In a country with no memory, Donald Trump and his fascist Republican Party may win in November
At no point before 1933 did the outlook for Adolf Hitler and the fascists in Germany look as favorable as it does now for Donald Trump and the fascists in the United States.
In America , a country with no memory, Donald Trump and his fascist1 Republican Party may win in November.
Political leaders and journalists speak of Donald Trump now as if he’s just another candidate.
They assume the population and likely voters remember why there are 91 criminal indictments against Trump, that he has been found guilty of sexual battery amounting to rape in a civil trial (where in a civil trial rape was not charged), that over 60 courts all rejected Republican charges that there was fraud in the 2020 presidential election, that Donald Trump instigated an insurrection that included the invasion of the Capitol causing five deaths and many injuries to policemen–as Trump passively watched on TV, and that he was also the mastermind of a well-orchestrated attempt, both before and on January 6, to overthrow the November 2020 election results.
They may even assume, if they remember themselves, that the population remembers the ten felony cases of obstruction of justice Robert Mueller laid out in great detail in his Report on April 18, 2019.
But if they are making such assumptions, they are dead wrong.
America has become a country with no memory.
Neil Postman in his classic study, Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), qotes Bill Moyers’ insightful observation, as follows:
We Americans seem to know everything about the last twenty-four hours but very little of the last sixty centuries or the last sixty years.2
Postman describes the shift from the “Typographic world” based on the printing press and the written word, to the current world shaped by the television commercial, which he terms “the Age of Show Business and Image Politics”. His analysis is deep, and goes far in helping the reader to understand the appeal of Donald Trump, the Entertainer, as opposed to that of Joe Biden, the Politician.
In such a memory void, where truth and actual facts have no weight, or at best a diminishing influence that vanishes after weeks, or even months, a charlatan and accused felon like Donald Trump can appear on television and weave his web of lies and distortions almost without commentary.
We are not living in a rational world, where truth and remembered facts may influence the opinions of voters and the votes they actually cast.
As a fascist takeover “with American characteristics” draws nearer, we must in all candor report on the failures of the many political leaders in both parties which have accelerated the growth of fascism in the United States.
First of all, there are the many Republican leaders who have either surrendered to their fear of Trump and his supporters, have abandoned all principles and their oaths to uphold the Constitution in blind pursuit of personal ambition, or who have succumbed to ideology and beliefs that Trump will be better for the country—and for their companies’ earnings and their own pocketbooks—due to cuts in taxes and other decisions supposedly favoring business.
Fear, ambition, and ideology (often at variance with the facts) have all contributed to the growth of the Cult of Trump and of fascism in the United States.
Would-be authoritarians and fascists will always exist. But what has contributed to the extraordinary growth in their numbers in the U.S. in recent years has been not only the failures of the Republicans but also the failures of the Democrats and Independents and other small-d “democratic” opponents of Trump, to take resolute action to stop Trump and his fascist supporters.
Foremost among the failures on the Democratic side have been those of President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland, who for some two years refused to initiate criminal proceedings against Trump and his accomplices for the apparent blatant commission of multiple felonies. These crimes ranged from cases of Obstruction of Justice (e.g., as outlined in the Mueller Report) to the numerous apparent crimes committed in Trump’s many efforts to overthrow the results of the November 3, 2020 election.
For a very long time House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi blocked all efforts by Democratic members of the House to launch a full and broad investigation into Trump’s alleged crimes. Finally, after almost two years, in September 2019 she allowed the Democrats to carry out a narrow impeachment investigation of Trump. In December, 2019 the House impeached Trump on two counts related to pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenski to provide information against Hunter Biden for Trump’s personal political purposes. While the proof was overwhelming, enough Republicans violated their oaths of office to prevent Trump’s conviction and removal in his Senate trial.
After the January 6, 2021 Insurrection, Pelosi allowed the House Democrats to impeach Trump a second time. Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell delayed the Senate impeachment trial until after Trump left office, and then with other Republicans voted against finding Trump guilty of the impeachment charges on the ground that he was no longer in office.
Again, though also by a narrower margin, Republicans violating their oaths of office blocked Trump’s conviction.
At the Justice Department, Merrick Garland, after swearing in his confirmation hearings he would not let political considerations influence his decisions, did precisely that by not immediately launching broad investigations into Trump’s apparent crimes.
Finally, on November 18, 2022, Garland appointed Jack Smith as a Special Prosecutor to investigate Trump’s potential crimes. So far Smith has succeeded in obtaining multiple criminal indictments against Trump, both for his attempt to overthrow the election, and for his violation of secrecy laws regarding highly sensitive intelligence information, including information regarding nuclear secrets.
Nonetheless, Garland allowed the statute of limitations to run out on the 10 Obstruction of Justice cases detailed, with references to specific evidence, in Robert Mueller’s Report of April 18, 2019.
The alleged crimes were committed in the spring of 2017.
Garland allowed the five-year statute of limitations on these major felonies to expire in 2022, without comment.
Instead of applying the law, Garland was apparently attuned to the political realities, and the fact that America has no memory.
The final shortcoming of the Democrats has been their failure to develop a viable alternative to Biden, a younger candidate who, without Biden’s age and foreign policy leadership liabilities (e.g., the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan), might help the Democrats run a strong and winning campaign against Trump and his supporters.
Given Biden’s adamant refusal to step aside, they have failed further by not developing and demanding the naming of a strong vice-presidential candidate who, unlike Kamala Harris, might be viewed as someone who is ready and prepared to become a capable president.
Identity politics may have made such a move appear to be impossible in the eyes of Democratic leaders. Nonetheless, such a move might represent the best possibility for a Democratic victory in 2024. Sometimes in exceptional situations political leaders need to reach beyond conventional wisdom to find and implement bold solutions that might save the day.
The choice is stark: Stick with your identity politics and probably lose, or replace Harris with someone who is viewed as good potential president, and win the election.
The latter option would in all likelihood remove, or at least greatly diminish, the issue of Biden’s age as a factor in the election.
Instead of pushing for such dramatic action, Democrats, with folded hands, have been passively observing Biden as he drags tho party down to what may be a resounding defeat.
They should take the polls seriously, which show that Trump has moved from a dead heat with Biden to a widening lead—as high as five or six points in some recent national polls. Moreover, these are national polls. The situation may be worse in the swing states whose electoral votes may decide the election, such as Michigan.
Democrats don’t get the central point: A majority of voters just don’t like Biden. This is not fair. This is not rational. But it is a fact.
In a world ruled by mass political emotions impervious to facts, Biden is losing support. The polls tell a clear and increasingly devastating tale of Biden’s looming defeat. He is likely to take a lot of Democrats down with him.
Despite his many merits, Biden is a weak candidate. Vice President Kamala Harris was a poor choice for VP in 2020, and does nothing to strengthen the Democratic ticket in 2024.
Theoretically, if Biden were to replace Harris on the ticket with a young and dynamic leader, he could strengthen the ticket and the Democrats’ chances of winning the elections in November, 2024.
But because Biden is a stubborn and willful old man, this could only happen if there were a concerted rebellion among the Democratic ranks in the Senate and in the House, and possibly among the major contributors in the Democratic donor class.
Given their track record, this is not a likely scenario.
Yet is appears to be the only scenario which might lead to a Democratic victory in November.
Biden and his coterie cling to the belief that the very strong state of the economy, and other Biden successes, will as the campaign progresses convince voters that he is the better candidate.
In a rational world, that scenario might be possible.
In a world where voters had a memory, that scenario might be plausible.
But in America, a country that has no memory, that scenario is not likely.
We are not living in the United States, today, in a world of reason.
Rather, we are living in phantasmagoric times, in a world of Unreason governed by mass political emotions, as confirmed by the strength of Trump and the fascist movement which has taken over the Republican Party.
A historical comparison is apposite, and instructive.
At no point before 1933 did the outlook for Adolf Hitler and the fascists in Germany look as favorable as it does now for Donald Trump and the fascists in the United States.
Anything is possible, and the worst seems increasingly likely.
James Rowles is a former Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and professor of international law at other universities.
See, e..g,
1)Collins Concise English Dictionary © HarperCollins Publishers::
fascist /ˈfæʃɪst/(sometimes capital)n
an adherent or practitioner of fascism
any person regarded as having right-wing authoritarian views
adj
Also: fascistic /fəˈʃɪstɪk/
characteristic of or relating to fascism
2)Collins Concise English Dictionary © HarperCollins Publishers::
fascism /ˈfæʃɪzəm/n (sometimes capital)
any ideology or movement inspired by Italian Fascism, such as German National Socialism; any right-wing nationalist ideology or movement with an authoritarian and hierarchical structure that is fundamentally opposed to democracy and liberalism
any ideology, movement, programme, tendency, etc, that may be characterized as right-wing, chauvinist, authoritarian, etc
prejudice in relation to the subject specified: body fascism
Etymology: 20th Century: from Italian fascismo, from fascio political group, from Latin fascis bundle; see fasces
Neil Postman, quoting Bill Moyers, in Amusing ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the age of Show Business, Random House, 1985, Penguin Books, 1986, 2006), p. 137.
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