If you're on the left, you'll remember this past week for its many shocking twists and turns, its many hate crimes and racial bullying incidents, and the many perplexing reactions to these ugly things.
That's natural, of course. I don't know if there's anyone out there who doesn't grasp this yet, but we are in the midst of a discussion about what it means to be an American. And what it means to be liberal or conservative. And I know that many of you believe we are entering a phase not unlike the early days of the Third Reich. I haven't heard recently from the colleague who was outraged at some length by my pre-election suggestion that Trump's rise shared some characteristics with the years when Hitler was trying to establish HIS brand, but I assume my Internet friend will be continuing the important job of reminding us petulantly that Hitler and the Nazis were worse. There's a perverse irony, of course, in the notion that people probably pitched in to deny and dismiss the first public nastiness back in Germany too, but those same incidents, now long documented and the stuff of consensus (to the extent that consensus is a thing loose in the world these days), are now being used to diminish the significance of our current American ones.
The spin people put on these things should be itself documented and set aside in a time capsule for a magical future when Americans, no longer inflamed by the notion that their intolerance won't be tolerated, will blandly walk through a museum exhibit looking at examples of historically important rationalizing of evil (I refer not to the contrived perception of "the media" as evil, but rather to the actual evil of threatening to cause people harm, or in fact causing it, while chanting the name of an admired public figure as a kind of "April Fool!" exclamation that inoculates one against criticism).
If you have twenty seconds available, you can catch Trump's attempt in a CNN interview to denounce these things while also diminishing them and deflecting blame, which is the way Trump has generally handled apology in the past. The only kind of guilt Trump's internal neurons can process is "guilty with an explanation," as if he's an eternal Eddie Haskell while the rest of us are always cast as Wally and The Beav, admitting when caught that we guess "maybe we wouldn't have done any of that goofy junk, if we'd only known it was gonna make everybody so crazy and stuff."
So I'm going to make not a prediction, but a guess. And it's only a guess, and it's based on very little evidence. I'm guessing that we're likely to sail into a port that's more like the McCarthy era than the Holocaust.
Here is the dubious evidence and logic supporting my gut feeling.
When I look at a photo of Steve Bannon, I feel that I'm seeing a schlumpy and disheveled guy who might be willing to help spread the Protocols of the Elders of Zion around, if it would help keep the rubes entertained, but whose own racism is more about not wanting Jews talking to his kids, or packing their lunches; he doesn't look like a man with the balls to tick off names on a clipboard while corpses are stacked like cordwood. I freely admit I'm basing this mostly on photos of his pants. But I suspect he's not angling for another genocide, if only because of the expense.
Likewise, it's hard to see Newt Gingrich as a Speer or a Goebbels. It's easier to see him as a Roy Cohn figure, with the more dyspeptic Giuliani standing in for Tailgunner Joe. I do think these two gentlemen of the Grand Old Party will accept a certain amount of heinous behavior in the homeland, indulgently cataloging it as a statistically insignificant side effect of this glorious and long-needed corrective to rampant liberalism and the chilling of redneck speech, but I suspect even they will stop short of state-sponsored murder. They would probably balk at the amount of federal employees needed for such a "big government" project.
Consider Paul Ryan. Ryan is sort of the Richie Cunningham to the conservative think tank crowd's Arnold's Drive-In. Despite Ryan's youth and resilience, I believe that even he is capable of overextending himself during a short term orgy of safety net dismantling. Staying up late to finish a batch of legislation before one of their many, many recesses, Ryan might pull a muscle, or come down with something. While convalescing, he would likely survey the American landscape and reflect that it's one thing to put families out in the street, but quite another to mow them down with expensive weapons. That's not what he signed on for, bucko!
Again, this is not a prediction. I recall feeling this way during the Bush era, when my cautious Americanism following 9/11 soon gave way to paranoia about our rights and our privacy. The right was slow to condemn the Bush erosion of our rights, mostly waiting until Obama decided to continue much of it before showing how angry it made them. And I read this morning that Kellyanne Conway was gently warning Harry Reid that his salty cornpone grousing was seditious. This coming era does seem more malignant than the earlier one already, and it's not clear to me that there will be any counter-balancing Michael Gerson figure in the Trump White House. Gerson was sort of the Bush administration Lorax, always working to inject a little Christ into the Christian-derived policy.
Now, we turn to Trump himself. I don't think Trump is a super villain, with a cadre of henchmen eager to do his bidding. Most of these luminaries are psychologically and intellectually very different from the Donald. They've been waiting for this day almost as long as Cubs fans, and they are giddy over the prospect of a one-party state with no meaningful dissent. They see our government as a sort of factory, which now can finally be switched over from the production of political correctness to the noble wartime role of cranking out nationalism, while rationing everything people actually use to feed their families.
Many of us watched what happened to Gingrich in the long-ago Clinton era. Given an apparent mandate, he promptly overreached and lost his job. Presumably he sees this new world as a far better situation for him, because for all of the quirks and head-scratching utterances of Newt and the other establishment bomb throwers who now get cubicles in the coming regime, I believe this crowd has Trump's number. I suspect they see Trump as I do, a fat pitch to guys who had been benched for too long. The Gingrich/Giuliani/Christie ganglia must have been twitching during the past year as Trump's fact-averse train waggled its provocatively empty caboose. Christie has now been tossed over the side like ballast, but Gingrich and Giuliani have taken over the dining car and put their feet up on the cheap seats.
They can't have missed the lesson in the odd spectacle of Trump wavering on various previous Commandments following a genial meeting where Obama swallowed his pride and kissed the Trump rump. I don't think Obama, for all his charm and rhetoric, could have talked Trump's circle out of anything, but Trump is no Moses. It appears that his need for yes-men is the real story, and any implied core values are us projecting onto a guy who spent decades as a Democrat when that was a good way to hobnob with liberal hotties. We now know that George Wallace's xenophobic message had more to do with his lust for power than with his own thinking, and Trump seems a more complex but related phenomenon. Trump has enjoyed his role as a Billy Mays-like pitchman at the giant infomercial rallies which he wants to continue as president, but away from the madding crowds he still needs constant mollifying and deference. He won't get that from Mitch McConnell, but the inner circle doesn't have McConnell's job security. They know damn well that they've lucked into the opportunity of a lifetime, and all they need do to keep getting paid is to rub Trump's belly once in a while. I think Bannon saw Trump coming, as a Best Buy clerk might spot a lawyer in need of a home entertainment system, and he is entirely comfortable with his new role as a schlubby Iago, but Trump doesn't really share either Bannon's curious racism or the Ryan/Gingrich long-nursed crush on Ayn Rand. Trump just wants people to treat him "fairly," which for a wealthy narcissist means pretty much what it means for any bratty kid whose parents buy him life size robot playmates at Hammacher Schlemmer. For these various "surrogates," the situation is well nigh perfect, because whatever happens, Trump will take the blame.
A word to the wise: I know you're thinking that a loud principled stand is what's needed to stem the tide of Nazi-like horror. Perhaps you are correct, but make no mistake-- we are living in an era where the more self-righteous liberals get, the more Trump's legions double down on whatever bubble-nourished rationalizing they are enjoying along with their domestic beer and empty calories. I'm inclined to try to engage the angry mob one at a time, knowing that they aren't used to being treated with respect and kindness by liberals, and hoping that they won't be taking the trouble to read anything like this piece, with its longueurs and eyeball-straining prolixity. Liberals are their real enemy, no matter how much they talk about Muslims and Mexicans. I'll be reaching across the aisle, knowing full well that the aisle now spews lava and brimstone that will singe my remaining hair. You can tilt at your windmills, and I'll tilt at mine, and we'll just have to hope that Trump's ragtag coalition isn't quite willing or able to transform the USA into an authoritarian dystopia, where pussies are grabbed, speech is curbed, and non-Nordics are hustled off stage to the accompaniment of a military band playing a tightly rehearsed version of "Wagon Wheel."
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