Trump-ism and the Overton Window

Here’s something I never wanted to write, and something it will pain you to read.

Donald Trump is the most consequential President of our lifetime.

He has done far more than Hillary Clinton ever could, ever would, or ever thought of.

Yes, it’s all terrible stuff. Consequential doesn’t mean good. It means significant. Adolf Hitler “won” Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year” multiple times. That doesn’t mean he was good, or that Time liked him. But when it comes to the history of the 20^th century, he was consequential.

Like Hitler, Trump is doing truly terrible things. Constantly. There’s not enough time to list it all.

The most obvious terrible thing he’s done has been to react to COVID-19 as though the virus had a political agenda. Viruses don’t have political agendas. Scientists disagree on whether they’re even alive. Arguing with a virus is like arguing with a river.

This stupidity will have killed about 200,000 Americans by Labor Day. It didn’t have to happen.

But this storm does carry a rainbow inside it. It’s one that electoral pundits, who constantly normalize Trump or don’t believe change can happen, will deny until it’s right up there in the sky.

Trump has changed the country’s fundamental direction like no one has since Pearl Harbor.

Ever since December 7, 1941, America has become increasingly militarized. Americans have become increasingly xenophobic. America has become increasingly anti-government. We have become intolerant, even of one another.

It took enormous strength and force of will for us to win World War II. When we got in, we were not the betting favorite. For the first year, there was no good news to report.

Winning, when it came, created a habit in us, the idea that we were in a life-or-death ideological struggle where we could never afford to let our guard down. This carried us through the Cold War, over 45 years. The great advances of that time – our Interstate Highway system, our mass college education system, Apollo, and the Internet – were all Cold War activities. Just like Korea and Vietnam were Cold War activities. The 1960s were a speed bump that accelerated that direction.

The Cold War created new habits within us. We came to see ourselves as the only essential nation, the only guarantor of stability and (most important) the controlling agent of the world’s resources. In the decades after the Cold War ended, we fought two wars for oil. That’s what they were.

Keeping the fight going meant starving other sectors of the economy. Instead of raising our kids to be scientists, my generation raised kids to be soldiers. Generations of military veterans grew up in a world of black-and-white, of subservience to hierarchy, of obedience to authority. This included church authority. Americans are church-going people and have generally favored churches we ourselves created. Not just denominations like Baptists or Mormons, but entrepreneurial churches, one-man churches, churches run for their owners.

Conservatives aren’t anti-government. Their principle is their principal, their interest their interest. It’s all about their money. The absence of government, the libertarian ideal, does not exist. After you drown government in a bathtub you still have government. Just government of the strong, the ruthless. You have feudalism.

Capitalism is not a political system, although it’s often described as such by Republicans. Capitalism is an economic system. Placing capitalism in contrast to socialism is a false choice because, as I said, capitalists do see a role for government, in protecting what they have from everyone else. The economy is always mixed. It’s only a choice of who’s doing the mixing, and to what end.

All these things, along with America’s innate racism, the snake under the table as abolitionists called it before the Civil War, combined to create Trumpism.

There is no doubt about it. Trump is an -ism. His is the most basic -ism of all, and it dominates today’s world as it hasn’t since this nation was founded. There are islands of democracy, in Europe, in Africa, even in Latin America. But the sea is ruled by tyrants, by Trumpists who rule by fear of the “other,” defined whichever way lets them keep power. To some, the other is Muslims. To others it’s “the West.” To still others it’s secularism. Or “socialism,” defined as any government program not directly benefiting them.

Whatever the other is, Trumpists will find it, and twist it, and turn it against the majority until it screams for blood. As I said, we’ve been building toward this moment for longer than I’ve been alive, for nearly four score years. Four score and seven gets you to 1933, and the rise of Hitler.

But there’s good news. Thanks to Trump, we’re on to the game. Most of us are on to it, regardless of other political preferences. The media denies this, for ratings. Many liberals like to deny it, for gaslighting purposes.

Trump and his people know it. They know they can’t win a free election. Their last throw of the dice is to destroy this election, and all democratic legitimacy. Once and for all.

Their problem is democracy doesn’t just have most of the people on our side. We have the money. Even some of the money that elected Trump, the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson, have walked away this time. Tech is on our side because its legitimacy is under attack. Money is threatened by a man whose only principal is self-interest, who would steal from them as readily as he would you, if he thought he could get away with it.

It will take work to overcome Trumpism. There will be uncertainty. Only the mail-in votes of active duty soldiers assured Lincoln’s re-election in 1864. The Man in the High Castle could have been a documentary.

Margin also matters, as never before. An 8-point victory may not win back the Senate. We need the kind of 3-2 margin we’ve seen three times before in my lifetime – in 1964, 1972, and 1984. Despite what the pundits may say, this is entirely possible. Because no one is sleeping on this. Trump’s actions against democracy guarantee no one is sleeping on this.

The result should be a fundamental shift in direction that’s even bigger than that of 1968. It’s something we haven’t seen since your grandparents were small. It’s not a wave, it’s not even a tsunami, it’s a sea change.

The Overton Window is defined as the range of political choices seen as acceptable at any one time. It has generally been going in one direction for two generations. It’s now going in the other direction. How far and how fast it goes is up to my children, and their children.

But the window is moving and Trump, because of his racism, sexism, and methodical trampling of our democracy, is the reason for it.

One more thing. This election won’t determine whether Trump is the American Hitler. He already is. It will decide whether he becomes the American Stalin, who murdered tens of millions, who died in his bed, and whose governing style of still rules his country, 67 years later.