The End of Trump’s ‘Domocracy’ Is In Sight

The November 2020 presidential election promises to be the end of the “domocracy” established by Donald J. Trump in the White House. This just goes to show how important the election will be and how much is at stake for American democracy.

“Domocracy” in this context means a regime based upon private “estates,” “homes” (domus) or a very particular, even singular, conception of political power. Trump claimed the executive power of the presidency as if it were his own; it became his unique and exclusive privilege, instead of seeing the presidency as representing the interests of the American people.

The rejection of Trump’s rule by electoral democracy, if it takes place on Nov. 3 as public opinion polls seemingly show, could remedy this unprecedented usurpation of executive power in the United States.

The Tip of the Iceberg

This way of establishing such a “domocracy” quickly took hold in the presidential office, with Trump appointing his own daughter, Ivanka, as special adviser, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as senior adviser to the president, just days after he took office. The round of subsequent dismissals in various branches of government, guided even beyond partisanship by the sole obligation of loyalty to the presidency, is only the tip of the iceberg of the “domocracy” that Trump desired.

With Trump’s “family estate” being well established, his interests were served with greed (from dignitaries visiting the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C., to the attempt to hold the Group of Seven summit at his National Doral Golf Club in Miami, showing some of the most glaring examples).

But this “domocratic” conception of the Trump presidency has been crystallized by attacks on the other legislative and judicial branches, threatening the checks and balances system established by the Constitution. The three branches are supposed to counterbalance each other; Congress makes the laws, the president approves or vetoes them, and the Supreme Court decides on whether or not the laws are constitutional.

Tyranny

The attacks on the legislative branch were mainly deployed after the 2018 midterm election placed the House of Representatives in the hands of the Democrats. Most notably, in the wake of the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and in the impeachment trial conducted by the Senate, which took every opportunity to resist requests for information presented to the White House in an assertion of presidential immunity.

The Senate’s complicity in these actions compromised Republicans as they defended autocratic presidential power; even partisan collusion could not mask the unequivocal appearance of a strategy primarily concerned with preventing exposure of Trump’s personal interests (including his personal business and tax interests) to public scrutiny.

The attacks on the impartiality of the judiciary, which must be taken for granted in a society governed by the rule of law, were concentrated on preserving Trump’s personal relationship interests and took the form of more than 200 patronage appointments to the federal court and nominations to the Supreme Court.

Commuting the prison sentence of convicted felon Roger Stone and pardons extended to Michael Flynn, with the recent complicity of Attorney General William Barr, have emerged as ways in which the untouchable nature of presidential power could be extended to his close circle of friends and allies, guided only by Trump’s personal will and loyalty to him — in the purest tyrannical style.

A Sad Spectacle

The incessant attacks on the media (the “fourth estate”), focusing on discrediting any information that did not directly protect Trump’s interests, dealt a severe blow to this crucial branch of political balance and the role it plays in forming public opinion.

A regime which denounces as “fake news” any information that is not legitimized or authorized by Trump himself, and which is not to his advantage — has created an aura of confusion around what may appear to be credible information, supported by independent and conscientious journalism.

As in the vilest dictatorships of the contemporary world, intolerance of free and critical information as well as the over-polarization of debates and crystallization of the most radical opposition, instead of mediating debate, has deliberately opened the way for the outright short-circuit of democratic life. The accumulation of all these attitudes, strategies and tactics defines the main characteristics of Trump’s “domocracy.”

As a result, U.S. voters were fundamentally misled in the 2016 election that brought Trump into office. The democracy that was supposed to put the United States back on the path to “greatness,” according to the winning campaign slogan, gradually revealed itself to be a pure “domocracy” tailored only to a presidency that was busy fighting tooth and nail to defend its special privileges.

So, a major issue for the presidential election is now emerging: Trump’s “domocracy” versus the democracy of the U.S. election, whose credibility Trump is still trying to undermine in the run-up to the election by arguing that it could be rigged. Similar to “1984,” because of Trump’s rhetoric and his debilitating ability, words now have their opposite meaning, and U.S. citizens will be faced with this sad spectacle until the polls open on Tuesday, Nov. 3, as they wait to see if they can get on board with the idea of putting an end to “domocracy,” and to face being “Trumped once shame on you, Trumped twice shame on me.”