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President’s day
It’s a local paper. And my weekly column is decidedly parochial in focus. But I cannot in good conscience mill the grist of Shire Hall’s adventures without occasionally pausing to note the threat of a malign America growing daily. Bear with me.
If a tinpot dictator was preparing to set the world on fire to distract attention from overthrowing his nation’s constitution as a means to seize total control of the levers of power—executive, military, civil—would it look different than Donald Trump’s first month in the president’s chair? If he was signalling to his supporters to prepare for another armed insurrection, would the preparations be different?
Trump is obliterating the Justice Department, the FBI and most other government departments in his way. Institutions meant to guard against authoritarian impulses are being hacked apart with the ferocity of a mad dog—with about the same amount of careful consideration of the ramifications. Meanwhile, there is a creepy cohort forming behind him who see Trump as the vessel for their dangerous and malign ambitions. Trump is doing so against little resistance.
The parallels to 1933 are becoming hard to ignore. Polarized politics. Each side hating the other. A fool posing as a strongman offering easy solutions to complex challenges. A loss of faith in liberal democracy to bridge a divided nation. The eagerness to punish the identified other as the enemy of good. In the 1930s, Jews and Roma were the scapegoats; today, thousands of brown people are rounded up and locked away in detention camps. All around Trump, the oligarchs are gathering, sensing that the moment is here to re-order the world for their benefit.
Then, the rule of law begins to fracture.
From Trump on Saturday: “He who saves his Country, violates no law.”
It’s a quote attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte. It is unlikely Trump knows who Napoleon was, nor the context—monarchy, feudalism, perpetual wars for power and treasure—in which he uttered these words. Trump is not a student of history—or of anything else. He is a profoundly ignorant man. But buffoons tend to make dictators. They can be shaped and moulded by forces in the shadows.
If you are an angry Trump voter, what do you hear in his proclamation? When you see the hundreds of violent insurrectionists pardoned, what is the message to those ready to take up arms to Make America Great Again?
If you feel aggrieved or entitled or that the price of eggs is too high, you may hear a free pass for bedlam. In piety for your new monarch. If you haven’t absorbed the basics of an education, you may not understand the forces at work and likely lack the curiosity to discover them—all you know is that you are mad as hell and will not take it anymore. With Trump’s blessing, you are encouraged to ignore the law in support of the king.
From the mouth of a sitting US president, such words are terrifyingly ominous. It is a declaration of war against the principles of liberal democracy that have guided that nation for two and half centuries. Yet it barely causes a ripple in our consciousness. We are unable—or unwilling—to keep pace with the pus-spewing abscess flowing from the wound in the White House.
Meanwhile, treaties and agreements forged over decades are being scattered to the wind. Suddenly, the US is unreliable. Unpredictable. On a slope to a very dangerous place.
The former Fox host, now Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, warned Europe last week not to assume the US would take its side in a confrontation with Russia. A sweet gift to Putin. A repudiation of decency, honour and, ultimately, America’s self-interest.
But no matter.
Trump dreams of sitting around a table with Putin and Xi to divvy the planet; to create a new world order. He would certainly lose in such a negotiation against more competent, more formidable and more experienced tyrants, yet he would blunder into it with the guile and agility of a raccoon staring at an oncoming transport truck.
In his first term, there were generals and senior bureaucrats to thwart Trump’s fascistic tendencies. Those safeguards have been expelled. He has found the lieutenants—or they found him—who will work to implement his worst instincts. Like any mafia don, Trump needs thugs and assassins to do the dirty work. Thus, he signals assurances of immunity and pardons to a nation armed to the teeth.
Does this mean the US is on an inevitable slide into authoritarian rule and perhaps another global conflagration to rid us of the pernicious virus? Maybe not. But we, as citizens, must watch for the signs. We must be vigilant. We must resist the very real human need to look away.
Smarter folks continue to assure that the US nation has endured worse—withstood worse attacks on its institutions and allies. It has endured 248 years; it will endure Trump. Maybe.
But it was just over a century ago that Europe began its slide into ruin. Those of us who came later never fully understood how educated, aware and decent people stood by as their continent descended into hell. We are getting a glimpse.
A former prime minister suggested last week that Canadians ought to prepare for pain and sacrifice in the looming confrontation with Trump’s America. Paying attention will help remind us why it may be necessary.
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