As the days since the election have gone by and Donald Trump has continued to deny that he lost the election, stories in the news media have taken on an alarmed tone. A good example (and a fine, hard-hitting article) is by CNN's Stephen Collinson. He hits the nail right on the head.
In essence, Trump, his family and his advisers are spending all their energy desperately trying to save a job--the presidency--that he appears to have no intention of doing in any meaningful sense.
The author's complaint, of course, is that there is a pandemic on, that it is worsening, and that Trump, rather than lifting a finger to help, is devoting all his non-golfing time to proving that Joe Biden stole the election.
Now that Trump seems intent on staging a coup, everyone's alarm is palpable. What I mean to point out today is that the time for alarm was November of 2016. I know I was alarmed. I woke up every morning from November 9, 2016, through January 20, 2017, with a fresh feeling of dread. And, of course, nothing Trump has done since 2017 has done anything to allay that dread. I have spent much of the last four years with a knot in my stomach, as have many other people.
I don't want to pick on any particular journalist, and certainly not Mr. Collinson, because I don't know how frightened any of these individuals have been, or how many warnings they have given, up until now. But my overall impression has been that the mainstream media have tried their hardest to fit Donald Trump into the mold of normalcy. He has not, often enough, been portrayed as a danger to democracy or to our nation's well-being.
Back in 2016, it was obvious to me that, in addition to Trump's glaringly bad character, he had no plans to accomplish anything. The Affordable Care Act, as a prime example, was to be replaced with "something terrific." There was no sign that anyone in his administration was actually working on the job of creating a new system.
If the news media were not aghast in 2016 when Trump was dealing insults to all and sundry, being exposed as dispenser of forcible kisses and gropes, making fun of the handicapped, and encouraging violence against people who protested against him, the question is, WHY NOT? Did they just find his antics amusing but harmless? When, after his inauguration, he began to antagonize our longtime democratic allies and cozy up to the world's despots, where was their shock?
The probable arc of the Trump administration should have been obvious and frightening to anyone long before his refusal to concede the 2020 election to its clear winner.
When Trump became president, we knew his history of failure as a businessman. His appearance of success was propped up by copious amounts of money from his father, and by little more than his own bluster. After all the bankruptcies, when banks began to shy away from lending him money, he was rescued by his stardom on The Apprentice, and by Russians who thought he might be useful to them. As president, he was shielded from removal by a Republican senate that was only motivated by his role in building and securing the party's power.
As his niece, Mary Trump, has observed, Trump has been effectively institutionalized his whole life cushioned against harm by his money. Since his loss of the 2020 election, he has sought to get us to a place where the Supreme Court rescues him from the will of the voters.
When Trump was elected, I realized that he had elevated himself to an international stage where he could fail BIG, and that the whole world would be witness to that failure. Little did I suspect that so very many people would fail to recognize his failure for what it was.
Where is the astonishment at the fact that, after four years of unmitigated disaster, there were still seventy-two million Americans eager to give him a second term. The only way I can explain that is that it's a cult of personality. They like him, the ugly truth be damned. He attracts the low-information voter, the high-misinformation voter, the resentful voter, the voter who is as lazy as he is. He gave up on coronavirus because it was too hard. His voters gave up on gathering reliable information for the same reason.
