It's Hitlerish
Reelection of a charlatan ... Republicans take popular vote for the first time in 20 years ... Amnesia ... Trashing a democracy ... Trump and his team of troubled men ... Mainstream media wilts in the eye of the storm ... Depravity, greed and revenge are the new normal ... Roger Fitch files from Washington
"Some Trump voters may believe his lies. But plenty more want Trump to be terrifying and stomach-turning so that re-electing him will be a fully realized act of social revenge. Harris cannot propose any policy, offer any benefit, or adopt any position that competes with that feeling" - Atlantic
"What luck for the rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
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Before the election, the NYRB and Atlantic warned that the 60th presidential election could mark the end of democracy in America. The Washington Monthly noted a Nazi analogy to the complicity of America's traditional conservatives in Trump's takeover of the Republican Party. The NYRB published reviews of new books on Hitler's 1933 ascent to power in Germany.
In one of the two dominant political parties there was no shame; no law, custom or standard of common decency that party operatives wouldn't transgress. Their presidential candidate, Donald Trump, was the worst, embracing racism and misogyny, or misogynoir, in the case of his opponent Kamala Harris.
Close to the election, the Republican candidate's behaviour became more erratic: at a charitable function, the white-tie Al Smith dinner, he descended into insults and obscenities in a room filled with Catholic priests, presided over by the Archbishop of New York.
At campaign stops he called Harris a "shit vice-president" and extolled the genital endowments of a dead golfer. His rallies became freak shows offering "extra buffoonery with a side of fascism", entertainment for his supporters and a continuation of the TV series that made him a household name, The Apprentice.
The ex-president himself saw it as a TV show. In explaining his loss in their "debate", he suggested Harris was given the answers in advance, like the 1950s quiz show scandals.
The Republican meanwhile hawked the same tat one might see in late-night TV ads: gold sneakers, trading cards (of himself), watches, the perfume "Trump" (Musk-scented?), even a "Trump bible" (printed in China) unsuccessfully foisted on Oklahoma school children.
This was the classy candidate that the once-venerable Republican Party offered for president in 2024.
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Trump wasn't guaranteed to win: in the last PBS/NPR/Marist Poll, reported on election eve, Harris led Trump 51% to 47%, outside the margin of error.
Never mind the polls; on election day, Trump won easily. His supporters got what they wanted and Trump gets to stay out of federal prison. He can now have what he craves most (after money): revenge.
There was clearly collective amnesia about Trump's last time in office, when, historians say, he was the worst president in American history. If only his followers had recalled some of the 100 worst things he did, like cruelly separating immigrants from their children, tearing-up Obama's Iranian agreement, ditching the Paris Accords and jettisoning pandemic preparations.
And his stupidity. Did no one remember his offer to swap Puerto Rico to the Danes for Greenland? His suggestion that drinking bleach would ward off Covid? The 200,000+ additional Americans who died unnecessarily in the pandemic because of his unscientific and incompetent response?
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Americans at Madison Square Garden, 1939
Democracy is wasted on Americans. They chose, as their president, an adjudged sexual predator who will remain a convicted NY felon even if he quashes the federal charges against him.
Twice-impeached as president, he's an unrepentant and compulsive liar, fake Christian, humourless bigot and a bully who has made over 100 threats to prosecute or punish perceived enemies and will now have the chance to do so.
How did a man so obviously unfit to govern, a fraud and a charlatan whose every utterance insults one's intelligence, win the 2024 presidential election? Inflation and xenophobia alone don't explain it. Was it the votes of racists and misogynists, homophobes, social outcasts, a revenge of the underclass?
Somehow, traditional and logical constituencies of the Democrats - the young, Latinos, black men - were poached by a party running on grievance and anti-immigrant animus.
Trump's final rally, on October 27 at New York's Madison Square Garden, was consciously Hitlerian, echoing the giant American Nazi rally at MSG in 1939. Everything was a reminder that a new Trump presidency would be cruel and violent. The speakers at the hate-filled rally leant straight into racism and neo-fascism. Even Puerto Ricans - US citizens - were included in disgusting nationalist attacks.
As the election approached, dire warnings from history were sounded. Two senior retired generals, Trump's former White House chief of staff and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, characterised Trump as a fascist, and so he seemed, his speeches channelling Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin.
Trump had said he needed generals like Hitler's, perhaps planning their use in das Vaterland, for he also consulted torture memo author John Yoo regarding military deployments within the US, forbidden under the Posse Comitatus Act. The ex-president also wrongly claimed he could use the wartime 1798 Alien Enemies Act for mass deportations of "invaders".
By the time of the election, Harris and nearly half the electorate agreed: Donald Trump was a fascist. No one cared.
If only the media had learned how to tell the truth about Trump or acknowledged the existential threat to a free press. There were, of course, editorial endorsements of Harris, in the Times, Guardian and Atlantic, but the Washington Post (who logged 30,000 Trump lies during his first term) declined to endorse either candidate, apparently taking Trump's press threats literally and fearing his vengeful whims.
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In the end it didn't matter. Trump has won the electoral college, and is winning the popular vote, a first for any Republican candidate since 2004. As of Thursday, November 9th, the vote totals stood at 72.77 million for Trump versus 68.1 million for Harris.
It's impossible to explain Donald Trump's enduring popularity. It's not just his entertainment value. It's been called a cult, cognitive dissonance, a folie à deux where millions shared the delusion that Trump won the 2020 election, just on his say-so.
Trump's crimes and corruption have had no effect on his supporters. His greed and malevolence, his narcissism, bad language and nasty manners, all seem to be accepted as a part of the rightwing package. As the Atlantic predicted, Trump's depravity would not cost him the election.
Meanwhile, for Trump loyal operatives, shame has been obliterated, and legal consequences are passé. It's no surprise then, that amongst the genuine Trump electors whose electoral college votes will be cast in January 2025, there will be fake electors from 2020: those who acted as Trump's sham electors in seven "swing states".
Some are under indictment in their home states for their 2020 crimes, and were open to repeating their crimes this year.
It looks like they won't need to.
