Every morning, I must fight against the two most unalterable facts of life in America that threaten to depress me all day long: One is that Donald Trump is our president, and the other is that Americans elected him fair and square. Most depressing, the American character that elected him could keep Trumpism for another 250 years even after Trump himself is gone.
But, thanks to my lifelong habit of thinking sociologically and historically, not personally, I manage to survive the day by inquiring into why and how such events happened in America. So, sociologically and historically, not personally, let’s think “regime change.”
In general, it’s a process somewhere between peaceful transfers of power and bloody revolutions that pushes a country’s regime to flip from unfriendly to friendly to American interests: The U.S. is powerful enough to dare change another country’s ideology and character structure at will. Among the many regime changes that the U.S. has already caused, directly or indirectly, Venezuela is a most recent example, with Iran and Cuba perhaps next on the line. Many small, weak countries (but never China or Russia) tremble when we threaten them with “regime change.”
But, this time, the regime change is in America! We kicked out “liberal democracy” (everyman for himself) and ushered in “nationalist democracy” (everyman in lockstep). What used to be a regime friendly to Americans is now very unfriendly to its citizens.
As a democratic process in this regime change, the two governments are so radically different from each other that only the concept of “regime change” can explain away the change: Liberal democracy, the old regime in cahoots with capitalism, had goaded America into such moral disarray that, when Trump promised salvation from our own chaos, we took the bait and got the government we wanted. As an historic event, America got exactly what its collective destiny deserved.
Although moderate Trumpsters have mentioned only “50 years” in their planned rule over America, winning its power fair and square, they have every right to plan their permanent rule on American soil, say, for another 250 years. Unlike Putin’s Russia or Orban’s Hungary, our version of nationalism in America is likely to be permanent because our regime change sprang from “what people wanted,” not from Trump himself: Trumpism will continue even after he retires or dies. Indeed, there are no signs that Trumspters are stupid enough to commit political suicide by giving power back to liberal Democrats.
At the moment, it’s unknown how Trumpsters will square this permanent-power plan with the potential midterm elections that could derail their 50-year (or 250-year) blueprint. With both courts and Congress largely staying silent, and with the world-conquering military itching for action under whoever commands it, they are as potent as Gods and as free as children — and completely innocent: No Trumpster has gone to prison for violating laws. (Crime is never in the act, but in the process).
Regime change has its consequences and privileges. Trumpsters are doing what all successful power-seekers do: Expanding and eternalizing their power. The new American generations created a regime change, from liberal to nationalist, but without really understanding what unchecked powers can do. (Blame their sheltered history).
In politics, power (not morality) is always the ultimate objective: Democrats saw politics primarily as morality play and lost; Trump exclusively sees politics as power play and won. Even in democracy, peaceful transfers of power exist only as luxury. Whether in politics or in money, no one ever wants to give up what he sold his soul to get. Everybody wants to keep his power (and money) as much and as long as he can. In humanity’s entire history, Roman general Cincinnatus (519-530 BC) is the only known persona to give up power voluntarily.
If Trumpsters are nakedly cruel, shameless and childish (befitting the new regime’s style), it’s simply because we, as Americans, are just as cruel, shameless and childish (befitting our generation’s style). Trump himself is nothing like his predecessors and, likewise, we, the regime changers, are nothing like the generations before. When liberals enjoy their late-night comic relief at “Trump jokes,” they are laughing largely at themselves. The subject of their jokes sits in the White House branch of the Bank of America, laughing all the way to the vault.
For the first time in American history, the American leader and American voters share a great deal of similarities in a capitalist society, which was here long before Trump. As a product of capitalism, Trump is utterly, totally self-loving, as Americans in general are themselves. All his life, he has lived only for money and power, no trace of humane loving or caring found in him, and that replicates the common American majority perfectly.
No liberal nation with such moral decline and ethical degeneration could protect its democratic and humane principles. The corrupt nation had to have a leader who fit the nation’s decayed civic virtues. In our time, the leader and the led are a perfect match made in heaven. The regime change was no accident: Given how corrupt America had become under liberal-capitalist-Democratic reign, the change had to come. Liberals hope that the American majority is now against Trump and will return Democrats to power on the next go around. But they forget that now, with all the complements of power in their hands, Trumpsters don’t need majority approval. Democrats, on their part, cannot claim moral superiority while continuing capitalism’s stupidity within themselves and inhumanity toward each other.
Whether we are Trumpsters or liberals, we all live comfortably under consumer capitalism as our reigning king. Everything else is mere hypocrisy and self-deception.
Jon Huer, retired professor and columnist for the Recorder, lives in Greenfield and writes for posterity.