As you head into the weekend, spend some time with Robert Kagan’s Washington Post essay on the dangers we face heading into the next election cycle(s). You’ll either start drinking or sober the hell up.
Former Republican and PNAC co-founder, Kagan begins:
The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves.
Barring health problems, Trump will run again for the presidency. He and his party “are actively preparing to ensure his victory by whatever means necessary.” He poses challenges the framers had no way to forsee, Kagan warns. They did not forsee the rise of national political parties nor of mass communications that would make possible a mass cult of personality.
For those who know the reference, Trump is a nonfiction version of Asimov’s Mule, an individual with the ability to alter emotions, “a power he used to first instill fear in the inhabitants of his conquered planets, then to make his enemies devoutly loyal to him.” Policy debates are meaningless. Trump himself is their policy.
Trump is different, which is one reason the political system has struggled to understand, much less contain, him. The American liberal worldview tends to search for material and economic explanations for everything, and no doubt a good number of Trump supporters have grounds to complain about their lot in life. But their bond with Trump has little to do with economics or other material concerns. They believe the U.S. government and society have been captured by socialists, minority groups and sexual deviants. They see the Republican Party establishment as corrupt and weak — “losers,” to use Trump’s word, unable to challenge the reigning liberal hegemony. They view Trump as strong and defiant, willing to take on the establishment, Democrats, RINOs, liberal media, antifa, the Squad, Big Tech and the “Mitch McConnell Republicans.” His charismatic leadership has given millions of Americans a feeling of purpose and empowerment, a new sense of identity. While Trump’s critics see him as too narcissistic to be any kind of leader, his supporters admire his unapologetic, militant selfishness. Unlike establishment Republicans, Trump speaks without embarrassment on behalf of an aggrieved segment of Americans, not exclusively White, who feel they have been taking it on the chin for too long. And that is all he needs to do.
Small-r “republican virtue” is dead, Kagan believes. There is no longer commitment among Republicans to “a love of freedom not only for oneself but also as an abstract, universal good; a love of self-government as an ideal; a commitment to abide by the laws passed by legitimate democratic processes; and a healthy fear of and vigilance against tyranny of any kind.”
“A Trump victory [in 2024] is likely to mean at least the temporary suspension of American democracy as we have known it,” Kagan warns.
“American democracy is over,” should Donald Trump retake the Oval Office, Mary Trump pre-concurred in her visit with UnPresidented this week. She herself might need to go into hiding. Donald will have an enemies list and a thirst for vengeance.
Kagan concludes:
We are already in a constitutional crisis. The destruction of democracy might not come until November 2024, but critical steps in that direction are happening now. In a little more than a year, it may become impossible to pass legislation to protect the electoral process in 2024. Now it is impossible only because anti-Trump Republicans, and even some Democrats, refuse to tinker with the filibuster. It is impossible because, despite all that has happened, some people still wish to be good Republicans even as they oppose Trump. These decisions will not wear well as the nation tumbles into full-blown crisis.
It is a slap across the face and a “snap out of it” moment. Peril remains. It is unclear whether there is any vestigial conscience left inside Kagan’s former party. But he is sounding a klaxon to awaken the somnambulant among them, and among the rest of us before it is too late.