction Act is Exhibit A. I continue to believe that many of our institutions are long, long past their expiration dates, bastions of self-interest and operational failure. Especially here in California, we live the consequences every day of bloated, corrupt, ineffective, yet staggeringly expensive governments and bureaucracies in Sacramento and many our city halls. The world’s fifth largest economy, with the highest tax base in the country, cannot prevent hundreds of thousands of people languishing and dying on our streets. Our public schools are abhorrent factories of failure. Our basic infrastructure, like roads and dams, literally is collapsing. The list of failures goes on and on, far into the night.
The solution, however, is not to burn the whole place down (though the bureaucracy often seems to be trying to do just that itself). The solution is radical reform from within. History teaches as much in crystal clear HD surround. Political revolutions never work out very well for anyone, least of all the revolutionaries themselves. And right now, Trump is the revolutionary in the wings, desperate to bestride the stage once more. If Biden and the Democrats continue on their current trajectory they may well guarantee he gets his wish.
The United States has weathered presidents who became literally physically incapable of performing their duties for periods of time (Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, arguably Ronald Reagan and possibly John F. Kennedy). It weathered the criminality and downfall of Richard Nixon and the rank incompetence of Jimmy Carter and (let’s face it) Joe Biden. Closer to the margins of mere anarchy we have weathered Presidents who served with lingering questions of legitimacy (George W. Bush, Donald Trump).
Through all of those trials and tribulations faced by our constitutional republic, never was there a presumption of absolute illegitimacy, much less years before an actual election. The questions that swirled around the 2000 election and our national Trial by Hanging Chads is a kindergarten playground scuffle compared to the allegations being thrown at Donald Trump and Joe Biden. There is a real problem, one might say a crisis, when Americans cannot agree whether or not leading presidential candidates are, in fact, a sociopath and a criminal.
Donald Trump’s continuing strength is Joe Biden’s betrayal
All that said, Trump, I believe, knows exactly what heās doing, at least for now. He’s still in his comfort zone, attacking the media as enemies of the people and, of course, railing against illegal immigration. He knows exactly how his adversaries will react when he parrots literal Nazi language, bellowing about illegal aliens āpoisoning the blood of our country.ā He knows the Democrats and most of the media will react like rabid hyenas discovering a freshly killed wildebeest. The dopamine will flow like the Colorado River. He doesnāt care. Or rather, he cares only that his stimulus provokes the desired response. He is, when all is said and done, one of historyās most accomplished fabulists. This is the core source of his power and his sway over his more ardent followers.
Trump is the ultimate fabulist, and also the ultimate troll. A carnival barker, a huckster. The Democrats know this, yet up to and including President Biden they treat his fabulism as reality. During the 2016 campaign someone observed that Republicans take Trump seriously but not literally, while Democrats take him literally but not seriously. In 2024 everyone seems to be taking him literally, with deadly seriousness.
Which is where the Democrats and the media deserve nearly as much blame for Trump as the Republicans. Everyone knows that the way to defeat a troll is to ignore him. Absent the constant barrage of media attention, absent the attention of thousands of reporters and armies of independent journalists and bloggers (hello!) Donald Trump would fade away. He would get louder and louder, he would try anything, but ultimately the attention is his oxygen. Starve him of it, and you starve the man. That the Democrats and much of the media cannot do as much implicates them: They know damn well that their their campaign coffers and bottom lines depend on keeping people whipped into a constant frenzy of anxiety and fear of Evil Orange Man, just as the Republicans and their media allies keep their base whipped into a frenzy of adulation. He is as much their oxygen as they are his. Or perhaps the more appropriate analogy: They need each other they way soybeans need manure. And so Americans are treated to stories of micturating Russian prostitutes.
Biden and the Democrats argue that even the possibility of Trump regaining the White House is sufficient reason to oppose him using any means necessary. But thatās the slipperiest of slopes. Once you adopt the tactics of your enemy, it isn’t long before you lose your own soul. One of the key reasons the Allies prevailed in World War II is that we never descended to our enemiesā level of depravity and moral rot. Yes, we carpet bombed cities and dropped two atomic bombs on civilian populations. Individual soldiers committed their share of atrocities. But we never crossed the line into genocide like Nazi Germany or mass torture and suicide like Imperial Japan. We mortgaged our national soul over Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, but we never sold it outright. In the postwar era we showed mercy to those who had sought to destroy us, committing trillions in dollars and resources to help rebuild our former Axis enemies. Ultimately we repaid the mortgages with interest.
In contrast, during World War I both sides ā all sides ā devolved into a condition of depraved barbarism, four years spent devising more efficient and horrific means of slaughtering each other both physically and psychologically. There was no moral line that was not crossed. The result was a bloody stalemate that resolved nothing, prompted a global economic depression, and set the stage for an even bloodier sequel. Somehow, in that sequel, one side managed to cling to a shred of its soul. Just enough to prevent the plunge into the abyss. The result, not coincidentally, was a clear victory and a clear demarcation in history between good and evil. Or, if you prefer, not completely evil vs. purely evil.
I worry that too many Americans have forgotten, or never learned, that essential lesson from history. I worry that in the mic drop social media era everyone, up to and including Presidents and presidential candidates, is addicted to the idea of the rhetorical knockout blow. They go low, we go lower, until one of us does or says the thing to which there is no possible rejoinder. The major parties are behaving like addicts, constantly spiraling toward rock bottom. Like so many addicts, they cannot seem to learn.Ā They don’t learn from rock bottom, they just bounce.
Call it what it is: A street fight
At the risk of over-analogizing, what we’re witnessing in 2024 it isn’t politics, itās political street fighting. Street fights rarely accomplish anything more than guaranteeing more street fights. Trump is the ultimate political street fighter, a man who has proven time and again that there are no depths to which he will not sink. He’ll mock the disabled and resort to actual Nazi language. If Biden and the Democrats think they can beat Trump at his own game, they are delusional. If they want to retain their soul, they best realize as much, in a hurry.
Joe Biden is trying to out-rage Donald Trump. It is a foolās errand. When I see the President up on a dais, delivering his best scowly face and balling up his fists, I see a guy at the local boxing gym flexing in the mirror and barking to everyone else that he could whip hat loser Connor McGregor. Joe thinks he comes off as Tough and Determined. That’s as may be, but then again so does the guy on his porch hollering at those damn kids to get off his damn lawn (the ways and the frequency with which Joe deploys the diminutive expletive is another bit of cringe-inducing masculine overcompensation). What he thinks is a Tough Guy Face looks like the face of a man passing a kidney stone. He replaced one vicious family German Shepherd, Major, with a new, more vicious one, Commander. His dogs have been Champ, Major, and Commander. At this rate he’ll name their next dog Supreme Commandant of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe.
Neither Biden nor the Democrats are fooling anyone, and yet they seem to be the only ones who don’t realize it. For nearly half a century Biden was āAmtrak Joe,ā the literal average Joe who despite his limitations rose to the heights of political power. He was the guy who made every other average Joe and Jane think they too could be a United States Senator one day. He wasnāt a brainiac, he wasnāt a tough guy, he wasnāt a world beater. He was as reassuring as an old t-shirt, as comfortable as your grandfatherās Laz-E-Boy. After four years of Trumpian chaos and nine months of pandemic, that’s the guy Americans voted into office.
But Joe himself, who has spent a lifetime weaving his own fabulist tapestries, is too addicted to his own (rapidly dwindling) testosterone. He’s 81 years old and still trying to convince people that he can take Trump out behind the school gymnasium and beat the Hell out of him. Even if it were true, who the Hell cares? We have a country to secure.
In that sense Joe Biden has betrayed America. His rage, his condescension, his exhausting tough guy routine ā none of it is what Americans wanted or asked for. They wanted Amtrak Joe, average Joe. They voted for a calm hand on the tiller, with full knowledge of the manās limitations. Recall Barack Obamaās admonition to ānever underestimate Joeās ability to f*** things upā (which statement revealed more about Obama than Biden, but that’s a different story). They voted for someone they thought was like them, in the hope that he would deliver a thoroughly mundane four or eight years in office.
Let that sink in: Joe Biden faced the lowest bar of success of any President in modern times, maybe in history. And he’s thoroughly bollocksing it. Instead of average Joe, Americans have gotten the ultimate Telephone Tough Guy, an 81-year-old at the height of global power who still worries how the other kids on the playground perceive him.
Six years ago I was in the camp that viewed Donald Trump as something of a curio. After a quarter century of Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama institutional malaise I understood the impulse to take a flier on someone so otherwise manifestly unsuited for the office. For most of his first term I felt like Clark W. Griswold in Christmas Vacation, when he traps himself and his family in their station wagon under a logging truck going 70mph. Sheer panic on his face, he shouts to his family, “We’re all right! Thank God, we’re all right!”
Me, 2017-2020
This time there’s no room for such levity and perspective. Donald Trump is a threat. He is also completely beatable. But to beat him, the Democrats are going to have to cure Biden of his desperate desire to be seen as tough. He isnāt. The sooner he realizes as much, and as soon as he realizes it doesn’t matter, the better off the country will be. Meanwhile, the sooner the media cure themselves of their Trump addiction and start reporting reality again, the better off the entire country and world will be.
Time is growing short.
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