gracchusdixit

In the wake of Donald Trump’s electoral college victory and Hillary Clinton’s defeat, Democrats and liberals generally are not only brooding over the tactical and political reasons for this outcome but also the psychological ones.  Indeed, they are obsessively psychoanalyzing themselves—which is what people of a liberal disposition tend to do.

This is partly because liberals are by nature reflective and thoughtful people, but also because they have a compelling need to see themselves as virtuous.  When liberals lose, rather than getting angry at their opponents, they frequently turn inward, blame themselves and go looking for some flaw or crack in the moral carapace of their own virtue.

In this case, because the outcome of the election turned on white working class voters in the “rust belt” states of Pennsylvania and the upper Midwest, liberals are flagellating themselves for the sin of having perhaps stereotyped such voters as bigots and racists rather than “decent, hard-working Americans,” who feel left behind by the global economy, ignored by their government, and condescended to by the intellectual, political, and financial elites who inhabit the cosmopolitan capitals of the two coasts.  This notion, if not complete rubbish, comes very close—and the self-flagellation it has caused is a feckless waste of time.

From the very day “the Donald” glided down the escalator at Trump Tower in Manhattan, it was abundantly clear that racism—verbal, vituperative, and sometimes violent—was the fuel propelling his campaign and that he was both encouraging and inciting it.  I have no doubt that there are some Trump supporters who did not join in, but there are plenty enough who did.  To suggest in some tortured way that those who voted for Trump are innocent, misunderstood victims, while those who opposed him are culpable for ignoring their plight, is, quite simply, ludicrous.

More importantly, this self-directed psychoanalytic exercise obscures the true nature, depth, and pervasiveness of racism in our society.  Racism isn’t simply a question of hateful speech or hate-filled hearts.  It is a question of behavior, of action or inaction, of passivity in the face of racist historical, institutional, and social norms so entrenched that they are all but invisible—invisible, that is, to those who benefit from these norms but starkly palpable to those who are the victims.  To one degree or another, in one way or another, every white American who benefits from these norms, either knowingly or unwittingly, is complicit in racism.

Every white American who “owns” a home, a farm, or a business west of Appalachians is the beneficiary of racist theft and murder.  The land on which white Americans live and work was stolen from Native Americans at gunpoint or simply appropriated after Native Americans had been expelled or exterminated.  I say “west of the Appalachians,” only because at least some of the appropriations that occurred “east of the Appalachians” were transactions between buyers and sellers.  Even then, however, it is doubtful that the sellers got anything remotely approaching fair terms.  It does not matter that today’s beneficiaries are not personally responsible for the original crimes. They are beneficiaries, nonetheless, because Native Americans and their descendants have never been compensated, have never received justice.  The fact that we all now blithely take their fate to be a fait accompli is racism.

Every white American who lives south of the old Mason-Dixon line is the beneficiary of one of the most horrific acts of racism in history: the enslavement and exploitation of millions of Africans.  The theft of their labor—and in countless cases their lives—produced untold wealth for white Americans.  It does not matter that today’s beneficiaries of this historic theft are not personally responsible for the original crime.  It does not matter if none of their ancestors owned slaves.  They are beneficiaries, nonetheless, because the African-American victims of slavery and their descendants have never been compensated, have never received justice.  The fact that we now treat this historic injustice as a fact of life beyond remedy is racism.

Every white American whose children benefit from the de facto segregation of our public schools—a system that, in the name of local autonomy and states’ rights, enables white school districts to educate their children lavishly while non-white districts are left to crumble—is also a beneficiary of racism.  It does not matter that the white parents in these districts are not intentionally racist.  It does not matter that they do not feel racism “in their hearts.”  They are beneficiaries of racism, nonetheless.

Every white American who gets preferential treatment from a legal and law enforcement system that reflexively criminalizes and incarcerates African-Americans and Hispanics is the beneficiary of racism.  It does not matter if the white beneficiaries of this system didn’t design or desire it.  They are its beneficiaries, nonetheless.

When liberals, in their anguished self-doubt, attempt to “understand” the racist words or feelings of Trump voters, they are not only wasting their time, they are distracting us from the awful reality that racism in our society isn’t limited to Trump and his adoring fans.  It’s pervasive.

It does no good to rationalize hateful language, to analyze hateful feelings, or to empathize with those responsible. We will never rid ourselves of racism until we realize that it is ultimately defined, not by words and feelings, but by actions.  Until we once and for all act to rid ourselves of the racist social, political, legal, and economic institutions that saturate our culture, all white Americans must face the stark reality that it isn’t just Trump voters who are to blame.  Until that day comes, we remain racists, one and all.

In 1963, the political philosopher and journalist, Hannah Arendt, published a book called Eichmann in Jerusalem: The Banality of Evil.  Its subtitle, The Banality of Evil, instantly became a permanent part of the language, and the book itself no less instantly became controversial.  It remains so to this day.

Eichmann had been a senior officer in the dreaded SS and played a major role in Nazi Germany’s attempt to exterminate the Jews, Slavs, and Gypsies of Europe.  When Germany was defeated, he fled to Austria and thereafter to Argentina, where Israeli intelligence agents eventually caught up with him.  He was kidnapped, spirited away to Israel, tried for crimes against humanity, convicted, and hanged.

Having observed Eichmann throughout his trial, Hannah Arendt reached the conclusion that he was not an abnormal or sociopathic monster but, rather, “banal”—that is to say, a drearily ordinary, rather dim-witted, and ignorant man, who subordinated his individual moral responsibilities to the dictates of the genuinely sociopathic monster who had taken control of his country, Adolf Hitler.  Eichmann’s defense was not merely the stock excuse of all war criminals—that he had “obeyed orders” and was therefore not personally responsible for the crimes he committed.  His defense was that he and every German citizen had had a patriotic duty to rally around the head of the German state and to carry out his wishes.

Hannah Arendt took Eichmann at his word and concluded that he sincerely meant what he said.  She was immediately criticized, and to this day is still criticized, for seeming to have excused Eichmann as a hapless victim, rather than an active and fully aware perpetrator of mass murder, genocide, and evil.  This criticism misses the point that Hannah Arendt was trying to make.

She was not at all trying to excuse or exculpate Eichmann by normalizing him.  Indeed, her point was quite the opposite.  She was trying to tell us that banality can abet evil by normalizing it; that ordinary people, by ignoring the unique awfulness of a truly evil man or ideology, can become the agents of that man or ideology; that the moral responsibilities of individual human beings are indivisible and non-negotiable, and, in the face of evil, cannot be subordinated to social, political, or ideological norms—in short, to banality—without extreme moral jeopardy.

We now find ourselves, as an entire nation, facing just such a moment—a moment of extreme moral jeopardy in which we are being asked to accept evil in the name of normality.

There are many, not the least of whom is President Barack Obama, who have urged us to do everything possible to ensure a smooth transition of power, to unify behind a new president, to help Donald Trump succeed, because, as the president put it, “If he succeeds, the nation will succeed.”

The problem with this gracious banality is that it begs the all-important question:  Succeed at what?

If Trump’s success means deporting or incarcerating millions of innocent immigrants, banning Muslims from entering the country on religious grounds and persecuting those who are already here, overturning the reproductive rights of women, legalizing discrimination against gay and lesbian Americans for their sexual choices—if that is what Trump’s success means, then his success will be a disastrous failure for the nation.  Without answering the question “Succeed at what?” the president’s exhortation to unify behind the man who will follow him is illogical, contradictory, and (I am both sorry and sad to say) immoral.

I have no doubt that these exhortations from President Obama and many others spring from the most sincere, heartfelt, and honest motives.  I have even less doubt that the president believes that he is trying to fulfill his constitutional duties and to remain faithful to our historical traditions and norms.

The trouble is that, in asking us to unite behind Donald Trump, the president is also asking us to ignore the abnormal, to normalize evil, to subordinate our individual moral obligations, as Eichmann did, to a national leader who shows no respect for the constitution or the basic human rights of millions of our fellow citizens.

Let me be clear.  I do not mean to suggest that Donald Trump is the moral equivalent of Adolf Hitler. Trump is not proposing genocide, nor, despite his obvious psychological flaws, does he seem to be utterly demented.  Equating him with Hitler would be tasteless, grotesque, and wrong.

This does not change the fact that Trump and what he represents are evils in their own right.  He is a clear and present danger to our democracy—an authoritarian demagogue, who, like Vladimir Putin, is perfectly prepared to ignore our constitution, to suppress the freedom of speech, to persecute and prosecute his political enemies, and to run the country for his own financial gain and that of his children.  Trump’s evil does not rise (or sink) to the level of Hitler’s.  It is evil, nonetheless.

Fifty years ago, Hannah Arendt warned us against the banality of evil.  Fifty years later, we run the risk of normalizing evil.  To normalize Donald Trump and the evil he represents would be unpatriotic, immoral, and disastrous.  He must be opposed, not normalized.  He must be rejected, not accepted.  He must be stopped, not supported.  Trump’s success is not, and never will be, the nation’s success.

After a presidential election, the outcome of which can only be described as a tragedy for the nation, questions are being asked about the future of our two major political parties.   In the case of the Republicans:  How can traditional conservative principles and policies be squared with the loud, angry and often vicious populism of the Trump electorate?  How can traditional Republicanism even survive with Trump at the head of the party?  In the case of the Democrats:  Having nominated (though “coronated” might be the better term) a quintessential member of the political establishment in a vehemently anti-establishment era, will the party decide to purge itself of the Clinton-connected elite in its upper echelons?  Will it further decide that its future lies with millennials and minorities?  Will it abandon what appears to be a hopeless and perhaps imaginary “center,” turning leftward toward the militant progressivism of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren?

These are significant questions, beyond doubt.  But they pale in comparison with a far more consequential issue.  That issue is the failure of the political and governmental system bequeathed to us by the Founding Fathers.

For more than 200 years, we have congratulated ourselves on the stability and continuity of our political system, heaping mountains of praise on the wisdom of the Founders who created it.  This rosy self-congratulation, if it was ever justified, now seems decidedly shaky.

The Founders gave us, not a democracy, but a republic, hemmed in by an extraordinarily complicated set of “checks and balances.”  These include three branches of government, each empowered to limit the powers of the others; an electoral college designed to moderate the excesses of the popular will; a wall of separation between the authority of the federal government and the prerogatives of the individual states.

All these complications, all these checks and balances, came into being for two reasons.

First of all, the Founders, having been subjected to the oppression (in their minds, at least) of a distant and all-powerful British monarchy and parliament, were determined to constrain the power of the central government.  Indeed, more than a few of them thought of the “united states” as a confederation of separate countries, not as a single nation in the modern sense.

Second, and more consequentially, many of the Founders were fearful of democracy and democratic majorities, believing that most ordinary people could too easily be swayed by their emotions and persuaded by demagogues or would-be tyrants to trample on the rights of everyone else.  There were those, of course, like Thomas Jefferson, who put their trust in the common man and advocated for a true democracy.  But they were the exceptions, and they did not prevail.

Thus it was that, for all their purported and in many respects genuine wisdom, the Founders made one, enormous mistake that has plagued us throughout our history.  They failed to understand that tyranny can take many forms.  In particular, they failed to anticipate that the labyrinthine system they created to defend against a tyrannical democratic majority might someday spawn a tyrannical anti-democratic minority.

It was a tyrannical anti-democratic minority that sustained slavery for nearly a century and, after slavery was finally abolished, installed Jim Crow in its place.   It took another century for that wicked system to be overturned.  And now, half a century later, many of its worst aspects are creeping back into our public life.  This outcome is not an aberration or an abnormality.  It is the direct consequence of the political system created by the Founding Fathers.

In fewer than 20 years, tyrannical, anti-democratic minorities have imposed their will on the nation, not once but twice.

In 2000, Al Gore won the election by more than half a million votes but was denied the presidency by five conservative justices on the Supreme Court.  Among the many terrible consequences of this anti-democratic intervention were the invasion of Iraq, the deaths of at least a million people, and the financial collapse of 2008.

Just days ago, Hillary Clinton won the election by a quarter of a million votes.  The size of her victory would beyond doubt have been substantially greater without the “checks and balances” that allowed Republican legislatures to suppress the votes of those who oppose them.  Nonetheless, Hillary Clinton was denied the presidency by the antiquated and anti-democratic mechanism of the electoral college.

When all is said and done, George W. Bush was not the democratically elected President of the United States, and neither is Donald J. Trump.  These men were imposed upon us by tyrannical anti-democratic minorities.  It’s time to recognize that the Founders and the institutional arrangements they bequeathed to us are to blame.  Had they put more trust in true democracy and the wisdom of the American people, our latest national tragedy would never have occurred.

The much, and justly, criticized decision of FBI Director James Comey to intervene during the final days of the 2016 presidential election reveals something not only about the man himself but about the institution over which he presides.  Comey’s behavior is shocking, but it is not surprising.  The disquieting truth is that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, far from being a body of disinterested law enforcement professionals who stand above the political fray, is not only a politicized institution but a deeply biased one.

We got our first, jarring glimpse of this unpleasant reality in 1975, when a congressional committee head by Senator Frank Church of Idaho uncovered extensive and systematic wrongdoing by the FBI as well as the CIA.  This included illegal wiretaps, the illicit interception of private mail, secret coups d’état designed to overthrow foreign governments, even assassinations of foreign political leaders whose views did not jibe with what the FBI and CIA imagined to be our national interests.  In the forty years since those revelations first appeared, we seem to have forgotten everything we learned about the dangers posed to our democracy by the intelligence and law enforcement institutions to which we give so much power.

Foremost among these institutions is the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  The FBI was all but created by J. Edgar Hoover in 1935, who, as its first director, reigned over the organization like an absolute monarch for the next forty years.  It was Hoover who carefully shaped the FBI’s “boy scout” image.  Behind the scenes, and belying that image, he was a controlling, manipulative, and profoundly prejudiced presence.  Hoover distrusted women and hated all minorities, African Americans most of all.  For years, he pursued a witch hunt against Martin Luther King that not only exceeded his statutory authority but broke innumerable laws and and violated the Constitution.

Even worse, Hoover spied upon public officials, including several Presidents of the United States, using innuendo and threats of scandal to intimidate and blackmail them.  In 1948, he directly intervened in a national election, leaking to Harry Truman’s Republican opponent, Thomas Dewey, information that he hoped would doom Truman’s chances.  The ploy didn’t work, and Truman was handily elected, whereupon Hoover spent the next four years doing everything he could to undermine the democratically elected President of the United States.  When the next presidential election came around in 1952, and Adlai Stevenson was the Democratic candidate, Hoover repeated the trick, this time more successfully.

It is tempting to dismiss all this as ancient history and to think that Hoover’s pernicious legacy was expunged long ago.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Although J. Edgar has been dead for more than forty years, his paranoid personality continues to permeate the FBI.  How could it be otherwise?  Hoover was the architect of the agency’s organizational structure.  He designed its incentives.  He authored its ideology.  J. Edgar Hoover, in short, is responsible for the FBI’s internal “culture,” and, as anyone who has studied corporate and organizational “cultures” will tell you, they are stubborn and long-lived.

Thanks to the actions of James Comey, it is abundantly clear that the corrosive FBI culture created by J. Edgar Hoover persists to this day.  It is a culture of conspiracy theories, authoritarianism, and lawlessness.  It is a culture in which the most powerful law enforcement organization in the land believes itself to be above the law.  It is a culture that feels entitled to undermine and overturn democracy itself.

As terrible as that is, the furor surrounding Comey’s actions has obscured a much bigger problem, one that extends far beyond the FBI.  Several of the largest police unions in the country have openly endorsed Donald Trump, a man who has incited violence at his rallies, has called upon his supporters to assassinate his opponent, and has declared his intentions to violate the most fundamental Constitutional protections. For national organizations representing law enforcement to endorse such a flagrantly lawless candidate is deeply shameful.  It indicates that these organizations care less about upholding the law than preserving and advancing their own tribal interests.

It also reminds us of something far more dangerous—the inescapable reality that law enforcement officers, officials, and organizations have an inherent tendency to behave in authoritarian ways and to support authoritarian political figures like Donald Trump.  This tendency is, as the popular phrases goes, “baked in the cake.”  When we give police officers and policing organizations power, when we sanction their right to exercise their power at gunpoint, whenever we allow democracy and the rule of law to be subordinated to the siren song of “law and order,” authoritarianism and abuse will follow.

The “boys in blue” to whom we give so much power and reverence—whether they belong to a local police department or the FBI—are not, never have been, and never will be, “boy scouts.”  The sooner we recognize this uncomfortable truth, the safer we will be.   We may need these people and the institutions that employ them, but we should never, ever give them our unconditional trust.  If we needed any reminder of that sobering fact, FBI Director James Comey has provided it.

In less than two weeks, the nightmare that is the 2016 presidential election will be over.  Depending upon the outcome, a large part of the electorate will breathe a long, loud sigh of relief or hang their heads in despair.  In the meantime, the suspense is killing all of us.  Dozens of public opinion surveys reveal that millions of Americans are fundamentally fearful of the results.

Thus it is that not a day goes by when anyone with a shred of sense or common decency doesn’t ask:  How did we come to this?  How did it happen that a bully and a buffoon like Donald Trump became the presidential nominee of one of our two major political parties, let alone the party of Abraham Lincoln?  How did we, as a nation, walk into this dark, disreputable, and dangerous place?

Trump himself requires little analysis or explication.  Long ago, it became abundantly clear that he is little more than a narcissist, a braggart, and a demagogue, who will use any tactic, technique, or dirty trick to advance his own self-interest and to shore up his precarious self-esteem.  There is nothing mysterious about the temperament of such a man.  Every time he opens his mouth, a bottomless well of insecurity comes gurgling out, like pent-up sludge hidden under a manhole cover.

What is far more mystifying, however, and also terrifying is that millions of Americans have fallen for Trump’s malicious malarkey and seem hell-bent on following him to the bitter end.  We can only hope that the end, if and when it truly comes, will be bitter for Donald Trump and no one else.

There have been many theories attempting to explain the furious anger of Trump’s supporters, their utter rejection of facts, evidence, and expertise, and their eagerness to embrace a man who seems determined to tear up our history and blow up our political institutions.  The various theories range from racist rage against Barack Obama, to sexist rage against Hillary Clinton, to an economic insecurity that requires the scapegoating of immigrants, to a resentment against remote political and media “elites,” to a cultural backlash by social and religious conservatives against any form of sexual or marital identification that isn’t sanctioned by the Book of Genesis.  The theorizing goes on and on, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

All these theories and explanations undoubtedly play some part in accounting for the phenomena of Trump and Trumpism.  But there is a different—and, I believe, far more convincing—theory of the case.  It is that support for Donald Trump is rooted in fundamental anxieties about status and social class.  In a country that prides itself on being “classless,” where, as the old saying goes, “anyone can grow up and become President,” the candidacy of Donald Trump has revealed quite the opposite.  Not only are we not the “classless” nation we imagine ourselves to be, we are a nation defined by social class and riven by class divisions.

To that point, Trump’s most ardent supporters can be defined quite precisely in demographic and social terms:  they are heterosexual white men without a college education.  All four components of that description—heterosexual, white, male, no college—are essential to understanding the Trump phenomenon.

For three hundred years, the people who fit that description have been a singularly “entitled” social class in our nation, in every sense of the word “entitled.”   Regardless of their actual skills or accomplishments, they have been paid more, deferred to, and respected—simply because of their gender, race, and sexual orientation.

For a variety of historical, demographic and social reasons, their day in the sun is, to quote the old Paul Simon song, “slip slidin’ away”.  Indeed, for many members of this entitled class, it is already gone.  In the world of technocratic global capitalism, it is no longer sufficient to be white, male, or even heterosexual.  Social status now depends upon some combination of education, professional skill, and affluence.

Lacking one or all of these qualities, many Trump supporters are staring personal and social humiliation in the face.  The women in their lives are no longer subservient, their children are no longer obedient, and people of color refuse any longer to defer.  Even their once normative sexual identity no longer buys Trump supporters an ounce of preferential respect, let alone social entitlement.  Gay, lesbian, and transgender Americans are, with increasing success, asserting their right to define themselves as they choose.  As a result, the “macho American male” of myth and the movies has become, not a revered icon, but a rather ridiculous caricature.  Figures like John Wayne, once lionized, now seem ludicrous.

In Donald Trump, these insecure white men have found their perfect paladin.  Like them, he is consumed by his own insecurities.  Like them, he desperately wants to be accepted by a social and financial “elite” that has always looked down upon him as a crass and pretentious vulgarian.  Like them, he knows, down deep, that he is—in that most brutal of all American words—a “loser.”

The election of Barack Obama was an especially humiliating blow for Trump’s insecure constituency.  Not only was the president an “uppity” black man who didn’t defer to their once privileged place in society, he was undeniably superior by every objective measure—eloquent, intelligent, well educated, and professionally accomplished.  The very fact that his accomplishments could not be denied made his election all the more galling.

Now, of course, Trump and his worshippers are staring another humiliation in the face: the possible election of a woman as our next president.  If that occurs, as I truly hope it will, it will sound the death knell of white, male hegemony and entitlement.  It is a moment that cannot come too soon.

During the third and final presidential debate, Donald J. Trump took the unimaginable step of twice refusing to say that he would abide by the results of the election.  A day later, at one of his infamous rallies, he made matters worse by promising to honor the election only if he wins.  The threat was clear:  any outcome but his own victory will be denounced as the illegitimate result of an electoral process Trump deems to be “rigged.”

In the 227 years since George Washington became the first President of the United States, we have had many close and contentious elections.  The election of 1860, which put Abraham Lincoln in the White House, led to the secession of  13 slave-holding southern states and a bloody civil war.

Never, however, has a presidential candidate done what Trump has done.  Never before has any candidate declared war on the legitimacy of fair and free elections, which are foundational instrument of our republic.  Even the Confederate states didn’t dispute the outcome of the 1860 election; they simply wanted no part of it.

Within hours of Trump’s pronouncement, he was condemned, not only by Democrats, but also by a number of Republicans, including Senators Jeff Flake and John McCain of Arizona, Marco Rubio of Florida, and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina.  Say what you will about their political opinions—and I for one have little good to say—these men were principled enough to stand up and denounce Trump’s assault on our democracy and our Constitution.

The leaders of the Republican Party, on the other hand, went into hiding.  It took Reince Priebus, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, almost a week to speak out, and when he did, it was to defend Trump with a series of exculpatory circumlocutions that convinced no one except Trump’s most ardent followers.   To date, we still haven’t heard a peep from Mitch McConnell, the Majority Leader of the Senate, or Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House and the highest Republican political official in the land.

I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised by the cowardly capitulation of Priebus.  He is nothing more than a political hack, who early on hitched his wagon to Trump’s campaign out of pure self-interest, hoping to keep his job if Trump were to be elected.  Now, of course, he is well and thoroughly stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

All the while Trump’s campaign flails and fails, his supporters have become more rabid, ready to attack anyone in the Republican establishment who shows the slightest sign of deserting their candidate.  If Trump is defeated—which seems more likely than not—Priebus will probably go down with him.  For the present, however, he has no choice but to defend his man or face the all-consuming rage of Trump’s “base.”  Thus it has become abundantly clear that, for a craven careerist like Priebus, the question of principle is an irrelevancy.

The irrelevancy of principle has never been in doubt when it comes to Mitch McConnell.  For all his huffing and puffing about Constitutional checks and balances and the noble traditions of the Senate, McConnell’s entire public career has been—from the very first day, 40 years ago, when he entered politics in Louisville, Kentucky—an exercise in pure opportunism.  For McConnell, “principles” have never been anything more than convenient tools, designed to hoodwink the dumber-than-wood electorate that he has successfully manipulated throughout his public life.  “Dumber-than-wood” is not a gratuitous insult—Kentucky ranks 47th in the nation when it comes to high school and college graduation rates, which means that McConnell has always been able to count on, and exploit, the support of “low information” voters.  In any event, he has for weeks steadfastly refused to discuss Donald Trump, knowing that any statement about his party’s candidate is potentially lethal to his own interests.  Now, even when Trump threatens the foundations of our democracy, McConnell chooses to lie low, stay mum, and hide away.

The pusillanimous behavior of Priebus and McConnell is not surprising, because it is entirely consistent with who they are and how they have led their public lives.  When they prevaricate, obfuscate, and evade, they are merely doing what they have always done.  Often, they don’t even bother to pretend.  They don’t expect the rest of us to take them at their word, because they know that we know their word is worthless.

Paul Ryan is a different creature altogether.  Ryan would have us believe that he is, in the deepest and most essential sense, a person of high moral and intellectual principles, a public servant dedicated solely to the good of the nation, and a man above purely partisan motivation.  He is particularly fond of spouting off about “ideas” and presenting himself as something of a political philosopher—a notion that’s a bit ridiculous in light of the fact that one of the “philosophers” he most admires is the one-time novelist and Hollywood screen writer, Ayn Rand, whose ideas border on the juvenile.  Given Ryan’s public persona, given his claim to be a man of principle, how can he possibly justify a refusal to condemn Donald Trump?

Priebus, McConnell, and Ryan are hiding away, because they lack any shred of principle, and they know it.  They are hiding under the very same rock that, for years, sheltered the sad and deluded people who have now come out into the open to support Donald Trump.

This inversion is deeply ironic, because Priebus, McConnell, and Ryan are neither sad nor deluded.  They know what they have done but are too cowardly to admit it.  They are the moral equivalent of maggots and worms.  We can only hope that they will stay right where they are, hidden away under the very rock they turned over.  Which is precisely what they deserve.

So much has already been said and written about the first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump that I do not propose to add another voice to the chorus.  Except to say this:  Trump’s “performance” shattered, once and for all, the delusion that he might somehow be capable of transforming himself into a serious, responsible, and mature candidate—because it is abundantly clear that he neither is nor ever will be a serious, responsible, mature human being.

“The Donald” who showed up on the stage at Hofstra University was the same freak of nature we have witnessed for a year:  an insecure narcissist with an ego more fragile than glass; a childish and petulant bully who, to use one of his own favorite gibes, “chokes” when confronted by a determined opponent; an unprepared, uninformed, unintelligent charlatan, incapable of uttering a coherent thought.  The terrifying fact remains that Trump can still win the election, because his supporters are no less deluded and even less thoughtful than their candidate.  It is therefore time for the rest of us to think long and hard about what the consequences of a Trump victory will be.

I say will, rather than may, because those consequences are as sure as the sunrise:

First, the world’s financial markets will fall and fall sharply.  The global economy is so vulnerable at the moment that this could easily precipitate another recession—or worse.  Certainly, our economy will go into a tailspin.  Hillary Clinton called Trump’s economic plan “trumped-up trickle-down.”  It is worse than that.  He proposes to slash taxes on the rich, eliminate estate taxes altogether, cut the corporate tax rates in half, and all but eliminate regulations on the fossil fuel industry.  This fiscal mulligan stew will make the budget deficits created by George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq seem penny-ante, starving our ability to make productive public investments in infrastructure, technology and education.

Medicare and Social Security will cease to exist as we know them.  When a Republican Congress finally gets a president willing to sign off on the so-called “Ryan budget,” Medicare will be turned into a “voucher” system, and Social Security will be privatized.  As a result, millions of Americans will lose the only social safety net they possess and sink into poverty, left to fend for themselves.  The Affordable Care Act, of course, will disappear altogether and, along with it, any hope of replacing our dysfunctional for-profit health care system with something saner and more humane.

Trump will, it scarcely needs saying, fill the outstanding vacancy on the Supreme Court with a Scalia look-alike.  Roe versus Wade will be overturned, the reproductive choices of women will be quashed, and we’ll go back to the “good old days,” when women had no recourse but quacks and back-alley abortions.  What remains of the Voting Rights Act will be further weakened, and millions of black and Hispanic Americans will be disenfranchised.  This will ensure that Republicans are in charge of most state legislatures when the next census comes around in 2020, giving them another chance to gerrymander congressional districts as they did in 2010, reinforcing their stranglehold on the House of Representatives for another decade.

There will be international and geopolitical consequences as well.

Emboldened and validated by the election of a white nationalist to the presidency of the United States, right-wing parties, already on the rise, will take power in one or more European countries.  This will accelerate the disintegration of the European Union and lead to the unraveling of the liberal democratic order put into place by the United States after the Second World War.  The result will be closed borders, severe economic contraction, heightened political tensions, and conflict.

Vladimir Putin, believing (quite accurately) that he can manipulate the suggestible ego of a President Trump, will move to invade and occupy Ukraine.  This will create a crisis for NATO and the United States.  If we honor our treaty obligation to defend Ukraine, American and Russian military forces will confront one another directly for the first time in a century, with the possibility of nuclear escalation.  If we fail to honor that obligation, Putin will turn his sights on the Balkan states, escalating the risks still further.  How Trump will respond is anyone’s guess.  He might submit to empty flattery, or he might pull the trigger when it’s already too late.

These various calamities are not speculations or mere possibilities.  They are the all but certain consequences of a Trump victory, because, for all its apparent randomness, history follows a certain kind of logic.  Far more often than we imagine, decisions and actions produce predictable historical results.  That is what George Santayana meant when he said:  “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  If we choose to ignore the logic of history, we cannot escape blame, shame or culpability for what comes; we cannot pretend that we had nothing to do with making history  go one way rather than another.

When Imperial Russia decided to enter the First World War, it was all but inevitable that defeat, revolution, and the end of the Romanov dynasty would follow.  Russia was utterly unprepared and ill-equipped for war, and her leaders knew it.  For the tsar and his government to have gambled the future on the hope that war might somehow unite a divided nation and prevent another revolution was an act of folly, the consequences of which were not only predictable in hindsight but predicted at the time.

When Adolph Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, it was equally inevitable that the twin horrors of the Second World War and the Holocaust would follow.  Hitler had made no secret of his demented intentions.  In Mein Kampf, the book he published a decade before his rise to power, he had advertised them quite explicitly.  When the German people cast their votes and raised their arms in the Hitler salute, they knew—or should have known—what would come.

If the American people, knowing what will come, nonetheless decide to make Donald Trump their president, they will not be able to escape their share of the blame.  As the old saying goes, elections have consequences, and sometimes those consequences can be foreseen.  This is one of those times.  We may pray for the best, but if Trump is elected, we must prepare for the worst.

In a mere 120 days, a new president will place her or (God forbid) his hand on the bible, swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States, and be ushered into office. Thereupon, Barack Obama, the first African-American to occupy the White House, will leave the people’s house, a house built by slaves, and return to private life.  The closer we come to this momentous day, the more evident it becomes that, with the departure of President Obama and his family, the nation will be losing something extraordinary and irreplaceable.

I will leave it to the historians to decide how President Obama ultimately fares in the never-ending and often silly game of grading the stature of our presidents.  It is enough to say that Barack Obama’s eight years in office will not be deemed inconsequential.  The passage of the Affordable Care Act, the recovery from a financial collapse that brought us close to a second Great Depression, the rescue of the automotive industry, our first meaningful steps as a nation to combat the looming catastrophe of climate change, the first and only bargain in a generation to deter the Iranians from developing nuclear weapons, the apprehension and elimination of Osama bin Laden—when you add it all up, the record of Barack Obama’s accomplishments will almost certainly earn him a place as one of our country’s most consequential Presidents.

None of which means that his record has been flawless.

He promised change and hope, and yet, in many ways, he gave us more of the same.  He promised to close the illegal prison in Guantanamo; it is still open.  He promised to end our disastrous involvements in Iraq and Afghanistan; we are still there.  He promised a more humane and sensible immigration policy; yet he has ordered the deportation of more immigrants than any President in our history.  He also authorized a massive expansion of secret “drone strikes” against targets in the Muslim world and an unprecedented clamp down on domestic whistleblowers and the journalists who publish what those whistleblowers reveal about the wrongdoings of the CIA, the NSA, the Defense Department, and every other department of government that cloaks its misbehavior with the all-purpose mantle of “national security.”

Despite all that, the last day of Barack Obama’s presidency will be a loss to the nation.  He, Michelle Obama, and their two daughters, have, in their personal and public behavior, set an example for all of us, with an uncommonly high standard of composure, courtesy, and decency that every American would be well advised and even better served to emulate.

In the long, checkered history of our presidential first families, the Obamas stand out as being almost unique.  Not a jot of impropriety, let alone scandal, has besmirched their eight years in the White House.   They have done absolutely nothing, they have uttered not one inappropriate or ill-considered word, to embarrass us or themselves.  All around the world, the President and his family are admired, respected, and in some cases revered for embodying everything that is best about this country.

What sets the Obamas apart, however, is far more than that.  It is not simply that they have never embarrassed themselves or us.  It is how decently and courageously they have behaved in the face of relentless hate and vilification that would have dispirited—or destroyed—lesser human beings.

From Republicans in Congress who long ago surrendered every shred of principled and responsible governance to self-interest, from the racist hate-mongers of right-wing talk radio who have tried to smear Barack Obama as a secret Muslim, from the vicious and lunatic conspiracy theorists of the “alt-right” who have tried to delegitimatize not only his presidency but the man himself, President Obama and his family have been subjected to an unprecedented onslaught of personal and political abuse.

Say what you will about his political record or the accomplishments of his presidency, Barack Obama’s response to all of this can be summed up in the words of Michelle Obama, “When they go low, we go high.”  President Obama and his family have met every slur and slander, every insult, lie and humiliation, with calm dignity and amazing grace.

Two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ admonished his followers to “turn the other cheek” in the face of evil.  Two thousand years later, we have been lucky enough to have had in President Barack Obama and his family a living example of that message.  Whether we, as a people, are capable of living up to that example remains an open question.

The improbable Presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump lurches from one outrageous pratfall to another so quickly that it is all but impossible to keep up.  The unfortunate result is that truly important questions get lost in all the hubbub before they can be dealt with properly.  In the wake of Hillary Clinton’s stumble at the 9/11 ceremony in New York City and all the phony furor about her (quite justifiable) use of the word, “deplorable,” to describe the racism of many Trump supporters, we have lost sight of something far more deplorable than an all-advised choice of words by the Democratic candidate for President.

Trump’s campaign has, from the start, been fueled by fabrications, falsehoods, and cons, each more outlandish than the last.  Mere hours before the distractions I just mentioned, Trump presented us with a con more colossal than anything he has thus far conjured up—one that has been all but ignored by the media.

In Philadelphia, where our Constitution was crafted more than 200 years ago, Trump delivered what was dubbed a “major address on national security.”  It turned out to be a largely incoherent rant, during which he strove to characterize himself as a figure of steady judgment in a world of chaos, created by a “weak” Barack Obama and a “reckless” Hillary Clinton, whom he described as “trigger happy and unstable.”  All this, from a man who thinks it would be a “great idea” if more countries around the world acquired nuclear weapons and can scarcely contain his thrill at any word of flattery that falls from the lips of Russia’s de facto dictator, Vladimir Putin.

Trump proposed a massive expansion in military spending, rattling off a bill of particulars that sounded like the Christmas wish list of the frustrated and disgruntled ex-generals and admirals who support him.  He promised more divisions for the Army, more battalions for the Marines, more planes for the Air Force, more ships for the Navy—more of everything for everyone.  To justify this extravagance, he claimed that our military has been “degraded” by President Obama and Hillary Clinton, whom he blamed for overseeing “deep cuts, which only invite more aggression from our adversaries.”

Trump neglected to mention that the budget cuts he derided were initiated, not by the President, let alone Hillary Clinton, but by the Republican majority that controls the Congress of the United States.  In any event, he declared that he would pay for all this new military spending by:

1. “Eliminating government waste and budget gimmicks.”
2. Collecting unpaid taxes “estimated to be as high as $385 billion.”
3. “Reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy.”
4. Asking all NATO countries to “pay their bills.”
5. Asking Germany, Japan, Korea, and Saudi Arabia to “pay more for the tremendous security we provide them.”
6. “Unleashing” American energy production.

In deciphering this gibberish, it is difficult to know where or how to begin.  Trump is so ignorant, or so deceptive, that it is all but impossible to disentangle each of his particular falsehoods.  Indeed, that may be his plan, since the fundamental trick behind every con is distraction.

Let us, nonetheless, try to disambiguate this particular set of distractions.

First, Trump’s essential premise—that our armed forces have been “degraded”—is utter nonsense.  Even after the sequestration imposed by Congress, the “defense” budget of the United States is by far the largest in the world, equal to the military spending of the next ten countries put together.  We outspend the Chinese four to one, the Russians nine to one, and the United Kingdom—our closest ally—ten to one.  We are the major arms dealer in the world, selling billions of dollars worth of military hardware to everyone from the Saudis to the Israelis.

Trump’s notion that a massive boost in military spending can be paid for by “eliminating government waste” is ludicrous on its face, because the major source of “government waste” is the military itself.  No other department of government squanders so much money with so little oversight or accountability.  The idea of giving still more money to such a fiscally irresponsible institution is simply nuts.

His suggestion that collecting unpaid taxes might somehow pay for more ships, planes, and tanks is equally ridiculous.  The only institution capable of collecting those taxes, the IRS, has been gutted by a Republican Congress viscerally opposed to everything the IRS stands for.  Unless Trump is proposing to hire more IRS agents—which is clearly not the case—exactly how does he expect these unpaid taxes to be collected?

Trump says that reducing the size of the “federal bureaucracy” will help to pay for his proposed largess to the military.  The reality is that the number of civilian employees in the federal government is lower than it’s been in a generation.  The “bureaucracy” he should be worrying about is that inside the Pentagon.

Trump says that he wants our NATO allies to “pay their bills.” He clearly has no comprehension of how NATO actually works—no surprise from a candidate who understands next to nothing about nearly everything.  NATO countries have a target for defense spending that amounts to two percent of GDP, but that target is non-binding and therefore unenforceable.  Some NATO members strive to meet it; others decide to take a pass (which is their prerogative); still others simply lack the resources.  No President of the United States has any authority to change this situation, and it doesn’t matter in the end.  Even if every NATO member were to spend two percent of GDP on defense, that wouldn’t reduce our military expenditures by so much as a penny.

Trump seems to think that we have troops and military bases in Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia to accommodate the Germans, the Japanese, the South Koreans, and the Saudis.  The truth is, we have bases in those countries to advance our interests—and those countries already subsidize our military presence heavily.  In truth, several of them would be quite happy to do without the “tremendous security” Trump says we provide.

Trump’s final proposal—to pay for military expansion by “unleashing” domestic energy production—is a notion that has nothing whatever to do with military costs or energy needs, since we already have more domestic energy than we can possibly use.  It is nothing but a handout to the fossil fuel industry, under the guise of national security.

Apart from the silliness of Donald Trump’s proposals and the falsehoods he uses to justify them, his proposals pose more fundamental dangers.  American military power is a blade with two edges.  When we overreach, which happens all too often, we do not make the world safer; we make it more perilous.  Our disproportionate military power causes other nations, even our friends and allies, to distrust and fear our motives, creating resentment, civil unrest, and chaos.  The Middle East is coming apart, not because we lack sufficient military power or have failed to use it, but rather because we used our power and used it badly.  The last thing we need is still more of that power.

We should never forget Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous phrase, “shock and awe,” invoked to describe and justify the invasion of Iraq.  That invasion did, indeed, produce “shock and awe,” but not the sort that was intended.  To imagine that more military spending, more “shock and awe,” will somehow put the world right is the greatest and the worst of Donald Trump’s innumerable cons.