(Apologies…I
couldn’t come up with a better title, so I borrowed from The Dead Kennedys.)
The Supreme Court wrapped up its term last week, and it was predictably disheartening. Former (for now) president Trump got his executive immunity. Attempted election tampering and inciting insurrection are no barriers to the highest office. The Sackler family is immune from being sued for Perdue Pharma’s role in the opioid crisis. The courts no longer have to defer to the expertise and judgment of administrative agencies. The Biden administration has been blocked from its efforts to curb air pollution.
And so forth. None of this is surprising, just more of the usual. Long standing protections and safeguards are falling one by one and there seems to be little will to push back. Biden’s disastrous performance in the first presidential debate seems to augur worse tidings to come.
Time has blunted the sense of shock surrounding J6. It’s hard to reconjure the feelings of dread pervading the pandemic year as emboldened armed nutters tested the boundaries of duly constituted authorities and the law itself. But it seems we are careening toward a repeat performance. Donald Trump is a master of self-reinvention, and it is becoming evident we are on the threshold of a second Trump presidency with all the implications that carries.
There’s always been an underlying current of violence beneath the placid surface of American life which periodically erupts as sudden, startling paroxysms of carnage. Nine short years ago some laughed and shrugged as long-shot candidate Trump bragged he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight and get away with it. But January 6th demonstrated that his words could move bad actors to commit bad acts.
It’s tempting to reflexively paint Trump and his devotees as fascists, which isn’t always a subtle enterprise, but there are historical parallels. An apt comparison is the assassination of Italian politician Giacomo Matteotti a century ago. Matteotti had challenged the victory of Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Party in the 1924 parliamentary elections, charging intimidation and election fraud. Days after making the accusation on the floor of parliament, Matteotti was kidnapped and murdered. The antifascist opposition then miscalculated and abandoned its parliamentary forum and counted on a general strike to topple Mussolini’s government. The strike failed and the withdrawal of the opposition only solidified Mussolini’s hold on power, moving Italy toward the totalitarian state it became. Mussolini eventually took credit for Matteotti’s death, framing it as a necessity and condoning the actions of the assassination squad.
It is not a broad inferential leap to see something comparable in present-day America. The Democrats won’t withdraw from electoral politics to be sure, but the Republicans use razor-thin majorities in Congress much more effectively than the Democrats. If Trump wins and the Republicans regain the Senate in November, matters could deteriorate quickly. With SCOTUS loosening its oversight of the executive and with Trump’s stated intention to replace civil service merit hires with handpicked loyalists, it won’t take a large majority in Congress to advance the MAGA vision. The roadmap is already there in the Project 2025 policy document published by the Heritage Foundation. The conservative long game that began with the Powell Memorandum in the 1970s is about to pay off magnificently.
But then there is a faint glimmer of hope amidst the dark tidings. New York state just disbarred Rudy Giuliani. For election denial. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
©
2024 The Unassuming Scholar
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