In today's Times, there is an article from Luigi Zingalis who outlines the right way to resist Trump. He compares the election of Trump to the election of Berlusconi in Italy, and I do think there's some merit in the comparison. He writes, "Now that Mr. Trump has been elected president, the Berlusconi parallel could offer an important lesson in how to avoid transforming a razor-thin victory into a two-decade affair. If you think presidential term limits and Mr. Trump’s age could save the country from that fate, think again. His tenure could easily turn into a Trump dynasty." There are, of course, signs that he is already thinking dynastically. Son in law and husband to Ivanka, Jared Kushner is said to be testing a legal path to a white house job, "a move that could violate federal anti-nepotism law and risk legal challenges and political backlash." It would perhaps be too much to appoint Ivanka directly, so it is smart to usher her in through the back door, and should you think the "legal challenges" or "political backlash" might cause some of his advisors pause, think again. "The president-elect’s sentiment is shared by Stephen K. Bannon, the chief strategist for the White House, and Reince Priebus, who was named chief of staff. Mr. Kushner accompanied Mr. Trump to the White House on Thursday, when the president-elect held his first in-person meeting with President Obama." Trump's age would simply put a sense of urgent priority on his dynastic ambitions.
Berlusconi's secret, according to Zingalis, was "an ability to set off a Pavlovian reaction among his leftist opponents, which engendered instantaneous sympathy in most moderate voters. Mr. Trump is no different." Thinking back on some of my previous posts, I would have to give this argument some credit. I absolutely DO find the prospect of listening to Trump over the next four years just short of intolerable. Just as Obama's black face set off a Pavlovian antipathy among the deplorables, his rich boy bloviating sets me on edge in ways that are difficult to describe. Nevertheless, he was elected, and to all appearances, fairly and squarely, and so in some way represents the will of at least half the people. Zingalis reminds us that "Berlusconi was able to govern Italy for as long as he did mostly thanks to the incompetence of his opposition" and at the core of that incompetence was such a rabid obsession "with his personality that any substantive political debate disappeared." The opposition "focused only on personal attacks," but personal attacks are a two-edged sword. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and we should remember that at least half the country holds a knee-jerk antipathy toward smug, culturally elite, limousine liberalism. I doubt that any of the pontificating of the Times, or the Washington Post, did little but reinforce the notion that Trump was the anti-elite, limousine populist he claimed to be. Just as the effect of leftist attacks in Italy "was to increase Mr. Berlusconi’s popularity," so too on suspects the effect of our own hyperbolic liberal antipathy to the Trump personality -- his "fitness" for office, his autocratic tendencies, his odd off-fact stream-of-conciousness rants -- served only to ratify his anti-elitest bonifides.
Let me be clear. I DO think the real danger of a Trump presidency is ultimately personality, not policy based. Trump's own dark core of insecurity allowed him to speak to the insecurities of a broad swath of the electorate, and his racism, his xenophobia, his misogyny -- the sorts of things I do find deeply and unconscionably deplorable -- were not "dissuaders," in part because those attitudes continue to affect (infect?) a broad swath of the electorate. Those attitudes can be justified and rationalized in any number of ways -- blacks and crime, foreigners and terror, feminism and disrupted families -- but we forget that those justifications and rationalizations speak to the real fears of many. His wealth, and the gaudy excess of its gilt plated opulence, is the guilty secret of too many Americans, those who buy lottery tickets hoping against hope and watch the Celebrity Apprentice. thinking "I'm smarter than they are." They want theirs, feel entitled to at least a portion of the booty, and they don't REALLY want to work for it. Trump has what they want. He represents the working class idea of what it means to be "really rich," and for all those duped by his faux university, all those who voted for him thinking he will bring back an easy prosperity, he represents the sympathetic magic that will get them theirs quickly and easily. Trump doesn't reflect the WORST aspects of the American personality, he simply reflects THE American personality, and for good or for ill, to reject that personality is to reject the attitudes and aspirations of altogether too many Americans. Clinton, and those of us who share in the liberal sanctimony, did just that. Emails aside, the real turning point of the election may well have been her "basket of deplorables," and Trump's response to his audience was not unlike someone instigating bar brawl -- "did you hear that? Did you hear what she just said about you? She just called you deplorable! You should do something about that." And they did.
So, yes, despite the fact that the real danger is personality based, the resistance should be policy based. We should not replicate the republican strategy and question the legitimacy of his presidency, and we should not do so based solely on personality. Let's face it. That anyone would put themselves into the political life today probably shares in some deep pathology, and arm-chair psychoanalysis doesn't really much help. So, yes, the first policy decision that should be resisted is the foray into creating a dynasty. Although one can expect the republicans to pooh-pooh the concerns, the democrats should insist on the law of the land and resist the appointment of Jared Kushner to any post within the administration. Although there is little that can be done about "informal" influence, he should not be given direct executive power. There are reasons for anti-nepotism laws, and anyone who had worked for the boss' son understands at a visceral level why they exist, but they are particularly important in a democracy. Nepotism is inherently aristocratic. It perpetuates an inherited and consequently unmerited elite. There was a sense of "nepotism" in the Bush dynastic ambitions. There was a sense of "nepotism" in the Clinton dynastic ambitions. The nomination and election of Trump was a rejection of both. We ALL should reject now even his fledgling attempts to further his dynastic ambitions, but particularly those democrats who actually value democracy.
Additionally, we should resist any unconstitutional attempt to create a "muslim registry." I have made little secret that I have little truck with religion, and I have not attended a church service for decades, but the idea of a religious registry of any sort is anathema. As reported, On Wednesday evening, Carl Higbie, a prominent surrogate of President-elect Donald Trump, appeared on Megyn Kelly’s Fox News program to defend the idea of a national registry of all Muslims — an idea Mr. Trump floated repeatedly during his campaign, along with calls for an outright ban on Muslims entering the country, which legal experts said would be clearly unconstitutional." I have to admit a growing admiration for Megyn Kelly. She is clearly conservative, but she seems willing to call out complete and utter bullshit for what it is, like Sean Hannity and others of Fox News. When she asked him to "defend the registry’s legality, Mr. Higbie pointed to the imprisonment of more than 110,000 Americans of Japanese descent following the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.: To her credit, "Ms. Kelly expressed shock that anyone would approvingly cite one of the darkest periods in American history, Mr. Higbie backtracked. 'I’m just saying there’s a precedent for it,' he said. 'I’m just saying' — that sneaky, timeworn disclaimer allowing people to say what they really believe without taking responsibility for it." No matter what one thinks of muslims, no matter the potential abuses inherent to their religion, the very idea of a religious registry contravenes the first amendment. Should any steps be taken to create such a registry, break out the picket signs. What comes next, a registry of atheists? of Jews? of Mormons? We should not allow the republican party to create a religious registry of any sort nor should we allow a religious test on immigration without fully resisting in the courts and if necessary in the streets.
Conversely, we should support those aspects of Trump's so-called populist agenda that might actually have some salutary effects. We should support, for example, his calls for improvement to our infrastructure. As suggested, "Here’s how President-elect Trump could unify a bitterly divided America, provide well-paying jobs to many of the millions of disaffected workers who voted for him, and lift the economy, stock market and tax rolls. All he needs to do is what he presumably does best: build something." If the space program in its early years provided a focal point for national pride, and bolstered Kennedy's image, so too could the revitalization of our national infrastructure, particularly if among those projects is something "terrific," like "the modern-day equivalent of the Golden Gate Bridge, the Hoover Dam, the Lincoln Tunnel or the Timberline Lodge." If Trump really is a "populist," and not a republican shill, then follow through on the new deal like promises to build something not only useful, but awesome. As the Times suggests, republican opposition "didn’t stop F.D.R. His Public Works Administration and Works Progress Administration, using combinations of public and private money, solicited proposals from states and cities, hired millions of workers and eventually built 78,000 bridges, 650,000 miles of roads, 700 miles of airport runways, 13,000 playgrounds and 125,000 military and civilian buildings, including more than 40,000 schools — in most cases to high standards of quality and design." For all I care, they can all carry the Trump name. If he builds them, I will applaud at the ribbon cutting. And then too, there's the space program. Why not be the first to put an on-going colony on the moon or mars? Screw the tax break. Most Americans, I think, would forego the $100 it would put in their pocket for safer bridges, better roads, improved airports, schools that aren't collapsing on the pupils, and the American flag firmly planted on the soil of Mars. It's political pork of the most productive and inspiring kind.
Likewise, we should support those aspects of Trump's so-called populist agenda to scale back our military interventions abroad, and put America first in the most generic sense of the words. Our treaty commitments are one thing, and we should either follow through on them or negotiate our way out of them, but we do not need to continue our imperial role in the middle east. It is not 1974, and we do have alternatives to oil that would allow us to continue our "way of life" with barely a hiccough, most of which come with the added benefit of decreasing carbon emissions. Just as little or no good came from our intervention in Vietnam, little or no good has come from our interventions in the middle east -- indeed, if anything, the situation on the ground has deteriorated and it has provided a hydra-like incentive to terrorism -- cut one head off, and two grow in its place.
His pick of Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor, however, sends something of a mixed message. He is "a retired intelligence officer who believes Islamist militancy poses an existential threat in one of the most powerful roles in shaping military and foreign policy." It is perhaps too soon to tell, but Flynn believes "Islamist militancy poses an existential threat on a global scale, and the Muslim faith itself is the source of the problem," and he describes it "as a political ideology, not a religion. He has even at times gone so far as to call it a cancer." There is a good deal that is familiar in such a stance. He would have come of age during the height of the cold war, where most in the military establishment believed that communism posed an existential threat on a global scale, and like many others, he has simply taken the cold war rhetoric, replaced "communist" with "jihadism and islamist militancy," and continued with barely a pause. Will he continue the extreme interventionism of the cold war? It seems likely, in part because the extreme interventionism creates a priority for expanding the so-called "military industrial complex." It also creates the on-going "emergency" that serves as a pretext for its use as well as the commanding presence of an imperial presidency exempt from a congressional declaration of war. Not only Flynn's, but Trump's ego would seem to demand it. Nevertheless, should we scale back, focus on protection of the homeland, and put America first, we should support Trump. Should we escalate, send increasing numbers of troops abroad, and subordinate the interests of the American people to the interests of "internationalism" and the "imperial presidency," then we should dust off the placards from the sixties and seventies -- hell no we won't go. The people have spoken, and have rejected this aspect of the Obama legacy and Trump should likewise follow through and reject it as well.
So it should go. Issue by issue.
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