Farrad Zakaria provided a very good but alarming report on CNN. He fears that American democracy is in grave danger, that we are on the verge of turning into an elective dictatorship.
Here are my thoughts on what is and what is likely to be:
Donald Trump is a Russian agent, not because he loves Russia, but because he believes the Russians will help him turn the United States into a dictatorship. Trump does not value democracy. He, and people like him, the “winners,” know what they want and will do anything to get it, and care about the rest of the country only to the extent that they do not want the “losers” to get in their way. They reject democracy and even plutocracy as unacceptably inefficient forms of government, and prize dictatorship or monarchy as the only way to really get things done.
It is of crucial importance to them to sweep away obstacles created by a system of checks and balances, by an honest judiciary or a popularly elected legislature. Both of these branches will be neutralized by filling them with people who think they stand to gain from the dictator’s rule. We see this happening even now with the Republicans in Congress in ambitious submission to Trump in hope, I think, that the U.S. will become a one-party state to the judiciary. In turn, the Senate is wholly complicit in Trump’s packing the bench with toadies.
The undereducated and mindless are incapable of voting responsibly. The Republicans will continue imbue them with a burning resentment for “the elite” and encourage their mistrust of whatever seems unfamiliar. Their fear of change will be stimulated and given focus by being directed at immigrants, “white genocide,” globalization, gay rights, feminism, Europeans, and non-Christians, and these fears will be assuaged by nativism, white supremacy, fierce provincialism, revived hyper-machismo, obdurate anti-intellectualism, and Christian triumphalism. They will be made to think they are happy by over-abundant entertainment, lurid scandals, sporting events, and their acquisition of cheap imported goods. They will be encouraged to prize their culpable simplicity and ignorance, to boast of their lack of education, and to believe that the nation is as simple as their families and only requires the rule of one strong man to set things straight.
The elites are also to blame. Though higher education in America has deteriorated like education at every level, the elites still over-value their college educations and don’t conceal their disdain for those not similarly educated, thus stoking popular resentment. They strive for a sophistication that ideally cannot be too widely shared, but appreciated by the cognoscenti alone. They too are determined to be winners, but in a less coarsely ambitious, more stylishly refined way. They abhor Trump and his horde, but do not exert themselves to squelch mindless populism because they are naively confident that the plutocratic government of the U.S. will keep the Trumpies from changing their lives fundamentally.
Most Americans, have, as St. Paul might say, “grown weary in well-doing.” Why should America be the world’s policeman? Do we have to be the do-gooders all the time? Let somebody else do it. Let’s put America first, and if anything should be left over, share it with client countries only. We will make tyranny tremble no more, because we will embrace it. And if totalitarian regimes force other peoples to live in poverty and oppression, it is not our problem. God gave America to us as the land promised to his saints alone. Let others see to themselves.