11-08-2020, 07:17 AM
The Trump cult is gone, or at least moribund. Receptiveness to cult messages never quite goes away. Cults are dependencies as are addictive behaviors -- gambling, compulsive shopping, compulsive sex, alcohol, and drugs. The need that people who supported Trump for reasons other than partisanship (the Republican Party used to be a benign organization!) for an idealized leader who tells them exactly what they want to hear is still there.
If we are Democrats we need not be so smug: that sort of person could conceivably hijack our Party. To be sure, many of us have said that we as liberals would reject a candidate with Trump's dishonesty if he gave us a huge amount of boilerplate liberalism. Donald Trump really is a shallow, horrible person. But suppose that we Democrats are in trouble politically due to some demographic decline. So he gives us voters that we have never had before even if we are uncomfortable with them, but those people are simply crazy. They fall for wild conspiracy theories that we pooh-pooh.
No matter where we are we must choose our allies wisely. Some hangers-on are just not worth it. If you are a conservative, then fascistic types are the ones who, should you get their votes, will demand of you what you cannot deliver -- and they will have infected a part of your constituency that never was fascist. We don't want any "ethnic cleansing", do we? If you are a liberal, then you don't want Marxist-Leninists in your midst. I think of the dictatorship in Venezuela: what once had been originally social-democratic took on dangerously radical and authoritarian qualities. Just think of what we could have ended up with as liberals if we sought to rush our return to power without doing what is usually necessary (building credibility in local elections, developing coalitions, vetting out extremists, and insisting upon character). We might have ended up with our own version of Donald Trump, someone like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
We Democrats have much forgiving to do. Those people who voted for Trump because he scared them about Biden being too much like Fidel Castro or Nicolas Maduro? We need to make sure that we don't fall for any left-wing extremism ourselves, and it is best that such people who voted for Trump as an expression of disdain for Castroism in Cuba or Chavecismo in Venezuela demonstrate clearly that we are democrats first and reformers second. (I hope that such people come to recognize that Trump is basically a right-wing version of Castro, Chavez, or Maduro).
Having impeached Donald Trump at the polling place, which is our only means, we are in new and uncharted territory in American history. We are still in the Fourth Turning.
If we are Democrats we need not be so smug: that sort of person could conceivably hijack our Party. To be sure, many of us have said that we as liberals would reject a candidate with Trump's dishonesty if he gave us a huge amount of boilerplate liberalism. Donald Trump really is a shallow, horrible person. But suppose that we Democrats are in trouble politically due to some demographic decline. So he gives us voters that we have never had before even if we are uncomfortable with them, but those people are simply crazy. They fall for wild conspiracy theories that we pooh-pooh.
No matter where we are we must choose our allies wisely. Some hangers-on are just not worth it. If you are a conservative, then fascistic types are the ones who, should you get their votes, will demand of you what you cannot deliver -- and they will have infected a part of your constituency that never was fascist. We don't want any "ethnic cleansing", do we? If you are a liberal, then you don't want Marxist-Leninists in your midst. I think of the dictatorship in Venezuela: what once had been originally social-democratic took on dangerously radical and authoritarian qualities. Just think of what we could have ended up with as liberals if we sought to rush our return to power without doing what is usually necessary (building credibility in local elections, developing coalitions, vetting out extremists, and insisting upon character). We might have ended up with our own version of Donald Trump, someone like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
We Democrats have much forgiving to do. Those people who voted for Trump because he scared them about Biden being too much like Fidel Castro or Nicolas Maduro? We need to make sure that we don't fall for any left-wing extremism ourselves, and it is best that such people who voted for Trump as an expression of disdain for Castroism in Cuba or Chavecismo in Venezuela demonstrate clearly that we are democrats first and reformers second. (I hope that such people come to recognize that Trump is basically a right-wing version of Castro, Chavez, or Maduro).
Having impeached Donald Trump at the polling place, which is our only means, we are in new and uncharted territory in American history. We are still in the Fourth Turning.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.