TRUMP AND THE AMERICAN FUTURE

There are two kinds of hope. There is the hope of the hopeless. It is the hope we cling to when there is no warranted reason to be hopeful. We retain hope because there is no alternative. There is also what we can refer to as empirical hope. It emerges when circumstances are grim, but there are to be found reasons, however minimal, that enable us to believe that the realities we confront can be overcome and put behind us.

Given the horrific and unprecedented circumstances Donald Trump and his minions have foisted on us in extraordinarily short order, I search for reasons to be hopeful. They are few and uncertain, yet I allow myself to believe that it is possible that we will emerge from this nightmare and our democracy can be saved from the jaws of authoritarianism. Whatever hope there may be must emerge out of the stygian hellscape that Trump has foisted on us.

And hellish it is. Trump has been described as narcissistic, pathological, criminal, and power-hungry with other unsavory adjectives. He is seldom decried as evil. Yet I contend that the descriptor is not misplaced in that Trump combines a limitless yen to expand his power with a complete absence of empathy for the plight or feelings of others. Sadism is a hallmark of his politics, and the anxiety and suffering he is causing, and will continue to cause, defines him as an evil human being.

Almost all Americans must be seething with anxiety. The internalization of dread has become pandemic. We can start with the assault on political rights, which can be understood as immunities providing protection from state tyranny. In the assault on immigrants, Trump has bolstered his appeal by tapping the dark emotions of those who feel themselves under the thumb of so-called elites. He has mobilized hatred, xenophobia, and ethnic scapegoating. In his prioritized deportation initiatives, he has crossed the line and expelled those who have legitimate rights to be in the country. He has removed immigrants, claiming they are here illegally, while violating due process, which is a fundamental requirement of a liberal democracy. Without due process, the individual is divested of freedom, and the power of the state becomes total. The danger at this moment is remote, but for many others it is imminent.

The focus is on Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran legally here on a green card, whom the administration admits was deported by error. He is being held in a supermax prison in El Salvador, though he has committed no crime. A federal court mandated his return, but the Supreme Court has put that decision on a temporary hold, to be determined at a later date. As with much of Trump's policies, Garcia's case has employed a great deal of theater, but it clearly masks much more sweeping policy designs.

Trump has recently met with Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele, in a camera-staged White House gathering, surrounded by cabinet members, declaring obeisance to his every intention. At the meeting, Trump declared that the next step was to deport American citizens for imprisonment in El Salvador. According to ABC News, “President Donald Trump on Monday doubled down on his idea of sending U.S. citizens to foreign prisons, telling El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele he wanted to send "homegrown criminals" to his country next, according to a video posted by Bukele's office on X.” “ 'Homegrown criminals next,' Trump said, according to a livestream posted by Bukele's office. 'I said homegrowns are next, the homegrowns. You gotta build about five more places.'”

Clearly, this declaration, seething with bravado, is blatantly unconstitutional. We don't send American citizens to foreign penal colonies. But it is Trump's wont to push the constitutional envelope. We are daily inching closer to the executive branch defying and violating the judiciary. It's an extraordinary power grab intended to subsume the authority of the judiciary under the command of the president. Trump will fudge the lines for a while, but once it is accomplished, democracy is over, which is precisely what Trump wants.

The upshot is that no one will be safe, regardless of their status, including those here legally, even citizens. If today any one person can be deported without first determining their status, then tomorrow it can be anyone. Unless this process is checked, the American experiment fails and is consigned to history.

We can next look at the undermining of economic security, including the thousands who have been fired from their jobs in the federal government. The reduction of the oversight staffs of the FDA and CDC leave the American public prone to disease. We take for granted that our food and medications are safe. But no longer. And then there is the widespread anxiety that informs the emotions of tens of millions of Americans with reductions to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security looming. As a recipient of Social Security, and speaking personally, I have felt secure that come the second Wednesday of each month, my Social Security payments would appear in my electronic checking account. For the first time ever, I opened the requisite page with feelings of anticipatory anxiety that it might not be there – if not this month, then sometime in the near future. Weakening Social Security would likely lead to increased poverty rates among our nation's seniors and broader economic insecurity as their vast spending power erodes along with other serious consequences.

And then there is uncertainty wrought by Trump's tariffs. The global economy occasions the reality that a multitude of household items, from smartphones to clothing, to children's toys, which are fixtures of our personal environment, are produced in China. The imposition of tariffs will raise the prices of those items in ways that will stretch already strained budgets. Trump and his gaggle of billionaires don't live in the world most Americans occupy and consequently can't identify with the continuous burden of balancing expenditures for items that comprise the mainstay of American households. But for those Americans who live from check to check, anxiety will be pandemic. This ill-conceived project, derided by almost all serious economists, generates chaos for suppliers, business owners, and those who lie at the center of the consumer economy. Prices will be raised, employment cut, and future planning well-nigh impossible when confronted by a radically uncertain and unstable economic future,

Worse still, Trump is cheerily supported by his MAGA acolytes and craven Republican officeholders, who, out of fear, nod approvingly as he dismantles our country. Anxiety, as noted, is becoming pandemic. It has seeped down into the psyches of multitudes of Americans. Anxiety can be understood as the intolerable apprehension of a fearsome future in which bad things will occur, but what they are remains unclear and uncertain. This, too, further propels the augmentation of Trump's power. The inculcation of fear and anxiety is both an end and means toward the escalation of Trump's sweeping command over American society, its politics, and its populace. It was Nicolo Machiavelli who advised the princes of his day that if they sought to retain power “it is much safer to be feared than loved because ... fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.” So much of the gleeful sadism animating Trump's policy initiatives exemplifies Machiavelli's insight. A fearful populace is a weakened populace.

As previously stated we are nearing a critical juncture. Clearly, there is broad dissatisfaction with Trump. But the resistance lacks solidarity. Opposition from Democrats is woefully sporadic. The house is ablaze and we need resistance fighters, not decorous legislators.

We need to ask: Where can we look to sustain hope as the tsunami of authoritarianism engulfs our democracy and eviscerates its institutions? On the left, an oft-cited political dynamic invoking a honed-down version of the Hegelian dialectic was “the worse, the better.” To the extent that it could be strategically employed, it is one I generally shunned. The reality of “the worse,” is open-ended. In short, how bad do things have to get, how many, and how greatly, would the undeserving need to suffer to bring political change? The employment of the rubric seemed ill-advised.

But these are desperate times, and we need to embrace what would otherwise present themselves as strategies fitted to extremes. One need not be a Marxist to conclude that economic need shapes consciousness. Yet, the past decades have dramatically demonstrated that people have been moved by ideologically-laced cultural issues that defy material needs. Questions of race, the legacy of slavery, gender, immigration, American history, diversity, and religion have gripped and molded the political positions of vast swaths of the American public, submerging politics related to economic security and opportunity. Access to health care, social welfare, and analyses of society rooted in economic class have taken a back seat.

Though in my view, the embrace of wokism by sectors of the Left have been politically ill-advised, the right, and Trump's MAGA crowd, have raised the salience of such cultural issues, absent economic discussion, to an extraordinary degree. In ways that defy self-interest, they have been able to shape the politics of the white working class, duping its constituents into believing that Trump and his billionaire allies support their economic interests, while explicitly shifting consciousness and political interests toward cultural issues that have mobilized powerful emotions and have cemented loyalties.

Despite the volatile issues that consume political discourse, I continue to hold that economics is, and will prove to be, foundational to framing political positions. Economic interest can be understood in at least two ways. The first is the presentation of economic realities as matters of policy. The second, which underlies policy discussion, relates to the direct impact of economic need or security as felt realities in people's lives.

We live in times wherein political knowledge and discourse is extraordinarily shallow, leaving public views dangerously manipulable by those of demagogic designs. There is little patience for abstractions or theoretical ideas.

But the reality of economic deprivation is immediately felt and, I contend, is a powerful motivator in shaping political opinions and commitments. It is this factor that enables us to perceive sunlight on the far side of the darkness. It provides a realistic basis for hope, if not immediately than in the middle range.

The chaos and arrant stupidity generated by Trump's policies will cause broad-sweeping economic harm. As noted, many will lose their jobs. With social welfare programs diminished, shredded, and thrown into uncertainty, those on the economic margins will be confronted with agonizing choices whether to purchase food, pay monthly rent, forgo childcare, or procure needed medication for their children. At least 40 percent of Americans survive paycheck to paycheck, A single medical expense or needed car repair can propel them into panic borrowing. Many of those enduring such realities have been Trump's supporters.

The pivotal agent in stalling Trump's takeover are those Republicans who curry his favor, but through their own self-interested commitment to cling to their offices are open to pressure brought by their constituents. If the economic despair of these constituents can enable them to find a voice in protesting the economic hardship that Trumpism has wrought, the possibility emerges that they will break ranks with Trump and his initiatives will begin to stall and shred. Democrats, for their part, need to stand ready to join ranks with such Republican defectors to win a majority in the House and Senate.

Political currents can shift, often in ways that are unexpected. And the future always remains open and unpredictable. But the cruelty of Trump's politics is equaled by its unworkability. It is ill-fitted to reality and may well prove inoperable. Therein lies our hope.