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. Topics of #47: death penalty ,fatigue and exhaustion with politics, my attending a “meet and greet” in Hendersonville/NC, and Stéphane’s comment on Marco Rubio’s pretty impertinent remarks in Athens. My contributions are here; the exchange is on Substack. Link here.
Salut Stéphane et Philippe,
Stéphane, I understand your pain about Donald Trump, but I have to admit that I don’t feel it. Never did. Trump the character and political persona is not an aberration from what is called “the American way of life” but the cartoon exaggeration of it. He personifies the never ending strive to getting more, doing better, going further, jumping higher, becoming bigger than the next guy, and utterly ruthlessly so at that. At all costs. The specimen has been plentiful throughout the American history, and you might well argue that the golden years between the New Deal and Ronald Reagan are more exception than normalcy. In its domesticated form, it is “rugged individualism” (transparency: I appreciate) – when running unrestricted, the feral man-beast at the center of the Weltanschauung of a fascist.
That’s where we are with Trump II. In my view, the guy and his rule is the closest thing to a modern form of fascism we have seen in the developed world since the demise of Adolf H. back in the Reich. It is very much like the autoritarian regimes we saw in Latin America, a mixture of fib, fear, and favoritism. This is why I call him the Caudillo. Yes, Philippe, he does not wear the phantasy uniforms they loved down South, but there is enough macho mimikry to warrant the moniker. Trumpism is high-T.
Now what? All things being equal of past instances, the Democrats should win the midterm elections of next Tuesday not by a nice margin but by a landslide. President Trump is unpopular, his “disapproval rating” at 60 percent. Contrary to his promises, his policies have not resulted in lower gas prices, lower inflation or a better health care system (plan was announced, but never materialized). Add the normal decline of the President’s party in the midterms, and out comes a big Republican defeat. Two questions follow then: One, how come Trump is still so popular with his own party? Surveys show an “approval rating” among Republicans between 75 and over 80 percent, and a near-total percentage with the true believers of the MAGA movement. The second question is: What will the Democrats use their election victory use for?
The first question goes to your concern, Stéphane. You wonder how someone could side with a man who acts so openly corrupt, and in his speeches states such clear falsehoods and patent idiocies. I don’t know. What I do know, because I have seen it, is that the capacity of human beings to abandon professed allegiances to their tenets is limitless. I remember the election of 1992 when Bill Clinton stood against the elder Bush. I knew people who gave long sermons about “values” and “decency” which they saw in Bush and missed in Clinton. They are all Trumpists today, and when confronted with the Caudillo’s peccadilloes, they shrug it off as lies of “liberal media”. This makes me understand a little better why one third of Germans went for ranting Adolf at the time. “Decency” and “values” only go so far when despair and the feeling of missing out are overwhelming enough.
You seem to say that the reason for Trump’s continuing pull with his side of the aisle is information, or lack thereof. You have a point insofar as most people restrict their sources of information to what they are familiar with. The “bubble”, as we say. Or as a man in South Carolina, a Democrat in a “red island”, told me about his neighbors: “They don’t read”. This is only half the truth. Of course, “they” get information, too. Not from his New York Times, but from Truth Social and Tucker Carlson and Fox News and Newsmax. And from the relentless propaganda that rains down on voters in election season, numbing and exhausting most everybody. “You know it is not true”, a man in Georgia told me. “Then you have do spend hours on the internet looking for information to get to the bottom of it. Who has time for that? It would be better if we had only one party”. That was a glimpse toward the end of democracy as we know it. The problem with information is not that it is not there. It is actually amazing how much can bee known about things in America, from analyzing your health data to the statistical shape of the economy and political trends. The problem is the unwillingness to take information into account that does not fit your bill. This cuts both ways, by the way. There are uncomfortable facts out of Trump’s corner you don’t see too much highlighted in the “liberal media”, like the fact that the influx of undocumented aliens into the country has been stopped under Trump, or the fact that the US’s intake from duties has increased by almost 200 percent, or perhaps even the latest economic growth number. I admit that I have no clue how to remedy the calamity. I am pretty sure that throwing money to media outfits, be it from the government or from generous donors, is not the solution. I think that the first requirement of good information is good journalism and that good journalism is surely not what the armies of “spokesmen”, “communication departments” and public-relations rainmakers practice. Good journalism rests on good journalists willing to put their own biases and predispositions – we all have them – into question. And good journalists depend on good superiors – editors and higher-ups – who have their backs and let the pieces fall where they may, damn the torpedoes. Not nasty Bezos at the Washington Post, and most certainly not what I witnessed at the receiving end at that terrible outfit in Zurich. I am also pretty sure that people are willing to pay for such information outfits, also in their digital form.
Now to the second question: What will the Democrats do with their majorities? First off, we don’t know how much wiggle room they will be allowed. You are right, the Trump administration will do everything in its power to inhibit the Dem’s access to it, starting with the day after the election. I have no doubt that some of the midterms will be challenged up to the day of seating the newly elected parliament. Secondly, it is not very clear where a Democrat majority will direct itself to. There is a lot of talk right now about the Democratic Socialists and a leftward direction of a future majority. Surely, there is a readiness for some kind of that. Many people want a government that is on the side of the little guy and a Democratic party that would lead this way. As a young girl told me about the Senate candidate Paggy Flanagan in Minnesota: “I don’t know whether she is a socialist, but she is not of the capitalist sort of Democrat”. That seems the extent of American socialism, year 2026: Discontent with the compromising, game-playing leadership and a yearning for something else. As James Talarico, the Texas Senate candidate says: “People know they are screwed, It’s not left versus right, it’s top against bottom”. A look at the program of the Democratic Socialists – still a slim outfit – does not yield a lot more insight. The document looks like the xeroxed brochure of some high-school students, complete with rised fist and this first sentence: ”Imagine taking a day off from work in a future without capitalism”. As if the days off work were not in the offing anyways without any additional push from some socialists, given the dire predictions of the AI barons. I frankly don’t think this is where the future of a viable American left will be found. Yes, very probably there will be more socialist politicians in view next to New York mayor Mamdani and the still irreplaceable Bernie Sanders, who articulates the most concise vision: Get money out of politics, rein in the oligarchs, use the state to provide for basic needs like education and health care. However, this is not at all the lingua franca of everybody in the Democratic Party. What their new majority will attempt to accomplish in Congress, where they will start, how they will try to get from A to Z, is pie in the sky. Will they start with holding the Trumpists in power accountable? Impeach the President? Many demand this ardently. Annie Andrews, the Senate candidate in South Carolina said no, when I attended her meet-and-greet in Ridgeland : “I will not spend a lot of time looking back”. Not to mention that all legislation to overturn Trump’s rulings will need the President’s consent which is hard to imagine. And not to forget that it is debatable how much clout the new left will have with Democrats in Congress. Adam Hamilton, the possible Democrat senator from Kansas, has announced that he will not vote for the current leadership. Not because it is too wishy-washy or too ineffective but because he wants a new team that’s more centrist.
Stéphane and Philippe, let’s keep two things in mind: America is not a socialist country and never will be. Too much “rugged individualism” there. Too much imagination that you “can make it” if you only try enough. But very much sensibility for fairness and for the idea that government is something to support the many, not abetting the few. There is a basis for policymaking there, but we have not seen its contours. The second thing we should keep in mind is the Democrat’s great talent to screw things up. Biden’s second run is one example, the crazy scheme in Alaska is the latest. In order to confuse the voters about the Republican Senate candidate Dan Sullivan, there is a second Dan Sullivan on the ballot, according to a disgruntled Democrat party hack all instigated by the party. I have no doubt that this is true. How idiotic does a political operation have to be to do such a thing in a situation where the opposition makes hay of “voter fraud” and the like?