Yesterday was a dark day in American history. A dark day that was pointless, unnecessary, and humiliating for our country. The sight of our Capitol being overrun by a mob is something that will remain seared in my mind as long as I live. Thankfully, the police and national guard restored order and Congress defiantly did its duty by certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election.
What happened yesterday, while outrageous, infuriating, and saddening, was not, however, surprising. Yesterday’s attempted coup was the end result of four years of endless demagoguery in the White House. As I have warned since before he won the nomination, Trump embodies the type of demagogue the Founders attempted to thwart by creating a government of checks and balances, including the Electoral College. Trump has never displayed any respect for our institutions, holds checks and balances in contempt, wants to be a dictator, turns Americans against each other for his own gain, inflames the worst passions of the masses who worship him, and has engaged in endless corruption while in office. Our institutions will survive his presidency, but have been tested, attacked, and weakened by the relentless battering ram of Trump’s demagoguery. Ironically, our saving grace might well be Trump’s incompetence and short attention span. Nonetheless, I fear that a future demagogue will be smarter, subtler, and better able to destroy our republic.
All our lives, we have been told that America is “exceptional” and that our constitutional system is the greatest political system ever devised by the minds of men and women. As yesterday, and really all of Trump’s presidency has laid bare, we are just as susceptible to the lure and threats of autocracy as any other country. George Washington creating important republican precedents that have guided America for over 200 years: the two-term limit, voluntary relinquishing of power, deference to the Senate in treaty ratification, rejection of titles of nobility, and so on. That, in combination with Madisonian checks and balances, largely allowed us to keep a functional democratic republic capable of defending itself against internal demagogues, such as Huey Long, Father Coughlin, Aaron Burr, Andrew Jackson, and Andrew Johnson. These checks, balances, and procedures, however, depended upon the good faith of human actors, which is always a risky foundation, but had more or less worked.
Then came Donald Trump. If any figure is the anti-George Washington, it is Donald Trump. George Washington was a great war hero, Donald Trump faked bone spurs to avoid serving in Vietnam. Washington was quiet, subdued, and cautious in speech, Trump is loud, brash, and unfiltered. Washington twice relinquished power that he could have held for the rest of his life, while Trump is desperately trying to cling on to power that expires in less than two weeks. Washington was the consummate republican, while Trump is the consummate autocrat. Washington understood the necessity and brilliance of checks and balances, while Trump views them as obsolete impediments to his will. Washington breathed life into our political system, while Trump has actively attempted to destroy it.
Trump’s presidency has been a chaotic circus. The sheer volume of scandals, alone, is impossible to process. Petty and divisive rhetoric are not only commonplace in his White House, but are expected. The staff and Cabinet turnover rates are jaw-dropping. Even more astonishing has been his complete abdication of leadership during the Coronavirus Crises (including the economic recession). The last four years have been nothing but a chaotic jump from crisis to crisis (many of which are either self-inflicted or self-exacerbated) that has divided Americans to an extent not seen since the Civil War.
Naturally, we would expect our institutions to keep him in check and restrain at least the worst impulses. In many cases, the institutions held, such as when Georgia’s Secretary of State and Governor refused to even attempt to unilaterally change the results of their state’s elections, just because Trump wanted them to. However, Trump’s conquest of the Republican Party has prevented many of these checks from fully functioning. The weak state of our national parties allowed Trump to get the nomination in the first place. Our pointless Electoral College has forgotten its original purpose and rather than preventing Trump’s election, made it possible, even though he lost by millions of votes in 2016. And Trump’s commandeering of FOX News, talk radio, and cult-level control over millions of GOP primary voters largely made him untouchable over the last four years, at least as far as elected Republicans are concerned.
Last year’s failed removal via impeachment illustrated this perfectly. Despite Trump’s actions being an impeachable high crime, only one Republican had the courage and fortitude to vote to remove Trump from office: Mitt Romney. Every other elected Republican cowered out of fear of being the subject of mean Tweets and allowed him to remain in office. Consequently, impeachment is no longer a viable check against the executive, as long as the president’s party controls 34 Senate seats, except MAYBE in the most extreme, indisputable cases of criminal activity. Trump has taken advantage of that reality in too many cases to even begin listing.
What has always been the most dangerous feature of Trump himself, however, has always been his autocratic propensities. Most of Trump’s policy positions are malleable or dispensable to him, but the one constant has been his belief that autocracy is good and necessary for governance. As our nation’s top diplomat over the last four years, Trump has always had better relations with international despots and illiberal leaders than with the leaders of western liberal democracies. Trump believes that nations need to be “tough” in order to survive, which usually means engaging in war crimes and police brutality, and views formal governing obstacles as useless impediments to the will of the leader. Trump loves the idea of power and envies those who are able to wield it with minimal resistance, such as Vladimir Putin, Recep Erdogan, Mohammad bin Salman, Kim Jong-un, and Rodrigo Duterte. Such beliefs are completely at odds with the ideals of our constitutional republic, but are core features of Trumpism. As such, Trump has made it a point to pardon and celebrate those who have acted in accordance with his vision of being “tough,” such as Clint Lorance, Joe Arpaio, the Blackwater mercenaries, and a few others convicted of war crimes. Autocratic impulses are central to Trump’s philosophical outlook on governance.
Trump’s cult-like control over large swaths of the American public, however, has been perhaps his most demagogic feature. Being popular and drawing large crowds does not, by itself, make one a demagogue; George Washington was practically a demigod to the Americans of the early republic, but he was not a demagogue. Demagogues set themselves up as the “voice of the masses” and declare war (usually figuratively, sometime literally) against the existing establishment. They stir up the people’s worst impulses and emotions in order to wield extraordinary political power. In many cases, the demagogue and the movement become so fused as to be inseparable; the leader literally embodies the people in the minds of the followers. Political scientists since at least Plato have feared demagogues and warned against them, because demagogues will use legitimately-earned power to destroy republican institutions and set themselves up as dictators. They will consolidate power through any means at their disposal and wield the power of angry masses to secure an indefinite hold on their power.
Donald Trump has embodied all of these features. If there is any way in which he differs from the classic demagogue, it is that he is not some military hero and great conqueror, but rather a game show host. That minor difference aside, however, everything else fits to the letter. He has turned a great political party into his own cult of personality, to the point that the 2020 GOP did not even bother to make a platform, instead preferring to let Trump’s ideas and preferences substitute for a broad statement of ideals. His rise to power and presidency have been marked by rhetorical wars against the “establishment,” especially the political establishments and mainstream media. He has the backing of a substantial portion of the country, and at an unhealthy degree, in many cases. Trump uses rallies to stir up his base, threaten opponents, and above all, to bask in the praise and adoration of his cult-like following. Moreover, he has continuously undermined faith and trust in our institutions, especially our elections. He has successfully convinced a large number of Americans that the election was “rigged” against him, despite providing no proof, whatsoever. He did that in 2016, as well. And he is totally fine with undermining our governing institutions, such as Congress and the courts, when they do not give him what he wants. It is difficult to argue that Trump has not succeeded in turning Americans against our republican forms of government and the democracy underpinning it.
And that takes us to yesterday. Any honest observer would have told the mob that Trump’s attempt to override the Electoral College vote was doomed from the start and that Trump had lost the 2020 election fair and square. Purely out of selfish reasons, Trump has dragged the country through endless litigation of the 2020 election, with a putrid record in court of 1-62 to show for it. There has not been one proven case of election fraud carried out on behalf of Biden in 2020, much less anything remotely close to even suggesting that millions of voters deserved to be disenfranchised out of fairness to Trump. If Trump was capable of accepting reality and conceding the election, yesterday would never have happened. Instead, his vanity and historically-fragile ego caused him to deceive thousands of his most loyal followers with lies about “voter fraud” and a “stolen election.” Four years of demagoguery resulted exactly as political scientists have said it would, with a mob uprising designed to overthrow democracy and install their hero as a dictator.
Many Republican members of Congress aided and abetted this uprising, out of either fear of Trump, or out of selfish hopes that they could be the natural successors to Trump. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and the House Republicans who also joined in the effort to overturn the election all know, deep down, that Biden fairly won the election and that their “objections” to the Electoral College votes were nothing more than vain posturing to a cultish base. Cruz seems to have a tradition of kicking off his presidential runs with pointless stunts that have no chance of success, but are good for fundraising and establishing his conservative street cred with the most radical elements of the base. In a healthy and functional democratic republic, elected officials would shoot down these asinine conspiracies and tell the truth to the people, rather than coddle them with lies. Moreover, a healthy political party is not tied to the identity of one person, but the Republicans have allowed their party to become one man’s cult of personality.
Consequently, yesterday’s mob uprising was horrifying, but not surprising. Trump has constructed a cult that is exclusively loyal to him, to the point of rejecting democracy in favor of a Trump-led dictatorship. Four years of letting Trump get away with practically everything has finally culminated in an attempt to overturn our very republic, itself. As mentioned earlier, Trump’s incompetence and goldfish-caliber attention span have aided our institutional safeguards against his attempts to be a dictator, but there is no guarantee that the next demagogue will be as stupid, manipulable, and easily-distracted. I have greater hope, however, in our professional public servants. While the elected national Republicans have largely failed to protect the country from Trump’s demagoguery, ordinary public officials at the state and local level, as well as the national bureaucracy, have resisted Trump’s maniacal attempts to subvert democracy and become a dictator. Figures like Brian Kemp, Brad Raffensperger, Al Schmidt, and others have endured relentless attacks from Trump and his followers, and yet did their duty. If America is “exceptional” in any meaningful way right now, it is because of the resolve of ordinary public servants to follow the Constitution, do their duties, and not allow the most powerful man on Earth to intimidate them.
Nothing about the American Experiment is guaranteed. The presidency of Donald J. Trump has made that all-too-clear, as he has relentlessly attacked the very foundations of our political system with a battering ram of demagoguery, hoping that he can become the dictator he wants to be, and establish a hereditary political dynasty. Going forward, we must be ever-more vigilant against the rise of similar demagogues and reaffirm our commitment to constitutional republican democracy. We must elect people committed to public service and the Constitution; people who will not depend upon others to do the unenviable task of preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution of the United States. We must always endeavor to protect the system, even if it means sacrificing policy goals. The American Experiment is too important to lose to the tyrannical impulses of demagogues, but it is not immune from these impulses. It is up to us to save, protect, and maintain it.
PS: Pence and the Cabinet need to begin the 25th Amendment process to remove Trump from office. Yesterday was entirely Trump's fault and he cannot be entrusted with power any longer; not even for two weeks. And Congress, once it reconvenes, needs to begin impeachment proceedings and this time, actually convict him and bar him from ever darkening another political office ever again.
What happened yesterday, while outrageous, infuriating, and saddening, was not, however, surprising. Yesterday’s attempted coup was the end result of four years of endless demagoguery in the White House. As I have warned since before he won the nomination, Trump embodies the type of demagogue the Founders attempted to thwart by creating a government of checks and balances, including the Electoral College. Trump has never displayed any respect for our institutions, holds checks and balances in contempt, wants to be a dictator, turns Americans against each other for his own gain, inflames the worst passions of the masses who worship him, and has engaged in endless corruption while in office. Our institutions will survive his presidency, but have been tested, attacked, and weakened by the relentless battering ram of Trump’s demagoguery. Ironically, our saving grace might well be Trump’s incompetence and short attention span. Nonetheless, I fear that a future demagogue will be smarter, subtler, and better able to destroy our republic.
All our lives, we have been told that America is “exceptional” and that our constitutional system is the greatest political system ever devised by the minds of men and women. As yesterday, and really all of Trump’s presidency has laid bare, we are just as susceptible to the lure and threats of autocracy as any other country. George Washington creating important republican precedents that have guided America for over 200 years: the two-term limit, voluntary relinquishing of power, deference to the Senate in treaty ratification, rejection of titles of nobility, and so on. That, in combination with Madisonian checks and balances, largely allowed us to keep a functional democratic republic capable of defending itself against internal demagogues, such as Huey Long, Father Coughlin, Aaron Burr, Andrew Jackson, and Andrew Johnson. These checks, balances, and procedures, however, depended upon the good faith of human actors, which is always a risky foundation, but had more or less worked.
Then came Donald Trump. If any figure is the anti-George Washington, it is Donald Trump. George Washington was a great war hero, Donald Trump faked bone spurs to avoid serving in Vietnam. Washington was quiet, subdued, and cautious in speech, Trump is loud, brash, and unfiltered. Washington twice relinquished power that he could have held for the rest of his life, while Trump is desperately trying to cling on to power that expires in less than two weeks. Washington was the consummate republican, while Trump is the consummate autocrat. Washington understood the necessity and brilliance of checks and balances, while Trump views them as obsolete impediments to his will. Washington breathed life into our political system, while Trump has actively attempted to destroy it.
Trump’s presidency has been a chaotic circus. The sheer volume of scandals, alone, is impossible to process. Petty and divisive rhetoric are not only commonplace in his White House, but are expected. The staff and Cabinet turnover rates are jaw-dropping. Even more astonishing has been his complete abdication of leadership during the Coronavirus Crises (including the economic recession). The last four years have been nothing but a chaotic jump from crisis to crisis (many of which are either self-inflicted or self-exacerbated) that has divided Americans to an extent not seen since the Civil War.
Naturally, we would expect our institutions to keep him in check and restrain at least the worst impulses. In many cases, the institutions held, such as when Georgia’s Secretary of State and Governor refused to even attempt to unilaterally change the results of their state’s elections, just because Trump wanted them to. However, Trump’s conquest of the Republican Party has prevented many of these checks from fully functioning. The weak state of our national parties allowed Trump to get the nomination in the first place. Our pointless Electoral College has forgotten its original purpose and rather than preventing Trump’s election, made it possible, even though he lost by millions of votes in 2016. And Trump’s commandeering of FOX News, talk radio, and cult-level control over millions of GOP primary voters largely made him untouchable over the last four years, at least as far as elected Republicans are concerned.
Last year’s failed removal via impeachment illustrated this perfectly. Despite Trump’s actions being an impeachable high crime, only one Republican had the courage and fortitude to vote to remove Trump from office: Mitt Romney. Every other elected Republican cowered out of fear of being the subject of mean Tweets and allowed him to remain in office. Consequently, impeachment is no longer a viable check against the executive, as long as the president’s party controls 34 Senate seats, except MAYBE in the most extreme, indisputable cases of criminal activity. Trump has taken advantage of that reality in too many cases to even begin listing.
What has always been the most dangerous feature of Trump himself, however, has always been his autocratic propensities. Most of Trump’s policy positions are malleable or dispensable to him, but the one constant has been his belief that autocracy is good and necessary for governance. As our nation’s top diplomat over the last four years, Trump has always had better relations with international despots and illiberal leaders than with the leaders of western liberal democracies. Trump believes that nations need to be “tough” in order to survive, which usually means engaging in war crimes and police brutality, and views formal governing obstacles as useless impediments to the will of the leader. Trump loves the idea of power and envies those who are able to wield it with minimal resistance, such as Vladimir Putin, Recep Erdogan, Mohammad bin Salman, Kim Jong-un, and Rodrigo Duterte. Such beliefs are completely at odds with the ideals of our constitutional republic, but are core features of Trumpism. As such, Trump has made it a point to pardon and celebrate those who have acted in accordance with his vision of being “tough,” such as Clint Lorance, Joe Arpaio, the Blackwater mercenaries, and a few others convicted of war crimes. Autocratic impulses are central to Trump’s philosophical outlook on governance.
Trump’s cult-like control over large swaths of the American public, however, has been perhaps his most demagogic feature. Being popular and drawing large crowds does not, by itself, make one a demagogue; George Washington was practically a demigod to the Americans of the early republic, but he was not a demagogue. Demagogues set themselves up as the “voice of the masses” and declare war (usually figuratively, sometime literally) against the existing establishment. They stir up the people’s worst impulses and emotions in order to wield extraordinary political power. In many cases, the demagogue and the movement become so fused as to be inseparable; the leader literally embodies the people in the minds of the followers. Political scientists since at least Plato have feared demagogues and warned against them, because demagogues will use legitimately-earned power to destroy republican institutions and set themselves up as dictators. They will consolidate power through any means at their disposal and wield the power of angry masses to secure an indefinite hold on their power.
Donald Trump has embodied all of these features. If there is any way in which he differs from the classic demagogue, it is that he is not some military hero and great conqueror, but rather a game show host. That minor difference aside, however, everything else fits to the letter. He has turned a great political party into his own cult of personality, to the point that the 2020 GOP did not even bother to make a platform, instead preferring to let Trump’s ideas and preferences substitute for a broad statement of ideals. His rise to power and presidency have been marked by rhetorical wars against the “establishment,” especially the political establishments and mainstream media. He has the backing of a substantial portion of the country, and at an unhealthy degree, in many cases. Trump uses rallies to stir up his base, threaten opponents, and above all, to bask in the praise and adoration of his cult-like following. Moreover, he has continuously undermined faith and trust in our institutions, especially our elections. He has successfully convinced a large number of Americans that the election was “rigged” against him, despite providing no proof, whatsoever. He did that in 2016, as well. And he is totally fine with undermining our governing institutions, such as Congress and the courts, when they do not give him what he wants. It is difficult to argue that Trump has not succeeded in turning Americans against our republican forms of government and the democracy underpinning it.
And that takes us to yesterday. Any honest observer would have told the mob that Trump’s attempt to override the Electoral College vote was doomed from the start and that Trump had lost the 2020 election fair and square. Purely out of selfish reasons, Trump has dragged the country through endless litigation of the 2020 election, with a putrid record in court of 1-62 to show for it. There has not been one proven case of election fraud carried out on behalf of Biden in 2020, much less anything remotely close to even suggesting that millions of voters deserved to be disenfranchised out of fairness to Trump. If Trump was capable of accepting reality and conceding the election, yesterday would never have happened. Instead, his vanity and historically-fragile ego caused him to deceive thousands of his most loyal followers with lies about “voter fraud” and a “stolen election.” Four years of demagoguery resulted exactly as political scientists have said it would, with a mob uprising designed to overthrow democracy and install their hero as a dictator.
Many Republican members of Congress aided and abetted this uprising, out of either fear of Trump, or out of selfish hopes that they could be the natural successors to Trump. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and the House Republicans who also joined in the effort to overturn the election all know, deep down, that Biden fairly won the election and that their “objections” to the Electoral College votes were nothing more than vain posturing to a cultish base. Cruz seems to have a tradition of kicking off his presidential runs with pointless stunts that have no chance of success, but are good for fundraising and establishing his conservative street cred with the most radical elements of the base. In a healthy and functional democratic republic, elected officials would shoot down these asinine conspiracies and tell the truth to the people, rather than coddle them with lies. Moreover, a healthy political party is not tied to the identity of one person, but the Republicans have allowed their party to become one man’s cult of personality.
Consequently, yesterday’s mob uprising was horrifying, but not surprising. Trump has constructed a cult that is exclusively loyal to him, to the point of rejecting democracy in favor of a Trump-led dictatorship. Four years of letting Trump get away with practically everything has finally culminated in an attempt to overturn our very republic, itself. As mentioned earlier, Trump’s incompetence and goldfish-caliber attention span have aided our institutional safeguards against his attempts to be a dictator, but there is no guarantee that the next demagogue will be as stupid, manipulable, and easily-distracted. I have greater hope, however, in our professional public servants. While the elected national Republicans have largely failed to protect the country from Trump’s demagoguery, ordinary public officials at the state and local level, as well as the national bureaucracy, have resisted Trump’s maniacal attempts to subvert democracy and become a dictator. Figures like Brian Kemp, Brad Raffensperger, Al Schmidt, and others have endured relentless attacks from Trump and his followers, and yet did their duty. If America is “exceptional” in any meaningful way right now, it is because of the resolve of ordinary public servants to follow the Constitution, do their duties, and not allow the most powerful man on Earth to intimidate them.
Nothing about the American Experiment is guaranteed. The presidency of Donald J. Trump has made that all-too-clear, as he has relentlessly attacked the very foundations of our political system with a battering ram of demagoguery, hoping that he can become the dictator he wants to be, and establish a hereditary political dynasty. Going forward, we must be ever-more vigilant against the rise of similar demagogues and reaffirm our commitment to constitutional republican democracy. We must elect people committed to public service and the Constitution; people who will not depend upon others to do the unenviable task of preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution of the United States. We must always endeavor to protect the system, even if it means sacrificing policy goals. The American Experiment is too important to lose to the tyrannical impulses of demagogues, but it is not immune from these impulses. It is up to us to save, protect, and maintain it.
PS: Pence and the Cabinet need to begin the 25th Amendment process to remove Trump from office. Yesterday was entirely Trump's fault and he cannot be entrusted with power any longer; not even for two weeks. And Congress, once it reconvenes, needs to begin impeachment proceedings and this time, actually convict him and bar him from ever darkening another political office ever again.
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