How Bad Will Another Four Years of Trump Be? Unthinkable.
Jul 2, 2020
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I’m going to say something that you probably already know. Another four years of this —the dystopia America’s becomeunder Donald Trump — isunthinkable and nightmarish. Like I said, you probably know that. Yet I think right about now, everyone could do with a moment of reflection on precisely why.
Let’s begin with Coronavirus.It’s already claimed130,000 lives and counting.One hundred and thirty thousand. This is mass deathon the scale of a world war. The responsibility for this catastrophic tragedy liessquarely at the feet of the Trump Administration— which, as the now notorious story goes, first denied there was a problem, then minimized, then told people to drink bleach…after cutting funding for the WHO and backing out of global vaccine efforts. What the?
The vast, vast majority of America’s unbelievable, horrific number of deathswereneedless.Theycould have been prevented— as they were in countries rich and poor, fromNew Zealandto Vietnam — with one simple thing. A national plan, a strategy, to defeat the virus. Instead,Trump surrendered to it— and the results have been devastating.
But there isplenty more devastation on the way.America’s daily caseload is the highest in the world:50,000 a day. The pandemic still hasn’t peaked, which is why there isno “wave” shape.
That’s because America still has no plan or strategy — even atthis late, grim juncture, where much of the world has defeated the virus — to fight it. Trumpdoesn’t appear to careabout the virus at all, which tells us there isn’t going to be a national strategy or plan under a Trump Administration.
So four more years of Trumpism also means another four years ofworld-war levels of mass death, as the pandemic just rolls more or lessuncheckedacross the nation. Without a plan or strategy at the national level, COVID willnevergo away. That’s one key lesson ofglobal best practicesfrom countries like South Korea and Taiwan and New Zealand. But America isn’t going to have a plan under Trump, which means three things will continue. Mass death at world war levels.A massive tidal wave of a deadly pandemic. And Coronavirus becoming just anotherpermanent, dystopian, bizarre feature of American life, like school shootings, “active shooter drills”, or “medical bankruptcy” — things which don’t exist elsewhere in the world.
America’s only real hope to defeat Coronavirus at this juncture is Trump’s removal from office, and Biden’s election.Itsonlyhope. Trump doesn’t just not care about the pandemic — heactively thwartswhatever steps a decent and sane society might take to fight it, from wearing masks, to trying to develop a vaccine, to enforcing lockdowns, to testing and tracing. There is not just no leadership — there’sactive ignorance and willful destructiveness.
Why?
Well, what does Trump care about?Keeping power.Buildinga dynasty of Trumpswho rule America for much of the rest of our lives. You might find that far-fetched, but consider this scenario. Coronavirus rolls on. By the end of the summer, when America has 100,000 cases a day — the level at which society begins to break down in the final and most fundamental ways, from food to water to medicine —Trump declares a state of emergency. Maybe even martial law. He threatened to do just such a thing from the steps of a church barely weeks ago.
That suppresses the vote. As a result of vote suppression, Trump wins outright — or the margin is thin enough to be contested. The Supreme Court and Senate hand the victory to Trump.And after that —it’s game over.There isn’t another election — just the pretense of one, like in Russia.
Scared? Sound far-fetched? Maybe both, right? Then consider this.Now is the time tothink the unthinkable. Just five years ago, you never would have thought America would be the kind of country that tolerated mass death at world war levels. Now it is.Think the unthinkable: lesson one when it comes to social collapses, becausedemagogues like Trumpwill always defy even your worst expectations, like encourage…mass death.
So the second reason that four more years of Trump are unthinkable is that — as most of us know by, deep inside —that’s game over for American democracy.Not sometime during those next four years — but the day aTrump victoryhappens. That will be theend of America as a democracy— a nation which is already ranked a “flawed democracy,” by the way, in theDemocracy Index. America’simplosion into an authoritarian statewill continue.
Along the way, it will be accompanied by what usually goes hand-in-hand with authoritarian implosions:economic ruin.
Right about now, the Trump Administration and a Republican Senate have effectively offered American households justoneweek’sworth of supportduring a pandemic that’s lastedmonths. Not nearly enough. Hence,unemployment claims are still topping a million per week, because the viciousspiral of depressionis setting in. Less spending, less employment…lower incomes, less spending. Bang!
A Coronavirus Depression is now a near certainty.That’s the economy Biden will inherit, if he’s elected. But at least Biden might be able enough to do something about it. Like what? Like themassive, massive wave of investmentAmerica’s needed for decades now. In hospitals, schools, parks, libraries, healthcare, retirement, education, childcare, and so on. All that would lift the economy to a permanently higher level of both income and good jobs.
But Trump will never create such a wave of investment.What will he do during another four years? More of what he’s done during the last four, only harder: enrich his cronies, reward his family with plum positions, and let most of the government go to hell, key positions left untended.Trump is the textbook American Idiot: he has no understanding that the key to fighting any depression — but especially the ones catastrophes like pandemics cause — isinvestment. Hence, Americans have barely been offered any support.
Hence, worse, there’s no next wave of support on the way for American households and businesses — even thoughthe virus is accelerating, exploding, doubling.It doesn’t make the slightest sense toanyone sane. This is the moment people need support as both producer or consumers — and every day they don’t receive it, tomorrow’s depression gets worse, hardens, lengthens. Invest now, avert a depression, fix your broken society. But don’t invest now — and every day you don’t yields another three days, four days, week of intensifying depression.
And yet no support is forthcoming precisely because Trump and his enablers believe in a kind of Social Darwinism, which has too long been at the rotten heart of American politics and ideas:the strong should survive, and the weak should perish.You can see the fatal results of that foolish idea right about now. The weak are perishing — at horrifying rates — and the strong are surviving: billionaires are getting massively richer. But all that only adds up to a devastated society, which can’t seem to provide even the most basic of basics — like public health — for people anymore.
So the third reason four more years of Trumpism are unthinkable is that the depression they’d unleash would be epic, explosive, all-consuming.It would rival the Great Depression to begin with, and then exceed it, because a Trump isn’t about to put in place a New Deal. He’s alreadyhappy to play golf while there’s a tidal wave of death— so why would he care about a depression? And how would a man this idiotic even begin knowing how to fight it — versus just enriching his buddies, and letting Social Darwinism take its course?
That repellent idea — Social Darwinism — brings me to the last and final reasonfour more years of Trump are unthinkable.I can sum it up in one word. It’s a word that Americans — who don’t understand yet that theirpoliteness equals complicity to a shocked and baffled world— still don’t use nearly enough. Are they scared? Are they dumb?
Why don’t Americans understand their society is turning fascist?That’s the question I get askedevery single day, by friends from around the world. France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Africa, Asia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. Every single day for me is like groundhog day: people ask me: “what the hell is wrong with Americans? Don’t they know fascism when they see it? Don’t they get taught at school?”
I sputter and stumble. There’s no good explanation.The simple fact is thatAmericans are playing dumb about their society turning fascist. And that’s a kind of complicity, a form ofappeasement.
Butthere’s no real debate possibleabout the reality of America becoming fascist.We’re all taught in grade school, then again in middle school, then again in high school, and then yetagainin college, the elements of fascism. Concentration camps, ethnic bans, raids, purges, a demagogue inciting violence and spewing hate, alreadyhated minorities scapegoated for the problems of a broken society, themechanisms of the state used to institutionalize that hate, and ultimately, to take personhood away from entire groups.
Almost every element of that list isalreadytruein America.It came true over the last four years. That’s what the world is baffled about. How on earth can Americans not see what happened to their society? Don’t they get that the fascists — the actual, real, bona fide fascists, the ones who thinks of themselves as supreme, and hated minorities as subhuman, put them in camps, and want to take their personhood away — rose to actual, real, bona fide, power, as in,they now occupy the White House? What the hell is wrong with Americans?
I have no answer for the world, except to have to state the truth.Maybe Americans are this dumb.After all, there’s a point at which playing dumb is indistinguishable from the real thing, andAmerica reached it long ago.
So if America hada fascist-authoritarian implosionover the last four years, what happens over thenextfour?The unthinkable does. Those camps get filled up with intellectuals, critics, dissidents, political opponents. Show trials are had, and any resistance gets quietly, quickly excised away. Secret polices and Gestapos becomes the forces which run society, along with paramilitaries. Martial law is the rule of the land — challenge it, or the leadership, at your peril. Hated minorities begin to be violently abused — even more so — right down to the point of genocide.
The pure and true —the demagogue’s chosen tribe— occupy all the positions of high power, from military to judiciary to legislation.They have become a bloc that controls a society wholesale. Nobody is left to checktheir abuses of power— which now multiply and proliferate well past mere kleptocracy, into thehard and final elements of fascist authoritarianism, which is the construction of a society that,obsessed with death and violence, is made topay homage to a Fuhrer.
Again, does that sound outlandish? Thenyou’re not thinking the unthinkable nearly enough.America is already a society right now whichtolerates mass deathon shocking and incredible levels — at the scale of a world war. That is a very, very bad sign. Normal, sane, healthy societies do not. Nobody else in the world does, really — apart from similarly broken societies, Russia and Brazil, for example. America already becoming a society whichtolerates mass deathsays: a demagogue has already gotten away with one of the worst abuses of power there is,which is just letting needless mass death happen.
It is a very, very, very small step from that abuse of power to the final one — creating a society in which abuses of power like mass death are just everyday acts, that people, powerless, hopeless, beaten,simply shrug at. And some of them —the true believers— even cheer on.
That is where the path America is on ends.It’s now trapped infour simultaneous cycles of ruin.Underinvestment yielding growing poverty — ancient Rome’s. Growing poverty becoming depression — the story of the 1930s. Impoverishment and humiliation breeding fascism — Weimar Germany becoming Nazi Germany’s. A class ofbackwards, incompetent eliteswho don’t understand any of the above, and so are perpetually surprised by it — Soviet Russia’s.
Trump is perfectly positioned to be the man whoseizes power in all that chaos.He can still pull offstealing the next election, make no mistake about it. That is why, right about now,everyone should take a momentto reflect on precisely and fully why four more years of a lunatic — one every bit up there with Caligula and Nero — like Donald Trump? Shudder.They’re unthinkable. But like I say: when catastrophe strikes, you’d better start thinking the unthinkable —if you want to beat it, before it beats you.
UmairJuly 2020
