gracchusdixit

For months now, the national news media along with millions of ordinary Americans, not to mention millions of people around the world, have been fascinated or stupefied by the prospect of Donald J. Trump becoming the Presidential nominee of the Republican Party and just possibly the next President of the United States.  His recent sweep of the New York primary will only make the fascination and stupefaction more stupendous.

Trump’s sudden rise seems to be a freak of nature or a freakish carnival sideshow.   It is, in any event, unprecedented in our political history.  The so-called Republican “establishment” is horrified at what they take to be the hijacking of “their” party by a rambunctious real estate developer and reality television star.  Countless others are simply dumbfounded.   There is much to be dumbfounded about.

“The Donald” is the political equivalent of what used to be called—cruelly—an “idiot savant,” that is, a person who is brilliant at one thing but tragically incompetent at everything else.  Trump’s idiotic brilliance, the skill that makes him a savant, is a knack for grabbing attention all the while he violates every rule of civility and polite behavior.  On a gut level, he seems to know which nerve to poke, and precisely which emotion to stoke, no matter which issue he decides to exploit: immigration, the economy, the biases of media, the assorted peccadilloes of politicians, you name it.   Trump is like a lion tamer who knows exactly which slab of red meat will cause his deadly pets to slaver, roar, and come back for more.

In every other way, however, and by every standard of normality, Trump is a political  and psychological freak.  He is a narcissist of gargantuan proportions, who never tires of talking about himself.  He is a shameless liar, who never repents of his lies and never hesitates to repeat them.  He is a con-man and a charlatan, who has defrauded countless investors and consumers, all the while insisting that his victims “love” him.  He is a bullying demagogue and, if not a fascist or a racist himself, certainly eggs on those of his followers who are.  More consequentially than any of that, his “ideas” for solving the nation’s foremost problems—even  when identifies the problems correctly—are stupendously stupid.

None of which seems to cause Trump’s most zealous followers to pause for even a moment.  Instead, they parrot his self-aggrandizing braggadocio—he is a successful billionaire, he is financing his own campaign, he is beholden to no one, he will force Mexico to pay for a wall, he will bring jobs back to America, he will be “so great on the military”—as if they were mindless pod people in the 1950s sci-fi classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

The fact is that, for all the hysteria and delusions surrounding Trump’s freakish candidacy, he has been an absolute gift to the Republican Party and to its other Presidential hopefuls.  In this perverse reality lies a danger far more serious than the perils posed by Trump himself.

Trump’s sideshow lunacy has given the rest of the Republican Party rhetorical “cover,” distracting public attention from the fundamental evils of the other candidates in the race and from the fanaticism that has taken hold of Republican Party itself.  Trump’s sheer outrageousness has allowed these fanatics to pretend to a “moderation” they do not possess.

Ted Cruz, for example, claims to be the only “true conservative” in the race, the one man who can save his party from the Trump train wreck.  Yet Cruz isn’t “conservative” in any meaningful sense.  He is, rather, an evangelical tea-party zealot, whose extremism makes Barry Goldwater seem like the dotty uncle you wouldn’t invite to Thanksgiving dinner but are fond of nonetheless.  It is Cruz who promised to “investigate Planned Parenthood on day one” of his Presidency (if, God forbid, there ever is a Cruz Presidency).  It is Cruz, imagining himself to be oh-so-clever, who smeared immigrants with the label “undocumented Democrats.”  It is Cruz who promised to destroy the IRS, after ensuring that the richest Americans will pay no taxes.

John Kasich’s entire campaign—if he can be said to have a campaign—is predicted on the notion that he is the only “moderate” in the Republican field, a can-do compromiser who can get things done in Washington.  Kasich is fond of saying that, when he was a Congressman, the national budget was balanced, implying that he had somehow been single-handedly responsible for such a miracle of nature but never mentioning that the budget was balanced, not by John Kasich, but by Bill Clinton.   As Governor of Ohio, Kasich has been—and remains—one of the most radical governors in the country.   He has done more than almost any other Republican governor to deny abortion rights, suppress voting rights, and eliminate union rights.

Then, there is that white knight, the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, whose protestations that he has no interest in saving the Republican Party from itself at the last minute of the last hour no reasonable person believes.   For more than a decade, Ryan has been trying to pass something that is now called “the Ryan budget,” which has become the Holy Grail of Republican economic and social philosophy.  In the name of “reform,” the Ryan budget would destroy the New Deal created by Franklin Roosevelt—which is its real but unstated purpose.  Medicare would be turned into a voucher system, and millions of elderly Americans would be turned over to the tender mercies of the private insurance market.  Social Security would be dramatically scaled back for those who now depend upon it and all but eliminated in the future.  Medicaid would disappear in any meaningful sense, and the Ryan budget would turn over whatever remained of the money to the states, on the grounds that the states know how to spend the money better than the federal government.  We all know how that idea—the idea of states’ rights—has worked out for people or color in our country’s long racist history.

So, there you have it.  In a few months, Republicans—and not long thereafter perhaps all Americans—will have a choice to make.  Republicans must choose between a freak and a fanatic.  The rest of us must choose between a decent and a frightful future.  The choice will be up to us, and the consequences will be ours to bear.