Call It What It IS

Biden recently called out Trump and his supporters as ‘semi-fascist’. He did not go far enough. 

 

Republican leaders, in their lust for power, have allowed a caricature of a mob boss to assume control of their party. Trump’s reputation in New York City prior to his presidency, for decades, was as a cheap scammer, someone who almost never paid his bills, a racist, mob-connected, showboat. 

But Trump’s followers in the general electorate do not see him that way. To them Trump can do no wrong. Even when wrong, he is right. Trump wins over reality. They are prepared to abandon societal norms to pay reverence to their leader. In fact, they are prepared to abandon reality, fact, truth, and even democracy, to maintain their image of him and their loyalty to him.  

 

Jim Jones, Charlie Manson, David Koresh evoked this sort of zealousness from their followers as well. And like Trump, their ability to do so was rooted in their mental illness, sociopathy, and narcissism.  

 

Republican leaders see the cult of Trump for what it is, and despite understanding its amorality and psychopathology, have consciously chosen to abandon their duty to this country, and to their own morality, to join him and his large voting block of cultists – as the price to pay for power.  

  

Republicans in congress more and focus on the maintenance of that power, rather than on governing. They have obstructed relentlessly. Senator McConnell vowed to completely obstruct both Obama and Biden’s presidencies, and in the last decade alone has killed hundreds of bills that enjoyed bipartisan support (3). Of those rare bills republicans have pushed through one was a 2.2 trillion-dollar tax giveaway to their corporate and ultra-rich donors. Prior to that they rammed a corrupt pro-pharma bill through, a bill literally written by the pharmaceutical companies themselves, that amongst other things prohibited the government from buying pharmaceuticals through a competitive bidding process. The pharmaceutical companies themselves set the prices.  

 

But with this Trump spectacle republicans have hit an all-time low. Trumpism represents one of the greatest existential threats to our democracy we have ever faced. With Trump as their leader, it has become clear that republicans are willing, and are actively planning, to destroy our democratic republic, replacing it with a form of fascism, in order to establish permanent minority rule. Their rule.

 

They have been consciously stacking the courts with partisan hacks for decades, attempting to tilt the justice system in their favor. With the corruption of the judiciary, we are already seeing one of their main goals beginning to come to fruition - the end of checks and balances between the branches of government and the beginning of their permanent power.  

 

If successful in taking power, as Trump has previously shown us, they will withdraw from sacred international treaties that have served us so well and kept the peace. They will dramatically escalate nuclear weapons production and will thus destabilize world order, increasing the odds of total global destruction.   

 

They will diminish our standing in the world which will destabilize the planet, greatly increasing the odds of US citizens being harmed.

 

They have made it quite clear that they will choose profit over environmental balance. They will ignore climate change, and will turn coal, oil, and gas companies loose on the last of our pristine lands. 

But most importantly they will destroy our democratic republic. They will abuse power by using politically weaponized law enforcement to maintain power and to terrorize those trying to uphold democratic norms against them. House Minority Leader McCarthy recently vowed to ‘probe’ the FBI and DOJ over the Mar-A-Lago search if they regain power in 2023. He did this before he had any of the facts of the investigation, or the raid - publicly stating his plan to abuse power to punish ‘enemies’ before he even had his facts straight. They will dismantle checks and balances, and will seek to erode our rights as citizens. A quick look to Texas, Florida, Tennessee foreshadows what we are in store for as a nation – rigged elections, control over what we may do with our own bodies, who we can marry, the burning of books, restricting language(gay), restricting the press, the internet, and information in general. 

And they will do all of this and more against majority will. 

 

This is not hyperbolic political rhetoric. President Biden clearly did not go far enough in his condemnation of Trump and his followers. We are now in a fight for our very country, against a vile and repugnant enemy. Our two hundred and forty-six-year-old democratic republic - the greatest social experiment of fairness and prosperity in the history of the world - cannot be allowed to decay and crumble into a pit of greed, fascist tyranny, sociopathy, and despair - which is exactly what will occur if Trumpism prevails.