Donald Trump has won the presidential election.
This is terrible news. He is a convicted criminal and has no respect for the norms of democracy that keep societies together. He is unlikely help the poorest in society and the USA will remain divided for at least the next four years, probably much longer. The global climate is in greater peril. Ukraine’s predicament is worse. The outlook is bleak for the Gazans and the Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
In the run-up to the election, the liberal press are full of warnings that this was somehow America’s last chance. The Atlantic posted articles on ‘The Fragility of American Freedom’ and the New Yorker Cover depicted Lady Liberty on a tightrope. The message is that now the USA has fallen to Trump, it will never recover.
The next few months and years will be galling and frustrating. But over the medium to long term, I remain optimistic. I think it’s helpful (if only to myself, as a coping mechanism) to list my heuristics and axioms.
“This too shall pass.”
This year has been a good one for me personally. Professional success in my new careers, some long term projects paying off, and a flourishing family. But earlier in the summer I was reminded of that ancient Sufi fable:
The Sultan asked Solomon for a Signet motto, that should hold good for Adversity or Prosperity. Solomon gave him,
— Edward Fitzgerald, retelling an ancient fable
“THIS ALSO SHALL PASS AWAY.”
Mr Trump is very mortal, his movement is a personality cult. I doubt that history is teleological: we cannot be certain that it “bends towards justice” of its own volition. But consider that America at its founding was a white supremacy with a narrow franchise. Over the next two centuries power leaked and society became more equal. Political power is brittle and fickle. There will be paths back to rights and good governance. Many people are saying that the shock of this defeat will galvanise the Democratic Party to better connect with the voters it has lost.
Trump is very bad at governing
“You campaign in poetry, govern in prose.”
Mario Cuomo
Trump’s ‘weave’ is incoherent and largely free of content. But his cadence seems to rouse is supporters and make them feel like he is On Their Side. In this sense, Donald Trump is a poet who can win elections.
As an outsider and a representative of the ‘anti-establishment’ sensibility, Trump is effective. However, as we saw from 2017 to 2021, he is terrible at the ‘prose’ part of politics. When he became the ‘establishment’ at the age of 70, his administration was chaotic. He lacked vision, alienated aides, and achieved little. I doubt he will show greater focus or effectiveness aged 78 and beyond.
This will at once limit the damage he can do, and also give his political opponents opportunities to regain power in the mid-terms and in 2028.
“Events, my dear boy, events!”
The Harold Macmillan attribution is apocryphal, but such quotes spring into life because they express a necessary wisdom. I recall how Boris Johnson looked electorally unassailable at the start of 2020, and yet he suffered a political defenestration only two years later.
This is another way of expressing two thoughts above. Donald Trump’s age, erraticism, and intellectual failings will catalyse events that will not be to his favour.
The constitution will prevail
Liberal, progressive types like me often find the constitution to be infuriating. The electoral college creates a bias towards the Republican Party (more accurately, it gives additional voting power to voters in the more rural states). The construction of the senate also favours the GOP. The lifetime appointment of Supreme Court judges has, in recent years, foiled progressive causes. The second amendment is the cause of unconscionable gun violence in American communities.
There is no political consensus to amend these foundational laws. And so they must remain.
However, the First Amendment also remains. It is buried deep within the constitution and within the American psyche, the pithiest expression of the libertarian values upon which the country was founded in the eighteenth century.
I think the First Amendment, and the political attitude that it represents, will protect citizens from the sort of authoritarianism we see in (say) Hungary. And I don’t think ‘fascism’ in of the kind we Europeans experienced in the twentieth century is possible. Shutting down critical news outlets is brazenly unconstitutional. As Trump himself has shown, there is a certain kudos to be had from expressing dissent and hundreds of thousands of people will do so on social media. It is one thing to create an epistemological bubble for one’s own hardcore supporters; quite another to suppress critical comments from outside that bubble. The cacophony of criticism will not be censored.