Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result
Democrats' Election Strategy and the American Appetite for Fascism
At Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally/racist bacchanal Sunday night, the slogan written on his podium and projected onscreen read: Trump Will Fix It. Many people — seemingly half of all Americans — not only believe that distortion, they embrace it.
Trump has always been a racist, misogynist aspiring autocrat. The Democratic party seems to think that if they just explain him in a new way, a more comprehensible way, with a different mouthpiece, then – finally! - voters will understand. But voters already do.1 And the only way I personally can make it through November 5 (and the anticipated months of litigation to follow if Trump loses on Election Day) is to face this reality head-on, accept it, and work against it however I can. Because it’s not enough to urge voters away from fascism by appealing to the value of democracy. People like Donald Trump. And, apparently, they like knowing that someone is going to come in and run things and they won’t have to worry about it anymore (especially if that person is not female). Trump Will Fix It.
Since Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign began, he has been very clear about his goals and his aspirations and his personal and ethical failings. He is consistently clear about who he is and what he wants (despite his allies’ best efforts to elide the truth). It’s just that many of us have trouble believing that so many people would actually want such a person in charge of our country. Look at the crowds on Sunday night rallying in New York City — New York City! It’s time to accept this reality.
While many Americans seem eager for a dictator to come in and take over and relieve them of responsibility for life decisions, some powerful Americans are simply eager to get in on the ground floor with the dictator before he assumes his mantle. This election cycle illustrates – depressingly – that the country rests on a bedrock foundation of putting self over others.2 American individualism, indeed.
In response to this, Democrats have tried in vain different ways of explaining the same thing: what Trump will do if reelected. (I’m not going to list the potential outcomes here because it’s numbing in its familiarity, the horror leached out by repetition.) Democrats have tried all sorts of ways to explain the stakes: Ousting a sitting President. Gathering the biggest celebrities. Stumping with Republicans. Quoting Trump’s own former, terrified staff.
It doesn’t matter. His supporters seem to understand the stakes, seem to buy what he’s selling, racism and misogyny included (or simply ignored). It’s not that we are flooded with disinformation. I mean, we are, but that isn’t the driver here, as I see it.
Billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Siang, the owners of two indispensable major newspapers (the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times) illustrate the behavior of the other sort of Trump supporter, the Power Player, who attempts to game the system by thinking they can outsmart or appease the incoming autocrat. It’s sad, really. They are misguided if they think that anticipating Trump’s requests now will save them later.
Briefly: both newspaper owners required that their editors pull endorsements of Kamala Harris, a week out from the election, after the vetting and investigating and writing was nearly complete. (See Democracy Dies in Broad Daylight.) The purported reasons don’t really matter in the long run. (Because of Gaza according to Soon-Siang’s daughter; in order to return to the paper’s “roots” according to WaPo’s publisher; or to avoid the appearance of bias, because, according to WaPo’s owner, Americans don’t trust the news media — !?!?!) At bottom, though, it’s simply a selfish act – using an influential national newspaper as a tool for their own ends. And the pitiful part is that someone like Trump can never be appeased. He is not a rational actor and will always crave more and deeper expressions of loyalty. So Bezos: enjoy the fiction now that your fortune is safe.
Democratic government is designed to protect the country from the whims of a few powerful men. These endorsement decisions highlight the current bind we are in. Millions of Americans rely on news coverage that itself relies on the whims of two — just two — wealthy, powerful individuals. Concentration of wealth poisons everything. Of course the wealthy and powerful choose to protect their own interests above that of the crowd; this is why founding fathers fought and died. But many, many people seem to like knowing it is possible to accrue that kind of money, that kind of power. They admire it. They would love to be in the same position.
The ascension of self over the rest of humanity mirrors another distressing trend: the contraction of support for protecting human rights among funders whose stratospheric wealth governs what we decide to protect or don’t. For years now we have watched the degradation of human rights support and funding, and I think it goes hand in hand with the elevation, as a value, of putting individual goals before those of humanity at large. Of refusing to see that what protects us all must come before what protects just me.
On the eve of an election where a major party candidate overtly campaigns on restricting rights and devaluing the humanity of women, people of color and immigrants, two of the largest international human rights funders have seemingly left the field. The multi-billion dollar Wellspring Philanthropic Fund recently announced its decision to stop funding human rights. And, after several years of restructuring and layoffs at Open Society Foundations, that stalwart defender of human rights globally, it’s not clear what will be funded in the future, but recent grants don’t bode well for prioritizing human rights. (See WiIl Human Rights Make It to 100?)
It’s possible that this shift reflects the failure of the Boomer generation’s ideals, or at least a failure to apply those ideals to a broader spectrum of social and economic rights or to meeting the urgency of the climate crisis. And, it’s true that some human rights organizations hastened their own decline by a failure to live their values or a failure to change with a changing world. But the idea that protecting human rights, as a general matter, is not vital? I can’t think of one issue that exists separate and apart from this statement in the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world…
How can we not all agree on this? Regardless of the reasons, I guess in America we don’t. And that’s what we should be striving to understand and address, rather than repeatedly trying and failing to convince Americans of the horror of a future with Trump at the helm. If you don’t believe in the primacy of human rights and its corollary, democracy – which half the country tells us they don’t – then the alarms about Trump are not alarming at all.
Even if — god willing - Harris wins, it should still electrify us to know that a week before the election around half the country could vote for Trump.
There have been many brave examples of people taking a righteous stand, too, but, unless the polls are considerably out of whack, such examples represent less than half the electorate.