Two journalists from Geneva, Philippe Mottaz (very old friend), and Stéphane Bussard (Le Temps) are writing a running commentary on the Trump presidency in the form of a letter exchange. They have invited me to join. I write in English, they translate into French. My contributions are here, the exchange is on Substack. Link here.

Dear Philippe and Stéphane,

I am writing from Rochester/NY. It is a detour, but I need to check what has changed on the shores of Lake Ontario which cannot be googled any longer. The last time we communicated I was down in Texas. I then drove north to Minneapolis, where I wanted to see the killing sites of George Floyd and the victims of ICE. More of that maybe later. Then over to Wisconsin, crossing the lake on the Badger to Michigan (yes, I visited the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids) and further to Detroit, where I went to the ballgame (Tigers beating the Dodgers, 2-1, last at-bat in 9th inning), ate a dog at Lafayette Coney Island where our championship Lions uncle Gil’s portrait still hangs over the bar, lingered for three hours in the rebuilt and gentrified downtown, listened to some jazz at Cliff Dell’s and continued to Ohio. On the grounds of being repulsed by the industry, I scorned the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Instead, I went to Canton, where I did not visit the Football Hall of Fame but went to the Stark County Fair. A friend of mine there is very active in the anti-datacenter movement, and it was fascinating to listen to the the folks in the exhibition hall where the antis collect signatures to put the issue on the November ballot. More of this later, if you want. At any rate, datacenters are rapidly becoming a huge election issue, to the chagrin of the Republicans, whose caudillo in the White House is foursquare behind the rapid buildup of the technology.

***

Enough. Stéphane, I salute your tribute to Dolly Parton. It is too bad that you are tone-deaf when it comes to country music. I agree that the crap coming out of Nashville these days is eminently forgettable, but the old greats are treasures. Willie Nelson is as much an American poet as the Nobel laureate Bob Dylan, and a better musician at that, and Dolly was one hell of a songwriter. I stop here, because what I would actually like to say is so not woke that you probably won’t feed it online. As you know, next to her musical prowess, Dolly Parton was famous for two physical attributes. She never had a problem adressing this. As a matter of fact, when talk show hosts brought it up, she got the better of them by being franker and more direct, sometimes shockingly so. I observe that this issue is carefully carved out from all Dolly-Parton-musings in the American press. Dunno what it means, but I see it.

***

Of course, both of you are right in ringing the alarm bells about the conduct and the aftermath of the November elections. The caudillo in the White House will try everything to avoid a loss – meaning the loss of one of the majorities in the Congress.  You detailed the measures prepared and under way, Stéphane, and a lot of them are under the threshold of the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibiliy Act” (SAVE act – the military and the government everywhere have a knack for creating the catchy acronym). That act requires proof of citizenship when registering to vote. I frankly do not see a problem with that at all. But there is a lot more in store. The federal government demands the voter roll from every state in order to double-check legitimacy and weeding out alleged cheaters. This is a red herring – of course there are isolated cases of mistaken voter registration in a country of over 200 million registered voters, but 60 court-verified cases resulted in 705 fraudulent ballots out of 1.505 225965 federal ballots cast? Do the math.  The US Postal Service, not famous for reliability, has already complied and will not send out mail-in ballots if states do not submit the list of eligible voters. At the ballot, voting according to Trump would require the voter to provide an ID again. This all amounts to scaring people away from voting. Moreover, there is the open question whether federal agents, the police, the National Guard, the military, what have you, will show up at the poll stations as “protectors” of free and fair elections. This is protection alright, but protection Mafia-style. Mind you that elections in the US belong to the realm of the states. Skeptical governors seem to not get a clear negative from Washington.

***

Now the clock is ticking and the courts let it roll. If I understand the Supreme Court decision correctly, they respond like a politician answers the uncomfortable what-would-you-do-if question: “I don’t answer hypotheticals”. The court leaves the legality of the Trump measures open but says that the proof of the pudding is in the eating and the question can only be dealt with when voting has actually taken place. This means after the fact, when the possible – or expected – damage is done. This leaves the other side, the plaintiffs and people concerned with the integrity of the ballot, in a nasty bind. They are in the same place like the driver of a car stuck on a train track, with the train approaching and the car stalling, and no help in sight.

***

Perhaps this situation explains why I do not hear a lot of worries about the voting procedures in the fall. Most of the people I talk to complain about high and higher prices, high interest rates, and up here close to Canada about the tariff war which hurts businesses. An exception is Mike, a retired physician and lapsed Republican (still registered, but not voting for the party). He is concerned about possible stiffening of voting requirements. He says when he registered in Michigan he had to show proof of his citizenship, and he sees nothing but harassment and dissuasion in the requirement to show the same proof again at the poll.

***

If I try to compare voting in the US and voting in Switzerland, I have to confess that I can understand attempts to streamline or simplify the procedure in America. In Switzerland we are by law bound to tell the government where we are, there is registration obligation – “Meldepflicht”. Libertarian minds might find that an unnecessary outgrowth of statism (one of our colleagues in Washington once wrote an article “Schafft die Einwohnermeldepflicht ab”, but that was in the 1980s). I do not. I think it makes sense, and I don’t have a lot of sympathy for “sans-papiers”. In the US there is no such thing like “Meldepflicht”. You go wherever you please and register independently with the many different agencies that want to know where you live, state or not. Because of this, you have to register as a voter every time an election takes place which complicates matters. People forget, have moved, are too late etc. In Switzerland, our ballots are sent out automatically to the registered address, all the time, and without the voter’s doing. The Swiss voter gets a ballot and a voting document with his name on it by mail to his or her official address. If the ballot is mailed in, that voting document has to be hand signed. If you belong to the perhaps 10 percent who still go to the poll, Sunday morning between 1000 and 1100 hrs, you won’t have to sign anything. You slide your document in the box and that’s it.  Never have I been asked to prove who I am at our voting place in the old schoolhouse, although the young people manning the boxes most certainly don’t know who I am. I really could take the ballot of my wife and vote instead of her (which incidentially might not be an altogether bad idea). In Trump democracy, I would have to show my ID, put up with the presence of cops or soldiers, and perhaps respond to questions by some uniformed gorilla or a snot nosed know-it-all twenty-year old.

***

Philippe and Stéphane, we don’t know what fall will bring. Yes, the Trumpists will try everything. But I am not sure how far they can succeed, i.e. how much resistance –  and I wouldn’t exclude even physical resistance –  the states and the voters will muster. When I look at the datacenter-action in Stark County and other places, I don’t see just gloom. The people there are not all party-line Democrats. My friend for instance is conservative and deeply Christian but has lost her affinity for Donald Trump. I doubt that they would humbly swallow whatever restriction of their civil rights comes their way.

***

But yes, authoritarianism is in the offing. Thank you, Philippe, for making us aware of PEADS and COGCON. I know about the theory of the limitless power of the chief executive, but those acronyms are new to me. Of course, there is no mention of this in the Eisenhower museum (nor is there any of “operation wetback”, the predecessor of the ICE-manhunt during the Eisenhower years). The PEADS and COGCON authorizations bring us back to the 1930s in Europe and the origins of fascism. The prime example is the emergency-rule paragraph in Germany’s Weimar constitution which paved the legal path for Adolf H.’s access to power, by way of President Hindenburg’s and his son’s acquiescence. For a long time during the Trump years, you were pooh-poohed when mentioning the parallels between such origins and the raise of the caudillo. Not so much anymore, as there are too many for them to be overlooked. The reign of Donald Trump is the closest thing to a modern variety of fascism America is experiencing during the 21st century. The 20th century saw Huey Long, a one-term governor of Louisiana and US Senator for two years until he was shot to death in 1935. Long was a demagogue, a ruthless campaigner (he once punched an opponent in the face), a corrupt and authoritarian executive, an opponent of the ruling white planter class, an enemy of the Standard Oil corporation and a fighter for the rural poor. He opposed Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal as not going too far. Long’s “Share Our Wealth” plan of 1934 proposed a limit of personal wealth, a maximal annual income (1 million), a maximum inheritance on one hand and on the other a government-guaranteed “household estate” and minimum income, a pension, a free college education, a mandatory 30-hour work week and 4 weeks of vacation for everybody. Based on his political style, Long is called an American fascist, based on his political proposals a left-wing populist, Bernie Sanders on speed.

***

Now guess who highlighted Huey Long the other day? No other than Vice-President J.D. Vance, the sycophant-in-waiting in Washington and a man who never refused a pivot when pivoting was of the order. In a speech in front of workers in a steel mill in his hometown of Middleton/Ohio he called Long “the great Southern populist…, an interesting guy, kind of a crazy guy”. He quoted Long’s program and bent it toward the Trumpian closing of the borders in order: “He once said, every man a king was the goal of his political program, but no man is a king if their castle is under siege by criminals”.

***

Huey Long “great”: will this make J.D. Vance great? Or will it split the not-so-populist billionaire class from the MAGA universe?