R&I – FS
Our concern shouldn’t focus on whether Trump can derail Biden’s inauguration. Instead we should be deeply concerned about whether this cult can derail our democracy.
The US has often been lucky that its enemies are too incompetent to detonate their own devices. But rather than relying on good fortune, successive presidents have spent trillions of dollars building a post-9/11 military order that is supposed to protect our freedoms.
After listening to the outgoing president’s call with Georgia officials, it’s painfully clear that Donald Trump is the underwear bomber of our democracy. We are blessed to have such incompetent enemies, but we cannot wait until someone comes along who knows how to light the fuse.
How incompetent is the soon-to-be-ex-president? Trump wields the awesome power of the presidency with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer trying to crack a safe.
He tries to threaten the state election officials with unspecified crimes and political punishment. “Well, under law, you’re not allowed to give faulty election results, okay? You’re not allowed to do that. And that’s what you’ve done. This is a faulty election result,” Trump warns his fellow Republican.
One of the many challenges of this era is the distortion field that surrounds Donald Trump. Because he only cares for himself, and because he represents such a grotesque distortion of leadership, we focus on the individual. We try to understand his sociopathy and we talk about Trumpism, assuming it will all dissipate after inaugural day.
But at this point, our concern should not focus on whether Trump and his allies can still derail Joe Biden’s inauguration: they can’t. Instead we should be deeply concerned about whether this cult can derail our democracy.
Long after Trump shuffles down the ramp to his post-presidency, there will be another: a Josh Hawley or a Ted Cruz or a Tom Cotton. We won’t call their autocratic politics Trumpism, but they will be Trump-like.
Captain
Article URL : https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/04/donald-trump-autocrat-cult-democracy