Slouching Toward Trumpistan

TUCSON — The world honored Jimmy Carter in the Capitol rotonda, which a deadly insurrection besieged four years ago. He had spent most of his 100 years waging peace and working to keep an imperiled planet habitable for humanity.

At the National Cathedral, Joe Biden lauded his old friend's character, a trait he himself displayed during a single term. He led a Covid-crippled nation to historic prosperity while keeping embers his predecessor left behind from flaring into global war.

Both men belong atop Mount Rushmore. Donald Trump belongs on a forgotten molehill elsewhere in the Dakotas. Mount Flushmore.

Carter, though scorned at first, departed with gratitude and glory. A spiritual man of deep faith, you could imagine him choosing the moment — just weeks before Trump's self-deifying Inauguration — to snap a misguided nation out of its stupor.

Many with short memories still disparage Biden. He will likely be gone before history makes the record clear. But his eulogy set the tone for the fight ahead he plans to join from the sidelines. "The greatest of sins," he said, "is abuse of power."

Early signs provide hope that concerted, sustained action can stop the United States of America from sinking into Trumpistan.

————

Trump's house of wild cards, rife with jokers, seems closer to potential collapse each time he opens his mouth or thumbs his phone. At 78, he is plainly more unhinged by the day. He makes no bones about his despotic intent.

At one of those one-way rants which too many reporters call "press conferences," someone asked if his threats of arrest caused news and social media operators to fall in line. With his signature smug Mussolini smile, he replied, "Probably."

No matter how grave the crisis, he fixates on pettiness. As greater Los Angeles burns, a foretaste of climate calamity he denies, Trump ignores human suffering to blame Gavin "Newscum" for some made-up plaint about water supply.

Upcoming Mort Reports will focus on what can be done to stop him. Above all, Americans need to get real. There is not a minute to lose.

Much of "the media" obsesses on Trump's absurd deflections. Annex Canada. Invade Mexico to stop alien hordes that break into homes to slit throats. Take the Canal from Panama by force. Why not torpedo Loch Ness monsters in the "Gulf of America"?

The real threats begin with a shredded First Amendment, weaponized justice, ethnic cleansing and a global monetary system that eludes control. Then, a world dominated by authoritarians and oligarchs. Forget Matthew 5:5. The meek would inherit squat.

Trump shields his medical records as assiduously as his tax returns and dubious dealings. He likely won't last long in office. As the veteran Washington insider who I respect most told me, "We are two cheeseburgers away from JD Vance."

Vance is an isolationist shape shifter, utterly amoral and apt at twisting truth with articulate doubletalk. His puppet master is an ungodly rich Africa-born Lex Luther, likely deportable for violating the terms of a student visa.

Rather than E Pluribus Unum, America's watchword would be DOGE, an Elon Musk unfunny witticism, which Timothy Snyder translates to Den of Oligarchs Gets Everything.

Musk already meddles in foreign policy as if he were president. "Tyrannical" Britain should be run by America. The AfD party, nostalgic about Nazis, ought to rule Germany. He supports far-right parties in Austria, Hungary and elsewhere.

He X-tweets those who oppose his pronouncements to "fuck your face." Steve Bannon, with similar vulgarity, tells him to shut up and listen or "we will rip your face off."

Fox News is fast outpacing cable rivals. Musk hints he might buy MSNBC with what is chump change for him, as he did with Twitter. CNN does some good reporting, but its new management doubles down on those senseless panels of opposing opinions.

Far too many people get their "news" by exchanging rumors and snippets among themselves. "Influencers" build followings with snappy delivery rather than actual sources. Some expound to millions about places they could not locate on a map.

————

Fierce resistance can stall much of Trump's grand plan until 2026. If Democrats and responsible Republicans dominate Congress, an enlightened electorate can take out the trash in 2028. This is less daunting than it seems.

Trump totaled less than half of the popular vote. He beat Kamala Harris in some key states by margins in the low thousands. About 19 million people who voted for Biden in 2020 stayed home this time, disgusted by Trump yet tepid about the alternative.

Young Americans with the most at stake were all over the place. Many tuned out entirely. Others blamed Biden and Harris for the mayhem Trump caused in Israel and Palestine, which helped return him to office where he is likely now to do far worse.

But when politics shift in America, change happens fast. Republican lawmakers who revile Trump in private are liable to discover consciences and backbones as they see his grip weakening.

The courts are less corrupted than they may seem. Aileen Cannon, the Colombian-born immigrant Trump handpicked as a federal judge in Florida, tried to quash Jack Smith's report on the Mar-a-Lago documents. The 11th Circuit overruled her.

Trump sidestepped the justice system to urge the Supreme Court to clear his name so he could reenter the White House with a clean record. It didn't. Lower-level judges upheld his multiple felony convictions for other crimes.

Judge Juan Merchan in New York made a point of getting Trump's 34 felony convictions for business fraud and hush money on the record. No penalty is attached, but it is the thought that counts. A felon will preside over the rule of law in America.

The world watched it all play out, from two impeachments down to a sexual assault the judge said would amount to rape in other jurisdictions. Trump's desperate efforts to alter history in plain sight only compounds his unfitness for office.

Before laying out a plan of action, it is important to trace how we got to this stage. Trump claims the world is laughing at the United States. We are way beyond that.

————

In April 2020, before Trump allowed Covid-19 to kill Americans by the hundreds of thousands and attempted a coup d'etat, Britons protested his state visit. Overhead blimps depicted a "Baby Trump" wearing diapers in a peevish tantrum.

British writer Nate White explained why in the ruefully hilarious piece attached below. After eviscerating Trump's humorless, bullying boorishness, he wrote:

"The fact that a significant minority — perhaps a third — of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people."

Americans are supposed to be nice, he wrote, which is why so many Britons and others are dismayed at faults that are so hard to miss. White concluded:

"After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit...God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too.

"But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid...In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws — he would make a Trump. And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?'“

————

That is what stymies me. Biden's candidacy was doomed after a meticulously stop-watched CNN "debate" allowed Trump a barrage of preposterous lies, wildly distorted figures, on-camera smirks and false accusations with hardly a single corrected fact.

During the campaign, if Biden had said anything close to Trump's malapropisms, idiocies and brain farts, he would have been confined for psychiatric evaluation. If found guilty of a small fraction of Trump's multiple felonies, he would face prison time.

The few classified documents he quickly returned amount to a parking ticket compared to top-level secrets Trump left lying around Mar-a-Lago, then tried to hide from the FBI. In a second term, allies will be loath to share vital intelligence.

Biden promised not to shield his son from a fair trial. He changed his mind only after Kash Patel threatened a kangaroo court. Yet even the thoughtful New Yorker carried a piece equating him to Trump, who vows to immediately free Jan. 6 "patriots."

In recent months, Biden has slowed down markedly. Still, he is hardly gaga. Harris had risen to the job. She was ready to take over his seasoned team to reassure allies and continue his muscular but cautious diplomacy.

Given the national mood, perhaps Democratic leaders were right in wanting to gamble on an unprepared fresh face. I made Biden's case in 2020 expecting him to restore sanity so that a younger candidate could run in 2024. But Trump would not go away.

Although this no longer matters, there is a crucial lesson here.

I now report on the world at firsthand from the far side of 80. Age slows you down. At some point what the French call "un coup de vieux" sidelines you. But there is no sell-by date. Carter could have told you that at 95 on a fishing adventure in Siberia.

"Senior moments" happen when lived experience crowds an aging brain. That's not dementia. Benching an elder statesman too early is like torching chunks of the National Archives. The danger is a despot who believes the archives belong only to him.

————

Upcoming dispatches will offer detailed talking points on where to go from here. Please message me with your own suggestions.

The key is to act. Anything is better than nothing. People need to know why every vote counts, all down the ballot. Knocking on strange doors is daunting. But everyone can work in their own circles to persuade the persuadable.

Elected officials know they are toast if they lose touch with their electorate. Organized vigils in relay at their headquarters can engage with aides, if not candidates themselves. Eye-catching signs constantly in sight deliver the message. Billboards do it better.

Emailed thoughtful letters from constituents, with signed copies via the post, make a surprising impact. They can focus on specific issues or overviews about what is going wrong, why, and what ought to be done.

It is especially important to engage young people whose grasp is thin on how American democracy works. That is no accident. A long-range plan by conservative libertarians since the 1980s has cut back "civics" and critical thinking from public school curricula.

These initial steps are urgent and essential. Executive orders can be reversed but their damage remains. Laws that cut taxes for the rich, force deep societal changes and hasten climate collapse are hard to repeal. Endemic uncivil war is all but unstoppable.

The hardest part is staying informed. "Breaking news" is meaningless without knowing what broke, why, and what can be done about it. Look for independent sources that try to tell it straight in broad context.

This is all a tall order, but what is the option? Once parents had to keep fires going outside their caves and sleep with an eye open lest a saber-toothed tiger make off with a kid. Today's challenge is easier, and the stakes are a hell of a lot higher.

————

Link: British Writer Pens The Best Description Of Trump I’ve Read