We’ve just returned from a trip to the United Kingdom; amid the many wonderful experiences we had during our stay, by far the most arresting for me – no surprise to anyone who reads these pages – was a visit to the Churchill War Rooms and the Churchill Museum in London. (TLOML had to finally drag me out, noting that we were in danger of missing a tour we had paid for 🙂 ). Certain aspects of our trip are well worthy of a post at some point in the future, but reviewing the War Rooms and Museum exhibits setting forth the details of the fascist danger that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the British people confronted alone from mid-1940 until the end of 1941 – the period after the Nazis overran Europe until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor finally brought isolationist members of Congress to support America’s entry into the war – is causing me to straightforwardly repeat here what I have indicated in the past: I perceive former President Donald Trump and his MAGA cohort to be a fascist threat to our way of life. I thought that if the former president was defeated in 2020, the spell he had cast over so many of our citizens would dissipate. Given the support he maintains despite his manifest unfitness for office, it would seem that that spell is even more intensely entrenched now than it was four years ago.
You who honor me by reviewing these posts are acutely aware of the many (and frequently wordy 😉 ) notes I have entered here. That said, if I was to list five entries set forth in these pages for which I have the most regard, “The Fourth Election,” which I posted in two parts in June, 2020, would certainly be among them. Its thrust was that the need to defeat Mr. Trump in the then-upcoming 2020 election was as critical to preserving the American life as the elections of 1788 (George Washington), 1860 (Abraham Lincoln) and 1932 (Franklin Roosevelt). I generally feel that I am “cheating” a bit if I quote a previous post to make a substantive point in a subsequent post, but in this instance, I can’t say it better the second time than I did the first. What follows are excerpts from “The Fourth Election,” edited only to clarify references. All emphasized text was emphasized in the original. (I hadn’t initially recalled that it included the longest litany of Mr. Trump’s personality failings that I have ever put together 😉 ). While, given its publication date, there is obviously no reference to Mr. Trump’s subsequent lying denial of his 2020 election defeat, nor to his subsequent seditious instigation of an attack on our Capitol, nor to the Project 2025 document (which, despite his denials, his actions in his last months in office make manifestly clear that he will implement if he is reelected), this 2020 post’s observations now seem prescient, given the glaring demonstrations we have seen since its posting of the authoritarian dangers a second Trump presidency will present.
The Fourth Election
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On February 5, 2020, President Donald Trump was acquitted by the United States Senate at the conclusion of his [first] impeachment trial. Two days after the acquittal, President Trump removed from their respective positions European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondlund and Director for European Affairs for the United States National Security Council Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, two witnesses whose undisputedly truthful testimony implicated the President in a scheme to pressure a vital but vulnerable ally for his own domestic political purposes. Four days after the acquittal, the United States Department of Justice, led by U.S. Attorney General William Barr, said that it was reducing the sentence it was recommending for convicted Trump confidante Roger Stone – described by former Trump Administration Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon during Mr. Stone’s trial as an “access point” to Russia conduit Wikileaks for the Trump Campaign — after the President tweeted that the 7-9 year term initially recommended by DOJ was “disgraceful” and a “miscarriage of justice.”
I tend to buy books in clusters. Largely driven by these Trump Administration actions … I went to my local bookstore to acquire specific titles that I considered appropriate supplements to my copy of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer: Mr. Putin, by Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy; The New Sultan, the story of Turkey’s President (and now autocratically inclined) Recip Tayyip Erdogan, by Soner Cagaptay; Fascism: A Warning, by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; and … a final selection — a volume generally available, but a title that causes you to lower your voice when requesting: Mein Kampf (in English, “My Struggle”), by Adolf Hitler.
At my last request, the young woman with whom I’d been working glanced up at me a bit sharply, then relaxed; apparently – thankfully — I look like a researcher, not a believer. She located Hitler’s opus, glanced at the price, added it to my pile, and observed sympathetically, “That’s a lot for such trash.” Then she added: “My Dad says I shouldn’t wear this necklace out like this.” I hadn’t previously noticed, but saw then: at the base of her neck was a small Star of David.
That is where we are today. Throughout President Trump’s term, we have seen countless instances of his deliberately sowing seeds of division among us, his lying, racism, religious bigotry, sexism, xenophobia, bullying, instability, narcissism, erraticism, avarice, pettiness, and flouting of norms, rules, and laws, his virulent attacks on the principled who disagree with him, a free press, and free speech, and his collaboration with foreign enemies for his own ends. Even so, never seriously did I contemplate the potential for his dictatorial inclinations until – after he was acquitted in the Senate — he dismissed Messrs. Vindman and Sondlund and meddled in Mr. Stone’s sentencing. Since that time, the Justice Department has sought to drop its prosecution of Mr. Trump’s former National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn (after Mr. Flynn twice pled guilty), Mr. Trump has dismissed four Inspectors General (dismissals U.S. UT Sen. Mitt Romney called “a threat to accountable democracy”), he has issued an Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship after Twitter added corrective links to his completely unsubstantiated tweeted claims of fraud related to mail-in voting, he has called upon the nation’s Governors to “dominate” protestors in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, and on June 1 had peaceful protestors cleared from Lafayette Square, in part through the use of chemical agents, in order to provide himself with a photo opportunity.
The above list isn’t exhaustive, but it is indicative. Clearly Mr. Trump has considered himself unfettered since his acquittal, and has felt free to exact revenge and pursue vendettas against those he considers to have wronged him or his entourage. Does anyone think that Mr. Trump will be more restrained if he is re-elected?
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Former President Barack Obama is reportedly fond of a statement by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” With all due respect to Messrs. King and Obama, I consider the sentiment poppycock. What is right and just is not inevitable; it must be defended. Messrs. Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant, and Messrs. Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Douglas MacArthur didn’t prevail in their struggles because they were right; they won because they had more troops and better weapons than the enemy. I would submit that this is the Fourth Election in which the American way of life is at stake. We citizens have only votes to defend the freedom this nation provides. The existential threats [existing as of the 1788, 1860, and 1932 elections] were brought about by outside circumstances beyond the control of the Presidents called upon to address them; in this election, [Mr. Trump] is the existential threat. His presidency has revealed both the strength and fault lines within our system of government.
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Although perhaps those that read these posts are already aware of this, it is nonetheless worth noting that Messrs. Hitler, Putin, and Erdogan all first assumed their leadership positions by Constitutional means in what were then actual democracies; none had to overthrow an established order before beginning their accumulation of control over their respective nations. While I draw a measure of solace from the manner in which [former Secretary of Defense Mark] Esper and [former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark] Milley have recently distanced themselves and the military from Mr. Trump’s Lafayette Park stunt – one can’t be an autocrat without an army – there are plenty of other Defense Secretary candidates and Generals from whom Mr. Trump can choose from if he is re-elected. I have seen a number of pundits suggest that Mr. Trump’s presidency is “over.” I suggest that we need be watchful, lest his dictatorship start.
In normal times, I consider politics to be the “sports page” of world affairs: Who’s winning, who’s losing, who might employ what strategy. Today, in the United States of America, politics is where the substantive battle to protect our way of life will be fought. Although the ammunition in this contest must remain ballots, the struggle to protect the ideals upon which this nation was founded is every bit as much at issue in the current campaign as it is on Ukrainian lands. The political exchanges we will see over the next two months – and given our experience with the 2020 Election, perhaps all the way to Inauguration Day – will determine whether the American experiment in democracy survives.
McCoy's Noise 