Where Does Trumpism Go Now? It Becomes Terrorism — And It’s Already Beginning
Image Credit: Bryan Woolston
What Do Fanatical Movements Do After Democracy Rejects Them? They Double Down on Violence
by umair haque
It’s been a terrible few weeks for the former President of the United States, the Orange Buffoon. So many hammer blows have hit him, it’s hard to keep track. His “organization” — what is this, a mafia? — was found guilty of fraud. The Jan 6th Committee’s going to issue criminal referrals. He was overtaken in the polls by Ron DeSantis, a man who has all the charm of Satan selling you a Tesla. And that’s after — and because — he bombed in the midterms, his slate of candidates being roundly rejected by Americans, his reannoucement bid being met with yawns of indifference and scathing laughter.
So. Where does Trumpism go from here? The answer to that question’s simple, and it’s grim, revealing, and will define a great deal about America, and the world, going forward. Now? Now Trumpism becomes terrorism.
I touched on this briefly a week or two back, and as if right on cue…well…you can actually now see it happening. In North Carolina, a power substation was shot up, depriving thousands of electricity. Allegedly, apparently, that’s the work of the far right, who wanted to block an LGBTQ event. The police and FBI haven’t verified, but honestly, let’s just be real: it’s not exactly the kind of vandalism teens do for fun, and hillbillies don’t exactly shoot up power stations for target practice. This was a deliberate act of…terror.
Aimed at one of Trumpism’s prime targets, of course. I’ll come back to that shortly. First, let’s discuss the context.
Where does Trumpism go from here? Well, politically, it’s dead. It’s toxic. Just like everything the far right touches, Trumpism died an ignoble death. And the way it died is remarkable, too. Americans didn’t just question it at the midterms — they rejected it in sweeping terms. Trumpism died just as it was born — from the bottom up. DC insiders didn’t expect the average American to turn away from Trumpism, and neither did pundits. Americans did that by, and for, themselves.
Why? When they write the history books, the story will probably go like this. When Trumpism arrived, it was something new and fascinating. For the first time, there was a figure from outside the political establishment, who sympathized with — and spoke for — America’s underclass. That means what remained of its once proud working and middle class — because by 2010 or so, the middle class was a minority, and most Americans lived on a carousel of unpayable debt. When the music stopped — they were out in the cold. Hardly surprising then, that most American deeply distrust political institutions. Trump arrived to prey on this distrust — and began to scapegoat minorities.
For a time, Americans believed him, even if many of them did so hesitantly. This was a new proposition — or at least new in contemporary history, at any rate. It was those bad people who’d caused the fortunes of the middle and working class to implode. Who were they?
You see, as Trump rose to power, now he had to deliver. Deliver what? Deliver some semblance of the dream again. Prosperity, of the post-war kind. It was never going to happen, because of course blaming scapegoats for the woes of the rest isn’t a solution to much of anything — it’s just a tactic to gain power, employed by history’s worst narcissists. And so the circle of scapegoating grew and grew, because when blaming one group didn’t work, soon enough, another had to be found. So America’s scapegoats went from Mexicans to Latinos to their families to their children, to immigrants in general, and then way, way beyond that. Now “real” Americans were on the list, too. The LGBTQ, women, kids of all kinds.
Reading that book? Banned. Think you might be a little different? We’re going to investigate your whole family. You’re a what..a woman? Sorry, you don’t deserve rights. Gay? Oh, you mean you’re a “groomer.” A red line was being crossed now. Trumpism was going after everyone. And it was becoming plainer and plainer to see just why. The scapegoating wasn’t doing anything — nothing — to restore the prosperity of the average Joe. And after a while, he or she began to ask: is it really OK to…just hate…all these people? Is it solving anything?
And then Jan 6th happened. And this, too, was a self-inflicted disaster for Trumpism. To that point, many people who’d believed Trump’s speeches and his fiery rhetoric might have dismissed it — and often did — as “just” that. Hey, he’s just a passionate guy. He has no filter. He says whatever’s on his mind, and I like it. He doesn’t mean it, though. He’s not actually going to go out there and…wait, what? He did what? He led a coup attempt on Congress? Where fascist paramilitaries stormed it? And spilled blood in those hallowed halls.
Jesus. Maybe I was wrong. That’s what a lot of American appear to have thought, because after Jan 6th, the tide began to turn decisively against Trumpism. Now, many former true believers appeared to feel something Trump couldn’t. Two things, to be precise: shame, and remorse. I’ve made a mistake. This is going too far. I’m not actually in favor of any of this. I think that it’s totally OK for gay people to exist and be married and I think my wife and kids and daughters should have rights and kids of all kinds should be able to read books and whatnot. This is…this is way, way too much. I thought he was just being a firebrand — I didn’t think he was actually a violent lunatic. And now that I see he is one, well, I’m rethinking my commitment to this whole ugly project. Do I want to be like that guy, the Orange Buffoon? Someone hateful and violent and ignorant? No way.
Trumpism began to die this way. You could see that even the Big Lies keeping it alive at that stage weren’t really whole-heartedly believed in anymore. People who were once keepers of the Trumpist flame would recite them, sure — the election was stolen!! Fraud!! And so forth — but in their eyes, you could see that the spark had gone. They were saying it to fit in now, not because they really had faith in it anymore.
And then along came the series of official hammer blows that began to deconstruct Trumpism. Justice was slow to arrive, to be sure, but when it did, it was brutal. Ringleaders of Jan 6th were tried for sedition — an incredibly serious crime. And the Jan 6th Commission made it meticulously, painstakingly clear to every American what had really happened on Jan 6th. Far from being some kind of rally gone wrong, it was a planned, coordinated, “sophisticated multi-part plan”…to destroy democracy. A classic pattern of soft coup becoming hard coup. That kind of thing sinks into a nation’s collective consciousness. It alters the way that people see history. Norms and moral structures begin to change. So do relationships and ways of thinking. Something that big? An attack on democracy itself? You can pretend to ignore it, but nobody really does. And this thought — it really was an attack on democracy — began to haunt even the everyday Trumpists now, and they seemed to feel the shame and regret Trump couldn’t. And so by the midterms, it was a blowout — Americans turned their back on Trumpism, in a remarkable accomplishment for any democracy, sending it to history’s dustbin.
That brings us to now. What’s left of Trumpism now is a kind of shell. At its top is the GOP, which is still captive to Trump, even though it doesn’t want to be, because he’s cost it three elections and counting. They don’t have much of an alternative at the moment, though, because they’re weak and afraid, which is the kinds of people Trump elevated to begin with, for precisely this reason. And its base is left the last few true believers. They’re hardened, committed, fanatics. The kinds of people for whom violence and brutality and hate aren’t a cause for shame and regret — but the point.
And in between this, the top and bottom of the shell, is a Great Exodus — the average American who once believed in this outsiders’ movement, against their better judgment, perhaps, fleeing as fast as they can, back to everyday politics in America. I’ll have a little bit of economic conservatism, and a little social liberalism, please, one scoop of each, and don’t overfill the cup on either side. And most of them feel good being back in that place, because it’s, well, sane. Calm. Pleasant. Peaceful. It doesn’t require spending hours a day exhausting yourself by hating some poor innocent person, and then crowing about it to your friends, and everyone has pretend they’re not secretly feeling ashamed of being that kind of person.
Now. This shell is beginning a kind of vicious cycle, if I can mix metaphors a bit. What tends to happen in situations like this goes like this. A fanatical movement is rejected by the mainstream. What was once a silent majority roars. No more. We’ve had enough. We’re going back to normality, thank you very much — no more Big Lies, no more fake slates of electors, no more plots, and definitely no more coups, hate, violence, bigotry. Everyone lives in peace, and we try to better each others’ lot. That’s how this country works.