When Madeleine Albright’s book came out, I bought it thinking that it would be specifically about the dangers of Trump administration. He certainly gets a lot pages and yet she ultimately references him as a symptom of a set of much larger problems linked to a combination of societal conditions America faces.
She addresses in detail the history of dictators and Fascist states, how they arise and what supplies the fertile ground for authoritarian governments to take root. I don’t intend to recap her fascinating treatise on this subject other than to say America meets those conditions and her warnings became more prescient for me as I watched the Trump administration’s actions the past two weeks.
Last night on FOX one of their nighttime entertainment hosts spent half of his show fanning the flames of fear and resentment about Black Lives Matter and Antifa. (Maybe someone should explain that it’s short for anti fascism, they might put their guns down). Warning his audience in his usual hyperbolic style that angry people were coming to get them. This is being systematically propagated across the entire conservative media echo chamber in all platforms. We have seen this coordinated messaging before. It has gotten so bad however that vigilante watchdog groups are roaming neighborhoods in small towns and suburbs looking for members of Antifa. Today Trump tweeted that the 75 year old peace activist pushed by the Buffalo police was possibly an Antifa “provocateur” (A word Trump was certainly unfamiliar with before today) and fell to make police look bad. Fear has an immediate impact on public sentiment that is not easily extinguished. We are herd animals with a million years of programming set to respond to any perceived threat, real or not.
Let me promptly get to the point here. Given the conditions America faces such as income inequality, ethnic, racial and ideological divisions on full boil, America is at a tipping point. Economists now tell us that the country was already in a recession in February before the devastation rendered by the pandemic and the subsequent job losses that came with it.
As Secretary Albright points out in her book, we must look back on the set of circumstances present in our country that we even considered the election of someone like Donald Trump in the first place. That in itself was a huge warning. As his presidency played out with its all cartoon like blundering and transparent disregard for the rule of law, there should have been mass rejection of his policies and him as a president in every corner of the Republic, no matter what political affiliation someone holds. That it didn’t should be a sobering moment for everyone.
If someone just a tiny bit more savvy, but with the same maniacal thirst for power had showed up, they may have pulled this off. The environment that existed that allowed for someone like a Donald Trump hasn’t changed, if anything it will become much worse. Obama left Trump a growing economy, low unemployment, healthcare and the world was relatively stable. Joe Biden will be taking over a economic dumpster fire. The people will only be patient for so long before they go looking for change. That change may not be towards more democracy.