Arraigning on Trump’s Parade

An Arresting Development for MAGAmerica

Donald Trump, a gifted con man, and showman, slow-rode his golden elevator into the Republican presidential primary in 2016. His faux-epic descent quickened the pulse of bigots, miscreants, and seditionists everywhere. By challenging and disrupting the norms of politics, civil society, and of governance at the highest levels, Trump won the presidency and the populist adoration of millions of disaffected Americans, including many in the White working and middle class.

These norm of politics had long since needed to be disrupted. They had been perpetuating inequality and injustice for all but privileged elites.

But Trump took the opportunity to assemble a parade of the perfidious: a rowdy crowd drunk on conspiracy-infused concoctions of unrequited grievance, score-settling, corruption, and thuggery. And the massing of such an unruly, cultish, and undisciplined mob led to some predictably “arresting” developments. It is these developments that are the most public signs of significant impediments ahead in the MAGA march towards a new American dystopia.

The World’s Greatest MAGAnificent Smackdown?

Otherwise known as the Right to White Christian Might

Trump turned his presidential parade into the political equivalent of the WWE‘s WrestleMania: muscular, dramatic, and sadistic theatrics framed by Trump’s constant ranting and tweeting of bigoted tropes and dog-whistles targeting “the other” as the enemy of what was once great about America. It’s been a 24/7 “Great MAGA Libturd Smackdown.”

Trump’s “never ending story” of narcissistic, criminal syndicalist Smackdowns has had a significant impact:

• Trump has galvanized a grievance-driven populist movement around, essentially, the Right to White Christian Might.

• He has stoked this movement into a devoted block of voters and activists who have thoroughly intimidated Republican leaders and legislators inclined to more mainstream Republicanism (branded in MAGA world as Republicans In Name Only (RINOs)). Of course, mainstream Republicanism is what brought us to this moment . . .

• He has emboldened a formidable domestic network of illiberal, anti-democratic plutocrats and ideologues — who, for decades, have been building towards the moment when they could “seize the day” — to capture and control governing political and legal systems in the states, and federally.

• And, while Trump himself fell short of his attempt to seize the presidency, this extremely well-developed and financed anti-democratic right-wing network has managed to seize control of our Supreme Court, the Republican Party, and the governance of many of our states.

It’s hard to overstate the impact of citizen Trump’s tenure at the apex of our politics.

But there is an underlying weakness in this Trump-led and -emboldened reactionary moment. The populist upsurge and the emboldened moves of our domestic authoritarians are intimately and inextricably tied to the innate anarchy of Trump’s narcissistic self-dealing, criminal syndicalism, and attempted emulation of the strongman authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin, Victor Orban, the Saudi monarchs, and other ruthless leaders worldwide. As such, Trump’s tenure as disrupter-in-chief has seeded some critical weaknesses in the pursuit of the Right to White Christian Might:

• He drew out into the open the links between the network of home-grown anti-democratic plutocrats and their domestic and global autocratic plotters.

• He attracted to himself, and alerted us to, a despicable and dangerous cabal of extremists (Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, John Meadows, Jonathan Miller, Michael Flynn, DJT, Jr., his siblings, and brother-in-law; Ginny Thomas, and so many others). But the cabal has now been outed and virtually “tagged” such that their movements and actions are no longer hidden from view.

• He (mis)led hordes of his followers into the militant embrace of a way-out-of-the-mainstream illiberalism and the scapegoating of fellow working and middle class “others.”

• He pursued a disgraceful attempt at re-election-by-coercion. And, having failed in this . . .

• He then launched an attempt at re-election-by-insurrection — shocking the nation and leading many of his most devoted acolytes into dire personal and criminal consequences in a fantastical, ill-conceived, and ultimately self-defeating frontal assault on our democracy.

• He has succeeded in inculcating in millions of Americans the conspiratorial delusion that the election was stolen from him — and them — and that he must be re-elected so he and they can finish the job of seizing power, exacting revenge, and, of course, making America a great bastion of White Christian might again.

• He emboldened Republican leaders at all levels, as well as the captured elements of the state and federal Judiciary, to overestimate their mandates and to overplay their far-from-mainstream agendas.

• He has implicated himself and senior-most aides in serious criminal legal peril through his efforts to coerce votes from state officials and the appropriation of top secret documents and his petulant obstruction of their “repatriation.”

• And, of course, so much more.

Arraigning on the Parade

While Trump’s political ascendency turned-out to be a clarion call to many in the disaffected working/middle class and to the formidable domestic network of illiberal, anti-democratic plutocrats and ideologues, it has also become a massive wake-up call for the rest of us: the mainstream American majority.

Trump’s defects of character, judgment, and political acuity have infected the Republican party, his MAGA base, and his erstwhile plutocratic allies — not to mention the majority of our Supreme Court and others. And these are the sorts of defects that mainstream Americans do not tolerate well in the public or private sphere, and that generally arouses pushback towards “common sense” or other moderating and de-escalating social norms.

We’ve already seen strong evidence of pushback on radical right-wing judgment in the SCOTUS “Dobbs” decision. SCOTUS blithely overturned decades of settled law to remove Constitutional protection of women’s rights to control their own heath care and reproductive decisions. The unusually strong showing of the Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections has been widely attributed, in no small measure, to popular reaction against this radical SCOTUS decision.

And there are many signs of major mainstream-American backlash at the state and local level as the various Republican-controlled states tee-up, pass, and move to enforce draconian abortion restrictions, including, in some cases, severe criminal (even death) penalties even for aiding a woman in finding these essential health care resources. Ditto in reaction to MAGA judges acting to uphold and justify such measures, as in the inept and inept recent finding by a Texas MAGA judge for a nationwide ban on FDA-approved, safe, and effective medicines.

Similarly, Republicans are ignoring, rationalizing, and effectively trying to normalize the now regular mass killings of school children and others in their unflinching defense of the expanded, unregulated, and unconditional access to guns — especially to the now virtually MAGA-sacralized military-styled AR15 and its cousins.

Mainstream America is Not on Board

Trump-infused arrogance and hubris blind MAGA extremists to a public growing impatient with their political theater and intransigence in the face of these unbearable, unacceptable, and preventable massacres of innocents.

Similarly, in other areas, Republicans are imposing radical, cruel, and unhinged measures such as book banning, state-mandated curriculum censoring, assaults on the integrity and funding of higher education, attacks on the bodies and rights of LGBTQ and many “others.” Evidence is mounting every day of growing popular disapproval of such extremism.

MAGA and the GOP’s Trump-infused bellicosity is awakening mainstream America to FDR’s prescient admonition:

“If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.”

Americans want the show end and the solutions to start.

We are lucky that the Biden Administration gets this and has gotten it from the start. Although frustratingly under-publicized and under-appreciated, Administration and Democratic Congressional leaders took advantage of the 2-year Democratic control of both houses of Congress to shepherd into law a series of mainstream, “middle-out” legislative packages that target massive investments to rebuild working/middle class livelihoods and communities, and put them to work building a more prosperous, equitable, and sustainable future for all Americans.

Expect more Arresting Legal Entanglements

Due to the diligence and courage of both state and federal prosecutors, Trump now faces perhaps his first-ever serious legal accountability. After a lifetime of bullying and buying his way out of adherence to societal and legal norms; and after a presidential term and its sequelae that history will surely rank as among of the most dysfunctional, disgraceful, and damaging in our history, Trumps legal perils seem poised to grow exponentially over the next few months.

Good.

Sure, this will all be terribly fraught as Trump plays the victim card and does everything he can to “trigger” violence and payback from among his more militant followers. Too many commentators consider this a justification for avoiding Trump’s prosecution. And almost all Republican leaders have attacked the integrity and motivations of the prosecutors, the DOJ, and of course the Biden Administration.

Republican leaders are simply unable to muster either the courage or strength of character to stand up for our legal system or for common decency — or to express the least bit of concern about the litany of blatantly improper, unethical, deceitful, self-aggrandizing, and likely illegal and seditious actions of the former president.

For MAGA Nation, a series of “arresting” developments is likely in its future. It’s a near certainty that Trump will face further indictments; and others in his criminal circle likely will too. Yes this will add to the anger and resentment of core MAGAcolytes. But Trump would be triggering and inciting them in any case with ever-more-desperate and fantastical conspiracy theories and grievances.

On the other hand, these indictments will go a long way towards re-affirming mainstream America’s somewhat shaken confidence in our nation’s ability to police and enforce fairness and accountability in government and, especially, among the gated class of obscenely wealthy men, women, and families who consider themselves the anointed wizards-in-Roll Royce arbiters of our collective destiny.

In being subject to and naturally reacting to the further deployment of MAGA fanaticism, mainstream Americans will be emboldened with the confidence in, and courage of, our convictions. The majority of Americans, being decent man beings, will stand-up and put their foot down on behalf of respect and progress, and against brutishness and reactionary extremism.

Taken together, and ONLY when taken together:

• the combination of the massive investments being made in making things right for middle America (and thereby for ALL of America),

• along with real and true accountability for wrongdoing; and

• with mainstream Americans putting our collective foot down when it comes to extremism . . .

. . . We can move our nation back onto the solid ground of America as the Land of Liberty and Opportunity.

Many MAGAmericans will not easily or quickly shed their resentment and frustration at being egregiously wronged for so many years by an unresponsive and uncaring neo-liberal consensus. That decades-long neoliberal consensus was, by design, far beyond their (or any mere citizen’s) capacity to influence and control. There is a painful trust gap that has to be filled.

And MAGA extremists will continue their frenzied efforts to impose upon the rest of us their pernicious White is Might agendas and their efforts to create daunting, hard-and-fast “facts on the ground.” They have reached a fever pitch — a fervent belief that they can seize the day — and that the future is theirs — and that they have been anointed in the service of apocalyptic to change the course of history.

But, we are already pioneering a new era. There is hope that the MAGA state of inflamed and misdirected grievance can be tamped-down and redirected into constructive, productive engagement in building a better life and future for oneself, family, and country.

There have been other times like this in our past, when rogue politicians, plutocrats, or judges; and/or states, parties, or other factions have tested us and tried to impose extreme ideas and measures on our communities or our polity. These have been subdued only once the mainstream majority has stood UP — and puts its collective foot DOWN.

There is nothing more powerful or more vital in the life of our nation than “We the People” standing up and holding our common ground.

Our opportunity and our responsibility is to engage ourselves not in extraordinary measures or mortal combat, but in the everyday actions and sometimes collective measures that affirm our unshakable commitments to moving democracy forward . . .

“. . . as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens.”