by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
I will admit that I was white hot angry for month after Donald Trump won in November because of the political rhetoric coming out of the Trump campaign. It seemed as though Trumplandia was going to be a fascist state and that was going to be that.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the Reichstag Fire.
It turns out, Trump is such an incompetent administrator that in the immortal words of Lawfare Blog, Trumplandia’s political power was “malevolence tempered by incompetence.” So, while Trump definitely has autocratic leanings — he definitely wants to be one, at least — he just doesn’t have the mental wherewithal needed to do it.
So, while Trump is like a bizarre version of Chancy Gardner in Being There, he simply doesn’t have the mental focus to actually make himself a quasi-autocrat. So, what’s happening is American civil society, while put off balance by Trump’s victory, is slowly, every so slowly beginning to figure out how to address the Trumplandia conundrum.
Thus, to draw upon a World War II analogy, Hitler would have probably have taken over the world, but for his own personality quirks, foibles and failings. Trump’s efforts to co-op the Establishment in a weird Vichy America scenario only got as far as the Republicans who are pretty much completely complicit at this point.
Now, there we can’t take too much comfort in Trump’s sheer incompetence. Trump really wants to do serious damage and from what I can tell, he’s well on his way to doing just that by packing the Federal bench with complete nut jobs. The way things are going, within 20 years, all those young insane Federal judges will make A Handmaid’s Tale look like a documentary. And that doesn’t begin to address other factors. A major terrorist attack on US soil, or a disastrous weather event or a wag the dog war with Iran or North Korea would allow Trumplandia to grow and expand in power virtually overnight. No amount of incompetence on Trump’s part would save us then. We would really be on our own then.
I would then suggest that The Resistance use the breathing room afford by Trump’s complete inability to seal the deal when it comes to establishing Trumplandia to organize, organize, organize. We need to stay engaged and we need to use whatever personal skills we may have to help the cause. We have to stay forever vigilant. If you’re a good writer, then write a screenplay about Trumplandia. If you have money, contribute to a the campaign of a Democrat in a flip-able district or State.
One thing I worry about is the possibility that should there be a major terrorist attack on American soil that the Internet will be the first victim. I’m concerned that something we take for granted now — ready access to the Internet, will end. Things like a national PIN service for using the Internet is something I’m sure Trump might think up.
If you really want to get paranoid there is the chance that Trump might use a terrorist attack or a wag the dog war as an excuse to do something otherwise unimaginable — change the Constitution itself. There is already a move afoot to call a Constitutional Convention it just seems to much like something Trump might latch on, given the opportunity.
We just can’t be lulled into a false sense of security. The Resistance has to be creative in the ways it holds the line against creeping fascism. Being innovative with technology and the arts seems like something that would really help the situation. Someone designing a “Twitter Killer” might be a way to starve Trumplandia of media oxygen.
But I don’t know. We have to be careful. We have to stay engaged. We can’t allow ourselves to get burnt out in our outrage. This is going to be a long struggle, one that could take the better part of a decade to complete.
