Trump’s Revenge. It is impossible to imagine another headline that could be so perfectly written. It wraps the absurdity of the Queens hustler holding the United States hostage with the most prolonged and unbecoming temper tantrum in world history.
There are many worthy sayings when it comes to revenge, and nearly all of them could be applied to Donald Trump. Let’s just say that when revenge becomes the cause of politics, tragedy follows.
Against whom exactly does Donald Trump want revenge? Why does he want revenge? For what? What happened?
Before answering the questions it seems appropriate to mention that the extremist cause has embraced a brand and a framework that has both an ominous history and a darkening present. AMERICA FIRST.
What does this mean? What is it?
Again, before answering, let’s subject the ideology to a few simple tests. Does the movement support the rule of law and the outcome of legitimate and honest elections?
Does the movement seek to expand the promise of freedom, liberty and opportunity to its full potential for every American?
Does the movement seek to unite or divide the country? Does it seek to dominate or persuade? Does it have a violent faction? Does it have a propaganda operation? Is it corrupt? Is it dominated by a single supreme leader and a court of rivals that schemes and plots for favor of the leader? Is it a grift? Is it hypocritical? Does the movement scapegoat different groups of Americans? Does it thrive on grievance and resentment? Is it angry and dishonest? Does it fetishize foreign leaders and dictators?
At this point, detailing the obvious isn’t just tedious, it’s stultifying.
“America First” is an anti-democracy movement. It is an extremist movement that takes its name from the 1930s global fascist cause birthed by Mussolini and claimed by Adolph Hitler. The Nazis who filled Madison Square Garden in 1939 would have all proclaimed themselves patriots and adherents of the “America First” philosophy in their time. They excitedly raised their arms in the fascist salute towards the giant banner of George Washington flanked by swastikas and American flags – just as their descendants scream in exultation with their red hats for Trump, their leader.
“America First” is hostile to equality between Americans of different races and genders. It is an ideology of domination and control. It does not recognize a boundary between the State and individual privacy. It embraces the biggest government of all – the one that peers through the bedroom window. It is relentlessly antagonistic towards women, people of color, gays and immigrants.
“America First” is corrupt. It is dominated by a sleazy creature cantina of corrupt grifters, ranging from Michael Flynn, Rudy Guiliani, Sidney Powell, Matt Schlapp, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Ron Johnson, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Mo Brooks, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Jason Miller, Bill Stepien, Kellyanne Conway and Mark Meadows, to name just a few.
It is a conspiracy of thousands, not a movement of millions. It is filled with people who have found a community and cause in politics. The snake oil salespeople have found their way to a flock who was looking for a new religion where imaginary victimhood became imaginary martyrdom. It’s the type of church that celebrates the class of miracles that includes cash spilling out of Joel Osteen’s walls.
The size of the “America First” movement feels larger because of its effective control of the institution of the Republican Party, which it captured without resistance. That happened after the abysmal 2016 primary season, during which a group of competitive quislings competed to avoid Trump’s ire as opposed to confronting his madness. He steamrolled all of them.
Every single one of them capitulated to his indecency, craziness and malice with their quiet acquiescence or, in the case of Cruz, enthusiastic participation. American politics has become so disgusting that the loathsome Cruz paid no real penalty for licking the paw of the man who slandered his wife and smeared his father. His submission became virtuous in the sick world to which he helped give birth, with his epic cowardice and abandonment of every previous principle. Like Lindsey Graham or Kevin McCarthy or Nikki Haley or Josh Hawley or hundreds of cowed members of Congress with an R next to their name, Cruz became synonymous with an abusive cowardice. That cowardice is dependent on the capacity to lie without exhaustion, in a media environment in which amnesia is the blessing that allows each story to exist as a disconnected episode with tiny titillations built on the trading of trivia for the accumulation of favor, for more access to get more favor. It produces the dreck and hollow coverage of events that have numbed the American people to the outrageous conduct of so many political, business, technology, media and religious leaders who sniff around each other looking for special deals as their first interest.
When trust collapses, the compacts that make society work start to unravel. The soft consensus that exists and binds a citizenry to higher concepts of duty, patriotism and service start to collapse. What emerges from the collapse are the same predictable bevy of lies and easy answers that always sprout from turmoil and uncertainty. They all contain an empty promise, which is one of the greatest lies ever told. It is the lie told to angry people who have been disappointed too often. It is the lie that says the solution is a leader with the power to punish the conspiracy and fight back against the enemies. The thing is, it’s never quite clear who the enemies are, or what they did wrong. In the end, the “America First” movement is hardly alone in its singular ability to see the conspiracies and puppet strings that remain invisible to the overwhelming majority.
Jonathan Swan has done a great service with his reporting. He has focused on the whole of the story. He has laid out Trump’s plot. It is all in the open, and it should terrify any person of sense and decency who has even the faintest inkling about the history of the last 100 years.
There is an organized movement that wants to take power and keep power once they have it. They have opted out of the agreement the pilgrims first signed on the Mayflower. They have quit the American experiment. They have quit the US Constitution. They have repudiated the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution and progress of the American Civil Rights movement. They march hand in hand with religious fraudsters and fanatics like Jim Bakker, Pastor Paula and dozens of other scammers who speak in tongues and writhe in the name of Trump, power and money.
The extremist “America First” movement is planning to win the Republican nomination and then return Trump to the Oval Office. When he gets there, his plan will be to break the balance of power by destroying all checks and balances.
Does any rational person really believe that Trump will not use the power of the State to punish political enemies?
The dominant vision within the “America First” movement is built around punishing and destroying enemies. The Silicon Valley fraud JD Vance has talked dreamily and openly in a sick MAGA masturbatory fantasy about crushing his enemies. The rhetoric is the venom of war, and the enemies of these extremists are the American people who want to live in a free and pluralistic society in which we pick our leaders.
The American people will have no excuse in the next presidential election. Donald Trump enters the GOP race as the front runner, and his early opponent, Ron DeSantis, looks more like Michael Spinks than Mike Tyson.
There is no mystery about the plan, the cause or the character of the leaders. Trump will run again, and his aim is to burn down the American Republic. He will be supported in that effort by an enormous percentage of local, county, state and national officials of the Republican Party.
Trump will be supported by reactionary and radical billionaires who are as angry for some unknown reason as the ignorant Trump rabble who stormed the Capitol, and will do the jail time as their insurrectionist superiors raise money and make their role in the insurrection the foundation of their next presidential campaign.
He will be supported in that effort by a vast propaganda apparatus helmed by Fox News and its White Power, Civil War-stoking, primetime lineup of insurrection and mayhem. Trump will be supported by a news media that is thirsting for the ratings and conflict that have nosedived in the flaccid Biden era, during which policy and seriousness always play a back seat to the Trump Circus.
The Trump Industrial Complex needs to be confronted in its entirety, and that includes the media, which has normalized the players of an autocratic movement as peers of people who also once worked at high levels in Republican or Democratic presidential campaigns, or served in White House roles. They are not. None of them.
There are a group of known individuals that can be easily counted. They are known. They are organized around a purpose and a cause. They are the core of the political movement that has rejected the forward progress of American freedom for a twisted 21st century fascism that venerates Donald Trump as its absolute leader. That is a crazy sentence to write, but it is true.
What sustains this madness is apathy. Lassitude is the great threat to a Republic, as a friend recently explained to me. He is correct. The extremist movement relies on cynicism. It thrives on it because it not only poisons faith and belief in democracy and the future, but any sense of common purpose or patriotism that transcends fidelity to their cult of personality.
Citizenship imposes obligation and responsibility. It imposes the duty of participation and understanding around how the society organizes itself. Free societies are infinitely more complex than autocratic societies. Submission to the leader requires an easy choice. Most every single Republican leader in any elected office across America, with frighteningly few exceptions, has made that choice. They have submitted themselves, obliterated their oaths and gotten in line. This instinct has fueled the leadership rise of a ruthless cynic and unprincipled opportunist like Elise Stefanik.
The lessons of the past years have been clear. Trump will attack anyone who crosses him. Very few people have stood tall and faced him. Most everyone else has done what people have always done around power. They have submitted and competed for the droppings that come from the transactions required to sustain it.
The corrupt “America First” ideology is the fluff around a claim on power by a malicious gang who has no right to it. They were rejected by the American people. Their revenge was to attack the country, which they continue to do to this day.
When reading Jonathan Swan’s story, a series of “what if?” questions came to mind:
If Trump and his people could, would they lock up political opponents?
Would they use the power of the state to persecute enemies and specific groups of Americans?
Would they kill or poison if they felt threatened?
Would they put dissenters up against the wall?
Where exactly would the line be?
The point of Jonathan Swan’s epic reporting is that they don’t want any lines. They intend to obliterate them. One election to go is how they see it. They intend to win it, and they have a rock solid plan to end American democracy just in time for the celebration of its 250th anniversary. That is, unless the American people stop them.
Could this be any better written or more cogently presented. No, it could not. Thanks, Steve for starting this up. How do we save America for all of us?
Thank you Steve for writing what is effectively a Democratic Societies call to arms, but in this case not Assault rifle toting second amendment wing nuts, but, a screaming GET OUT THE VOTE plea.
Best sentence in todays piece :
"Citizenship imposes obligation and responsibility. It imposes the duty of participation and understanding around how the society organizes itself. Free societies are infinitely more complex than autocratic societies. Submission to the leader requires an easy choice" I worry ( as anyone paying attention does) that too many young people think their vote doesn't count. And of course the irony is how determined this America First group is in making them right. Massive turnout can usurp the intent of the 33 new laws in the 19 states designed to silence the majority!