The illusion of Donald Trump and the fourth founding of America

I have been chronicling the Age of Trump for more than eight years. It has caused great harm to our individual and collective emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and yes, physical lives. So much has happened in that time that it is difficult to remember it all. Distortions of time and memory lapses are common problems for individuals and societies under extreme stress. 

As I think about the 2024 election, I keep hearing the lyrics of Irish poet Thomas Moore’s song “The Minstrel Boy”:

The Minstrel-Boy to the war is gone,

    In the ranks of death you'll find him;

His father's sword he has girded on,

    And his wild harp slung behind him.

"Land of song!" said the warrior-bard,

    "Tho' all the world betrays thee,

One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard,

    One faithful harp shall praise thee!"

The Minstrel fell!—but the foeman's chain

    Could not bring that proud soul under;

The harp he lov'd ne'er spoke again,

    For he tore its chords asunder;

And said, "No chains shall sully thee,

    Thou soul of love and bravery!

Thy songs were made for the pure and free,

    They shall never sound in slavery.

As the child of a Black janitor and home healthcare worker, it feels surreal to find comfort in a 19th-century Irish song about war and loss. I can't get it out of my mind as I meditate about the future of American democracy and society.

Donald Trump and the MAGAfied Republicans have won the 2024 election. Trump has won both the popular vote and the Electoral College. He is the first Republican to do so since George W. Bush in 2004. The MAGAfied Republicans have also taken control of the United States Senate. It may be several days or weeks before we know which party will control the House of Representatives.

While the following reality may cause great pain and a narcissistic injury to Democrats and the professional class of the pro-democracy coalition, the results of the 2024 election are a mandate for Trumpism and American fascism in whatever form they may take. Such an outcome was not forced on the American people. No, they chose it. As I have been repeatedly warning here at Salon, Trump and his MAGA movement are much more popular and enduring than many in the mainstream news media and the professional pundits would like to believe. The American people and their democracy are now far worse off due, in large part, to such denial and incredulity.

Based on the early exit polls and other preliminary data, for example, Trump's rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden (New York is a Democratic Party power base), which was attended by more than 20,000 of his followers, was a bold and successful gambit, and one emblematic of a much larger national trend. Trump is a master propagandist and political strongman and charismatic leader who knows what his MAGA people and many other Americans want as he encourages and then mines their rage and anger. Kamala Harris and her campaign’s strategy of “joy” and “hope” and mocking Trump and the MAGA people for being “weird” were simply not an effective weapon (or defense) in a battle with fascists and other enemies of democracy and human decency. This is especially true when the opposition embraces such monikers as a badge of honor and pride as more proof that they are “owning the libs.”

I am certain of several things. Such conclusions require no great insight or genius. I simply adhere to Masha Gessen’s wisdom and warning to listen to what Trump and the MAGA people and the other fascists and authoritarians are saying and to take them seriously.

As Jamelle Bouie writes in the New York Times, “This brings us to the second thing you must keep in mind if you want to understand Trump. He may rant and he may rave, but his rantings and ravings aren’t static; they carry meaning, even if the signal is hard to find in the noise.”

Trump will be a dictator in an American mold. He is empowered by the United States Supreme Court to be a king who can break the law at will without consequences as long he does such things as part of his “presidential duties.” Trump is channeling the Führer principle and what Nazi legal scholar Carl Schmitt described as a “state of exception.” In this model of governance, Donald Trump is the State; his corrupt desires and various failings of character and morality will be made into official public policy; The American people will have to learn to read and respond to Trump’s moods and mercurial nature and impulses if they want to survive. If the Republicans retain control of the House, and Trump takes control of the bureaucracy and replaces career professionals and experts with loyalists, there will be few counterbalances against Trump’s near-unlimited power.

Trump’s first regime was disorganized as compared to the highly organized cruelty that his second regime will unleash upon the American people. To that end, Trump’s propagandists and other agents are literally threatening a regime of “trauma.” Trump is personally promising to crush the “enemy within” and the “demonic” Democrats and “the Left” as he “purifies” the “blood” of the nation from the human vermin. Trump has also repeatedly threatened his “enemies,” meaning any individual or group who dares to oppose him and the MAGA movement, with prison and/or death. Trump has also fantasized about his own version of “the Purge” where his police and other right-wing street thugs can run amok, killing and brutalizing “the enemy” at will.

Trump has publicly fantasized about a “bloody story” of mass deportations and concentration camps targeting Black and brown “illegal immigrants.” Legal residents and naturalized citizens (and all American citizens) will also face the threat of deportation and loss of rights and citizenship.

Trump has also threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and the Alien Enemies Act to order a military occupation of “blue states” and Democrat-led major cities as part of a plan to crush dissent.

The United States will be pushed toward a White “Christian” theocracy. The civil and human rights of racial and ethnic minorities will be imperiled, as the gains of the civil rights movements will be further undermined and rolled back. Environmental collapse and climate disaster will be greatly accelerated by the Trump regime and its anti-science policies as real experts are purged from across the government and replaced with Trump loyalists. Women’s rights to control their bodies will be further stripped. Freedom of the press, free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom of thought, and other Constitutionally protected rights and liberties will be restricted.

Pocketbook voters who do not care about such abstractions as civic virtue and civic responsibility or democracy will see the prices of a range of goods they depend upon from food to clothing and other services increase because of tariffs on imported goods and the devastating impact that deporting millions of undocumented residents will cause the economy. Their wages will also be stagnant or effectively decrease because of inflation and other shocks to the economy. The social safety net will be gutted even more — this will include de facto cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, as well as overturning the Affordable Care Act. The very richest Americans (like Donald Trump) and corporations will pay even less money in taxes — assuming they pay any taxes at all; the tax burden will be shifted even more onto the middle-class, poor, and working-class Americans.

Trump would destroy the country’s foreign alliances, specifically NATO. This will create global instability. Trump will cede even more of America’s influence and power to Vladimir Putin and Russia and its plans of foreign aggression and expansion. The devastating war against Ukraine is only the first step in Putin’s imperial vision.

Trump and his allies and agents have publicly announced and detailed their fascist and authoritarian plans in Agenda 47 and Project 2025.

In one paragraph, the Editorial Board of the New York Times summarized the existential danger that Trump and his regime will pose to American democracy and freedom:

You already know Donald Trump. He is unfit to lead. Watch him. Listen to those who know him best. He tried to subvert an election and remains a threat to democracy. He helped overturn Roe, with terrible consequences. Mr. Trump’s corruption and lawlessness go beyond elections: It’s his whole ethos. He lies without limit. If he’s re-elected, the G.O.P. won’t restrain him. Mr. Trump will use the government to go after opponents. He will pursue a cruel policy of mass deportations. He will wreak havoc on the poor, the middle class, and employers. Another Trump term will damage the climate, shatter alliances, and strengthen autocrats. Americans should demand better. Vote.

The average American will likely not be impacted at first — unless they are a member of a targeted group. This illusion of safety and normalcy is very dangerous; it is one of the primary ways that authoritarian leaders take control of a society and create compliant subjects. Eventually, most Americans will internalize the cultural logic of Trumpism and fascism and begin to self-police and conform — and enforce the new order against their family members, friends, neighbors, and strangers. Too many Americans will find a way to use this corrupt power, and the threat of it, to gain advantages for themselves. They are collaborators and quislings. MAGA, like other fascist and authoritarian systems, will, almost inevitably, turn against its own members.

America has three foundings: the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. With the election of Donald Trump, America will need a fourth founding to defend and renew its democracy against a man and regime who, as promised, will rule like a dictatorship or some other form of authoritarianism modeled after Vladimir Putin's Russia or Viktor Orbán's Hungary.

Are there enough Americans who are up to such a task and responsibility? Based on Tuesday’s election results, I very much doubt it.