While some are lauding the criminal convictions of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and former Trump lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen as evidence that our institutions are capable of thwarting the Trump menace, and also as a historical opportunity for our Democracy to reassert itself, Nobel Prize winner and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is considerably less sanguine.
I felt a sense of deepened dread as I watched the Republican reaction: Faced with undeniable evidence of Trump’s thuggishness, his party closed ranks around him more tightly than ever.
He cites the behavior of two European countries that Americans seldom think about—Poland and Hungary—as evidence of how quickly so-called Democracies can fail their people in an environment that succumbs to white nationalism and xenophobia, which are exactly the type of sentiments that the Republican Party finds itself beholden to, in its newly-embraced role as the proxy enabler of Donald Trump.
In both countries the ruling parties — Law and Justice in Poland, Fidesz in Hungary — have established regimes that maintain the forms of popular elections, but have destroyed the independence of the judiciary, suppressed freedom of the press, institutionalized large-scale corruption and effectively delegitimized dissent.
Overshadowed by the death of Senator John McCain, the big news this weekend was the discovery of a “spreadsheet” making the rounds of the Republican Congress, describing in lurid detail the type of criminal investigations and inquiries this Administration will face if Democrats re-take control of the House of Representatives on November 6th. Tellingly, the “spread sheet” is being circulated not to illustrate the depths of depravity that the Administration has sunken to, or the fact that these are the types of investigations that ought to be conducted by any law-abiding legislative body in the face of venality like Trump’s, but rather to instill a sense of urgency and “resolve” for the Party now committed to defending him.
The thing about the list is that every item on it — starting with Donald Trump’s tax returns — is something that obviously should be investigated, and would have been investigated under any other president. But the people circulating the document simply take it for granted that Republicans won’t address any of these issues: Party loyalty will prevail over constitutional responsibility.
On both the national and statewide level, Republicans are becoming increasingly blatant in their embrace of a totalitarian ethic, where raw power is the only currency that matters. Institutions that are theoretically supposed to preserve our democracy are being tossed aside with impunity and arrogance—the Republican-dominated West Virginia legislature impeaches its entire state Supreme Court; the Republican-dominated North Carolina legislature vengefully passes legislation to curtail the powers of a newly elected Democratic governor; a county in Georgia tries to close African-American polling places under the bogus guise of complying with the Americans with Disability Act. Individually, these appear as disparate attacks of democratic institutions, but collectively, they begin to form a pattern—a marked, noticeable shift away from respect for the law and towards the imposition of autocratic solutions upon the population.
And probably most disturbing of all is the abject silence of nearly every Republican holding elected office, in the face of the ever-widening gyre of corruption and criminality surrounding this Administration.
A year ago it seemed possible that there might be limits to the party’s complicity, that there would come a point where at least a few representatives or senators would say, no more. Now it’s clear that there are no limits: They’ll do whatever it takes to defend Trump and consolidate power.
The common denominator Krugman sees between what so swiftly happened to Poland and Hungary and what is happening to us is that a huge segment of the American public is being led by the nose with a politics of resentment rooted in white grievance. Call it the ”othering” of America. Call it whatever you want—it is the one motivator common to Trump’s base of support—the feeling, ginned up by hysterical “populism”—that white people are under some type of mortal threat. And it is the same motivator of those former European democracies that have so swiftly fallen into autocracies. All it takes is a loudmouth with a megaphone, and a following, and an opportunistic political party supporting him that consciously chooses to abandon notions of “right” and “wrong.”
The point is that we’re suffering from the same disease — white nationalism run wild — that has already effectively killed democracy in some other Western nations. And we’re very, very close to the point of no return.
So yes, this election is a historical moment. Either we prevail in November and preserve our Democracy, or we fall increasingly into the grip of what can only be described as fascism.