donald-trump | gracchusdixit

February 23, 2025

It’s Not Him, It’s Us

Donald J. Trump—a convicted felon, sexual abuser, and serial adulterer—has been President of the United States for little more than a month, yet in that time he has inflicted decades worth of damage on American democracy. The first time he occupied the White House, his presidency was so chaotic, incompetent, and unprepared, that four years later he was booted out of office, losing by seven million votes to the already doddering Joe Biden, one of the least inspiring presidential candidates in American history. This time, however, Trump and his henchmen may be no less chaotic and incompetent, but they are infinitely better prepared, and they moving swiftly to impose what can only be described as a revolutionary reign of terror on the nation.

On his first day in office, our new “fearless leader” unleashed a torrent of executive orders that violate the constitution, make a mockery of the law, and upend the fragile social and cultural balance that has held our fissiparous and centrifugal nation together for generations. In the days since, he has taken steps to impose his absolute control on the military and law enforcement, to wrest the power of the purse from Congress, and to cow the media into subservient silence. All but one of his cabinet nominees —most of whom are utterly unqualified, ethically questionable, or both—have been confirmed. And finally, Trump’s unelected doppelgänger, Elon Musk, has been let loose on the federal government, with the explicit purpose of destroying as much of it as he can.

If Trump is the sociopath that he so obviously is, then Musk qualifies as a psychopath, whose monstrous ego feeds on delusions of grandeur, is blind to his own failings, and takes pleasure in the pain and suffering of his fellow human beings. Because this latter-day Rumpelstiltskin is the world’s richest man—thanks in large part to the largess of the federal government—money-worshipping Republicans have decided that Musk is to Trump what St. Peter was to Christ, the rock on which his church was built.

As horrific as all this is, worse—much worse—is sure to come. To anyone who once dismissed Donald Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric as mere bluster or pooh-poohed the deadly seriousness of his vengeful agenda in the vain hope that he didn’t really mean it, the only thing I can say is this: It is time to wake up and shed your illusions about both the man and his malignant mission.

It is also time to shed another illusion, i.e., the always preposterous fiction that the United States of America is a morally exceptional nation and that Americans are a uniquely decent people in a world otherwise filled with sin and woe. If Americans had even a shred of decency, they would be recoiling in horror, disbelief, and outrage in the face of Trump’s cruelty. And some of them are. Most, however, seem to like what they see. Indeed, Donald Trump’s approval ratings are higher than they have ever been, and one recent poll found that, if the 2024 election were rerun today, he would win, not by the slim plurality of last November, but by a decisive majority.

Just days after that November election, the Governor of Michigan, who is, or was, frequently touted as one of the Democratic Party’s rising stars, said this:

As we move forward, let’s remember that we are a nation of good, kind people that have more in common with each other than not. Finally, let’s root for the success of the new administration and keep working together to get things done.

I have no idea whether these sentiments were sincerely meant or merely a political calculation. What I do know is that they are fatuous, false, and morally repugnant.

A “nation of good, kind people” would not allow 30 percent of its population to own more guns than automobiles, with the result that 20 percent of all the murders in the world occur in the United States and more American children are killed by guns than by any plague or disease.

A “nation of good, kind people” would not tolerate, let alone applaud, the prospect of millions of hapless immigrants being rounded up, locked away in concentration camps, and deported to God-knows-where, simply for committing the spurious “crime” of seeking a better life for themselves and their families.

A “nation of good, kind people” would not abide the denial of critical medical care to desperate women, whose only wish is to end pregnancies they never asked for, let alone stand by as all too many of them die for want of that care.

A “nation of good, kind people” would not turn a blind eye to the persecution, and soon perhaps the prosecution, of gay and transgender Americans, whose only “sin” is a desire to be the people they believe themselves to be.

The assertion that we are a “nation of good, kind people” is a travesty. The exhortation to “root for the success of the new administration” in the name of “getting things done” is far worse. This sort of cheerleading nonsense is more than naive, it is a grotesque failure of moral and historical imagination. Most of all, it is a failure to see the “American people” for what they are and always have been: insular and ignorant, bigoted and backward, self-centered and all too frequently cruel. Rooting for the success of the Trump administration is tantamount to cheering on Adolf Hitler’s plan to exterminate the Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, and other “inferior” beings of Europe.

H. L. Mencken, the most acerbic observer of the American scene who ever put pen to paper, once wrote:

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

Little did even the quintessentially cynical Mencken imagine that the White House would someday be adorned, not merely by a “downright moron,” but by a convicted criminal and a psychological freak. Say what you will about the man, Donald Trump has always made his freakish and criminal intentions clear. That 77 million Americans voted for him nonetheless is a stain upon this country and its people that can never be erased.

October 26, 2024

The Devil We May Deserve

For months, we have been pummeled with warnings by pundits and politicians, by scholars and historians, and, increasingly, by former government officials and military officers, that the upcoming presidential election will decide not merely which of the two candidates on the ballot will prevail but whether American democracy itself can be saved from the blatantly authoritarian impulses of Donald Trump. There is a good deal of truth in this warning, but not the whole truth, for there is an infinitely more consequential question on the ballot. That question is whether American democracy can be saved from itself.

Unless something dramatic occurs to change the trajectory of this election, there is every possibility that an unapologetic racist, misogynist, and fascist may not only win but also be elected democratically—that a majority of Americans, exercising their right to vote, may elect to end the very democracy that gave them that right in the first place.

As shocking this prospect is, it is not surprising, because democratic peoples have for ages exhibited a willingness, even an enthusiasm, to embrace demagogues and dictators. When Winston Churchill famously observed, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time,” he wasn’t extolling democracy, as so many seem to think. He was damning it with the faint praise of being the least-worst among a series of dreadful choices.

Churchill knew his history.

The citizens of the first democracy in the world, that of ancient Athens, readily subordinated themselves to the dictatorship of Pericles. The citizens of the first republic in the world, that of Rome, willingly surrendered their ancient freedoms to Julius Caesar and his successor, who ended the Roman Republic forever. The people of England, having deposed and beheaded a supposedly tyrannical king, promptly installed Oliver Cromwell as their “Lord Protector,” a hifalutin euphemism for dictator. From Pericles to Peròn, from Caesar to Cromwell, from Mussolini to Modi, dictators and demagogues have for centuries been elected or empowered by the citizens of supposedly democratic nations. If Adolf Hitler had deigned to hold a free and fair election, does anyone seriously doubt that an overwhelming majority of the German people would have cheerfully shouted Sieg Heil as their goose-stepped their way to the polls?

Decent, liberal-minded Americans like to think that free and fair elections inevitably lead to decent, liberal-minded results. In this, they are kidding themselves. At least half the population of the United States, which for the better part of three hundred years has congratulated itself on the purported strength of its democratic institutions and constitutional “checks and balances,” seems eager to vote for a cowardly thug who isn’t qualified to run a Seven-Eleven—a man who squandered the vast fortune handed to him by his crooked father, has filed bankruptcy half a dozen times, and has committed countless cons and crimes, not to mention being a serial adulterer, a convicted sexual abuser, and so morally depraved that he has openly fantasized about dating his own daughter. Why would millions of Americans even consider voting for such a monster?

There are at least two reasons.

The first is the stupendous ignorance of much of the electorate. When it comes to literacy, the United States ranks 36th among the nations of the world. A majority of Americans read below a sixth grade level. Fewer than half can name the three branches of government, and only one in four can name even a single branch. One in three dismiss evolution as a “theory” unsupported by facts or evidence, one in five think that the sun revolves around the earth, and almost as many believe that the earth is flat. Copernicus, Galileo, and Darwin must be rolling in their graves. At the same time, eight in ten Americans believe in miracles, seven in ten believe in angels, four in ten think that ghosts and UFOs are real phenomena, and a comparable number have convinced themselves that dinosaurs and human beings walked the earth together, even though the last dinosaur disappeared millions of years before the first human being crawled out of the antediluvian mud.

As Thomas Jefferson famously remarked: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free…it expects what never was and never will be.”

This ignorance is no accident. It is the direct result of an organized effort by political and social conservatives to keep Americans as ill-informed as possible, lest they realize how destructive the conservative agenda truly is. That is the motive animating the right-wing attack on universities, calls to privatize public education, the banning of books and the condemnation of “woke” content, and demands that prayer be mandated in classrooms and “creationism” be required in school curricula. This anti-intellectual jihad is justified in the name of “parental rights” and “religious freedom,” when, in fact, it is nothing more than an effort to keep Americans as dumb as possible—an effort that has proved to be tragically successful.

The second reason so many Americans are ready to embrace a self-absorbed sociopath like Donald Trump is that they themselves are no less self-absorbed and narcissistic than the devil they adore. It was the psychologist and philosopher Erich Fromm who first recognized that, not only individuals, but entire nations and societies are susceptible to this sort of pathology. In his most influential work, “An Anatomy of Human Destructiveness,” Fromm provided this prescient diagnosis of narcissistic political figures and the narcissistic nations that embrace them:

Among political leaders a high degree of narcissism is very frequent; it may be considered an occupational illness—or asset—especially among those who owe their power to their influence over mass audiences. If the leader is convinced of his extraordinary gifts and of his mission, it will be easier to convince the large audiences who are attracted by men who appear to be so absolutely certain. But the narcissistic leader does not use his narcissistic charisma only as a means for political success; he needs success and applause for the sake of his own mental equilibrium. The idea of his greatness and infallibility is essentially based on his narcissistic grandiosity, not on his real achievements as a human being. And yet he cannot do without the narcissistic inflation because his human core—conviction, conscience, love, and faith—is not very developed. Extremely narcissistic persons are often almost forced to become famous, since otherwise they might become depressed and insane…Popular success is, as it were, their self-therapy against depression and madness. In fighting for their aims, they are really fighting for their sanity.

When, in group narcissism, the object is not the individual but the group to which he belongs, the individual can be fully aware of it, and express it without any restrictions. The assertion that “my country” (or nation, or religion) is the most wonderful, the most cultured, the most powerful, the most peace-loving, etc., does not sound crazy at all; on the contrary, it sounds like the expression of patriotism, faith, and loyalty. It also appears to be a realistic and rational value judgment because it is shared by many members of the same group. This consensus succeeds in transforming the phantasy into reality, since for most people reality is constituted by general consensus and not based on reason or critical examination.

If those words, written more than 50 years ago, do not describe the crisis we now face, I don’t know what possibly could.

To rid ourselves of the political pathology embodied by Donald Trump, we must first cure ourselves of the same disease. To proclaim incessantly, as so many at both ends of the political spectrum do, that the United States of America is “the greatest nation on earth,” a “shining city upon a hill,” and the “last, best hope of mankind,” is errant nonsense.

There is no doubt that our nation has many virtues, and I would be the last to suggest otherwise. But it also has many flaws, and it is no way “unpatriotic” to acknowledge them. On the contrary, those who truly love this country must be prepared to atone for its sins.

The origin story of our nation is riddled with theft, murder, the enslavement of millions of human beings, and the ruthless depredation of natural resources. No amount of flag-waving chauvinism and self-aggrandizing rhetoric can erase these facts. Nor can it paper over the deep-seated racial prejudices that have never been expunged from American society.

It is not only our past that plagues us, it is our present. We are drowning in guns and gun violence. We are among the most economically unequal nations in the world, with disparities between rich and poor that make many so-called “third world” countries look positively egalitarian. We fail to provide rudimentary social services—universal health care, child care, parental leave—that are taken for granted in other industrialized nations, because millions of Americans condemn such common decency as “socialism,” all the while they haven’t the slightest idea what “socialism” actually is.

Even our much-vaunted constitution, with its supposedly wise architecture of “checks and balances,” has proved to be a papier mâché construction, powerless to stop the authoritarian onslaught of Donald Trump. On the contrary, the specifically anti-democratic design of that constitution—crafted nearly 300 years by 55 white men, 25 of whom were slave-owners—has done little but to enable that onslaught.

It no longer even remotely plausible to imagine that ours is a morally “exceptional” nation, immune to the relentless vagaries of history. Our only “greatness” resides in a transitory material wealth and military power. It will not be long before this disappears and with all the “pomp of yesterday is one with Nineveh and Tyre”. To pretend otherwise is a narcissistic delusion.

Until and unless we confront our own political and social pathology, until we shed our delusions of grandeur and learn to live more humbly, we will never purge ourselves of the moral evil and psychological malady that Donald Trump represents. If we do not do so, the blame will be not his, it will be ours, and we will have elected the devil we deserve.

February 21, 2024

The Cry-Wolf “Crisis at the Border”

To hear Donald Trump and his sycophantic enablers tell the tale, the United States of America is being overwhelmed by a tsunami of illegal immigrants who pose an existential threat, not only to this country, but to “civilization” itself. Bellowing in Hitlerian terms that these desperate people are “vermin poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump has declared his intention, if he regains the White House ten months from now, to use the military to expel them from the country or to lock them away in what used to be called “concentration camps”.

Far from alienating voters, this vicious rhetoric has thus far served Trump well. In Iowa, where he clobbered the pathetic remaining candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, the number one issue was immigration. Even in New Hampshire, where one might have expected a more rational response, angry fantasies about the dangers of immigration loomed large. All this, despite the fact that these small and comparatively isolated states are among the most lily-white in the nation, in which immigrants are only slightly less rare than unicorns and just about as dangerous.

If Trump succeeds in defeating Joe Biden this November—the horrific possibility of which seems likelier by the day—the proximate cause will surely be America’s hysterical overreaction to the so-called “crisis at the border”.

As if that prospect weren’t depressing enough, Joe Biden himself has all but abandoned his promise to bring about a more humane immigration regime, in effect kowtowing to Trump’s preposterous and vicious claims. It would seem that the geriatric establishment in charge of the Democratic Party is terrified that if their geriatric president dared to tell the American people the truth, both he and they would soon be out of work.

And what is the truth?

That truth is that the “crisis at the border” is a hoax conjured up to serve the demagogic purposes of a nihilistic Republican Party that has no political program beyond slavishly supporting Donald Trump, without regard for facts or evidence, common sense or common decency.

The truth is that millions of helpless yet hopeful people yearn to immigrate to the United States legally, as they have for generations, but we make it all but impossible for them to do so, not because they pose any sort of threat but, rather, because we refuse to let them in. Fewer than 15 percent of Americans were born outside this country. In neighboring Canada, the number is 21 percent. Indeed, the number of immigrants in this country, as a share of our total population, is close to an all-time low, ranking us 56th in the world.

The truth is that, far from being a land that welcomes the “huddled masses yearning to be free,” our country is deeply xenophobic. Not only do we prevent immigrants from entering our country legally, we make it even harder for them to become citizens. Still worse, we turn our backs on those seeking asylum from the chaos and violence created by our very own political and economic misdeeds: countless CIA coups against democratically elected governments, innumerable assassinations of left-leaning politicians, and the utterly immoral practice of propping up right-wing dictators whose only virtue is their willingness to do the bidding of our nation’s biggest corporations.

The ultimate truth is that the “crisis at the border” is not caused by desperate immigrants and refugees trying to get in; it is caused by the cruel and perverse efforts of the United States to keep them out.

No amount of truth, however, is or will ever be enough to prevent right-wing fear-mongers from demonizing immigrants and peddling outrageous lies to justify their authoritarian purposes. To cite but one example, a “senior research fellow” at the Heritage Foundation named Robert Rector, posing as an expert on immigration, recently testified before Congress. Whatever expertise Mr. Rector may or may not possess, the Heritage Foundation is little more than a front for the anti-democratic agenda of the right-wing billionaires who control the Republican Party and have saddled us with the conservative majority now in charge of the Supreme Court. It was therefore not surprising that Mr. Rector’s testimony was riddled with falsehoods and misrepresentations. Here is one of the most egregious:

An extensive study by the National Academies of Science (NAS), “The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration,”…confirms that immigrants with low levels of education impose large fiscal burdens on U.S. taxpayers.

And here is the actual text of the study Rector cites:

“The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration” finds that the long-term impact of immigration on the wages and employment of native-born workers overall is very small…This report concludes that immigration has an overall positive impact on long-run economic growth in the U.S.

From the very first day Europeans set foot on the North American continent, searching for a better life, hoping to escape the political, social, and economic tyrannies that oppressed them at home, one wave of immigration after another has enlarged and enriched the nation. What would this country be without the millions of Irish, Italian, German, Jewish, Dutch, and Scandinavian immigrants who poured into this country in the 19th and early 20th centuries? Why do we imagine that the contributions of Spanish-speaking or Asian immigrants will be any less?

The terrible truth is that, throughout the tortured history of our nation, the immigrants who were lucky enough to get here first have routinely demonized those who followed. It wasn’t that long ago when the high-and-mighty descendants of the English Protestants who settled New England were decrying the arrival of Catholic immigrants from famine-ridden Ireland and impoverished Italy, Jewish refugees from the pogroms of Imperial Russia, or Poles and Slavs striving to escape centuries of oppression, war, and rapine. The irony is that the descendants of those once despised and downtrodden immigrants now eagerly embrace the brutalizing demagoguery of Donald Trump, because the immigrants he demonizes have brown or black skins and speak Spanish, Chinese, or Hindi.

The anodyne and shopworn cliché that the United States is “a nation of immigrants” misses the point. The point is that, without immigrants, the United States would not exist at all. Without a steady influx of immigrants, the population of the United States would age and wither on the vine, like the populations of so many European countries. Far from being a drain on our economy or a threat to our culture, immigrants are, as they have always been, the very lifeblood of the nation.