If Trump Follows Trump, Then Anything Is Possible

With Donald Trump in the White House, the United States is showing its repulsive face. His sermons of hate against women, blacks and immigrants are supposed to secure the majority for a second term. To achieve his goal, every lie is fine with him.

The political system of the United States has endured many tensions and contradictions. But it is not attached to the firmament with chains. The president’s hateful tirades against three leading Democratic women, all American citizens, are a prologue to any kind of nuisance.

Trump in office has been an experiment. But if Trump follows Trump, then it’s all possible. America’s friends and allies have reason to worry about the Imperial Republic which turns on itself. The political system is based on checks and balances. Thus America became the model for the rest of the world in the 20th century, a reason for American citizens to be proud of the republic. In biblical language, “the shining city on the hill.”

But with Trump in the White House and his assistants at the levers of power, the land shows another, a repulsive face. Everything seems possible now. At Harvard University, where the country’s intellectual elite are centered, fear of a creeping coup d’état is spreading.

Perhaps that is an exaggeration; perhaps not. Until the presidential election in 2020 there’s still a lot that can be damaged. By now, one can conclude that if Trump triumphs, we will have a different republic, with consequences beyond the United States.

Trump tears apart the basic consensus that has held America together in all its forms. But that is no longer the conciliatory “e pluribus unum,” the multifaceted unity that overcame rifts and revenge after the Civil War.

Trump’s raging now sounds like the mobilization of a white electorate that fears social upheaval, value change, and women’s emancipation. Charlottesville, where Trump called the racists and their democratic opponents both “very fine people,” was just the beginning.

The unflattering nature of his public statements, and the preaching of hatred against women, blacks and immigrants go beyond anything that an election campaign could justify. Obama, the predecessor, is demonized 24 hours a day, along with everything he stood for.

Trump’s raving is supposed to create a majority and carry him back to the White House, beyond the reach of prosecutors and tax inspectors. By now, he does whatever it takes: threat, demonization, lie.