The Stupid Shall Rise Again

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Joe Biden may be able to roll back some of the Trumpian carnage, but an environmental agenda sufficient to prevent climate disaster looks unlikely.  Moreover Biden’s successor may be a more competent neo-fascist than Trump. It may be time to make your peace with human finitude and fallenness… 

A couple of weeks ago, The Haze, asked me to reflect on  “the legacy of Donald Trump”. 

Directly after the election I was unsure what to say. I fully expected Trump to put up a tenacious fight against the truth of the result…whether in the courts, Congress, or on the streets.  Even now, in the wake of his failed coup attempt, I’m not quite ready to rule out a declaration of martial law, an act of war (even a nuclear strike), or further acts of terrorism including an assault on the Inauguration. 

Come what may…I count it as virtually certain that, in the time remaining, he will pardon his immediate family, his worst remaining unpardoned enablers, the mob that stormed the Capitol and very likely… himself.  But what then? How might we finally assess his “legacy”?

Virtually any assessment of the Trump presidency must be measured in damage done; I can think of absolutely nothing that has been positive.  I see three damage groupings:

1) Those things that are potentially reversible or remediable, at least in part

2) Those that will endure, either for some time or until the much anticipated extinction of the human species

3) Those that are milestones towards the collapse of civil society…at least in the increasingly dis-United States.

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Potentially reversible damages

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Many of Trump’s most heinous official deeds were undertaken by Executive Order or administrative appointment. As such, they will largely be reversible. The recent Senatorial victories in Georgia will free Biden to make appointments free of obstruction from Mitch McConnell et al.

Some restorations of the status quo ante, will require Republican votes; here, Biden’s ability to inspire “bipartisanship” remains to be seen. I suspect most Republicans remain too terrified of displeasing the Trumplodyte goons (80% of their current constituency) to break ranks.

Among some of the damage open to reversal, either by Executive fiat or with a modicum of Republican co-operation are:

• Immigration policy
• Environmental & safety & trade regulations,
• Assorted other miscellaneous Executive Orders
• Congress’s gargantuan tax-cuts for the less-than-1%,
• Trump’s withdrawals from the Climate accords, the Iran accords & the WHO
• Trump’s pro-authoritarian relationships with Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Hungary, Brazil, Israel, N. Korea, etc.,
• Trump’s legitimization of  white supremacists, Neo-Nazis & right-wing militias / delusional conspiracy-theorists
• The Trump family’s hugely corrupt self-dealing & cronyism
• Trump’s appointment of wholly corrupt and/or incompetent staff in innumerable agencies throughout the government

and (perhaps most pervasively toxic and corrosive of all) Trump’s wholesale dismissal of norms of procedure, professional ethics, common decency & simple honesty. 

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Enduring damage, at least for the near term

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Among the more irreversible effects of Trump’s American Carnage: 

• the sale of oil & gas leases, public land, timber rights, national parkland & wildlife refuges
• the countless numbers of first-rate career public servants who have been permanently driven from government service.

And then, of course, there’s the U.S.’s former reputation as a bulwark against authoritarianism, and as a reliable ally.  Biden may well refurbish that reputation to some extent…but with Don Jr., Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley waiting in the wings for 2024, who would ever trust a long-term U.S. commitment ever again?  

Nor should one forget the heavily stacked Supreme Court & Federal benches, now heaving with arch-conservatives & some outright loons. Not to mention the host of terrible new legal and political precedents set by Trump’s lawyers and legislative enablers. 

Last but scarcely least, there are the soon to be more than half a million dead U.S. citizens, most of whom would still be alive in any more civilized country, thanks to the single most incompetent and viciously negligent Covid-19 response on the planet

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Social dissolution

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The U.S. has always had far more than its fair share of kooks, grifters, con men, carnival barkers, gullible suckers, and the willfully ignorant. 

For instance, roughly half of the American population believes in the Ussher Hypothesis (which calculates the age of the universe based on Biblical genealogies).  Until the age of social media, however, most of this native credulity was confined to lowbrow religious zealots, most American conspiracy-theorizing (apart from that surrounding the Kennedy assassination) was a largely fringe phenomenon, and the 3 broadcast TV networks & the major urban newspaper dailies provided a mostly uniform (and, at least in many respects, fairly reliable and ethically-constrained) source of information to the public at large. 

Current poll evidence strongly suggests that roughly half the U.S. population (primarily the Republican half) is astonishingly ignorant, malign or both. This 50% seems  incapable of distinguishing simple facts from risible lies, imbibing a hell’s broth of ludicrous conspiracy-theories and half-witted biblical literalism. A new media ecosystem of cable channels, “patriotic” blogs & radio talk-show hosts & social media websites has created and reinforced all this, without the slightest scruple about circulating lies and distortions for profit.

• A recent poll discovered that 17% of Americans believe the QAnon claim that all Democrats are Satan-worshipping pedophiles, while another 30%, though unsure, don’t rule it out. 
• A majority of Republicans believe that Biden and the Democrats “stole” the recent presidential and senatorial elections.
• Very probably at least 50% of all Republicans also believe that it was somehow Antifa, rather than a horde of raving Trump supporters, who trashed the Capitol last Wednesday.

America’s “reality-based community” is becoming an endangered minority, while the politics of big lies and mob incitement are becoming the mainstream.

Can Biden lower the temperature, and effect some level of restored collegiality & cooperation?

I don’t rate it as WHOLLY impossible…but I regard it as distinctly unlikely.  It’s not just a matter of lowering the emotional pitch, or of refuting specific beliefs; rather, the problem is that at least half of the country has become completely untethered from reality, evidence, or rational persuasion…and is fuelled by fear, hatred, racism, anti-intellectualism – a hysteria that will not be mollified by good intentions or sweet reason. Cultural identification and habituated traits of character simply can’t be argued or placated away. 

Trump leaves behind a very large and lively neo-fascist movement, which is more likely to grow than to contract, no matter how conciliatory Biden’s governance might prove. The violence is far from over; there will be further acts of terrorism, sabotage, kidnapping, murder, and mass carnage.  There will be isolated attempts at secession, and perhaps a concerted, coordinated effort.

It will probably fall short of literal civil war…

…but it might not. 

Dr, Light (lite)

Since 2013 I have worked on this Ad-Free site: trying to give a voice to those without the power or agency to speak out for themselves and speaking simple truths that well paid journalists in the corporate media dare not utter.

I am a home schooling parent on a low income – paying for the domain, web hosting and security entirely out of my own pocket.  

If you find this website useful and could spare us a few shillings to help keep our lights on, it would be very much appreciated.

Thank you in solidarity with all our readers. John Lynch, Editor.     

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