THE despair that descended upon the liberal, the sensitive and the sane in the weeks and months following the election and subsequent inauguration of Donald Trump has been long in lifting. This is to be expected: the scale of the catastrophe was immense and finally unknowable. That this odious wretch won a national election in a civilised country was appalling enough; that, with the Congress in Republican hands, there seemed no hope of resisting him made the disaster a catastrophe. But eighteen months after the inauguration – a moment, and a speech, encapsulating the lunacy afflicting the world’s pre-eminent democracy – there is at last some cause for hope. His regime has been corrupt and incompetent rather than power-hungry or efficient, blundering from crisis to self-made crisis, and its leading talents far more interested in self-aggrandisement and money than in policy, consolidating power or in moving the political consensus. The courts, the police agencies and even the Senate – twitching limply in Mitch McConnel’s dead, talon-like grip – have shown more independence and moral courage than we had dared believe. And now, with the mid-term elections a mere 3 months away and the polls predicting a massacre for the House Republicans, the end of the phantasmal “Trump agenda” is finally at hand. And with the respective conviction and guilty plea of tinpot tyrants’ lickspittle Paul Manafort and comedy mob boss Michael Cohen – on top of the dozen or so convictions and guilty pleas Mueller has already secured – the crows are beginning to gather on the White House lawn. After more than a year of smears and accusations of overseeing a witch-hunt Mueller has exposed Sean Hannity and his allies in the Republican Party and the right-wing media as shameless liars. We are faced with not merely the prospect of castrating the administration by retaking the House: a Democratic Majority will be able to protect the Special Prosecutor from partisan obstruction whilst subjecting the government to – perish the thought – actual congressional scrutiny. Until now, the Trump juggernaut has seemed, if not unstoppable, impervious to conventional political weaponry. But we may be about to witness not merely the implosion of the administration, but the ruination of Donald Trump personally; and perhaps even the destruction of the Republican Party itself.

 

This prospect is no mere consolation prize. Recall: Donald Trump has been breaking laws and getting away with it for his entire life. Remember the fraudulent Trump University, his theft of charitable donations from the Trump Foundation or his use of illegal labour to build the Trump Tower. For decades, he has been cheating and lying, assaulting women, exploiting workers, defrauding business partners and ripping off customers. For the Donald, there is no lie too blatant, no scam too petty. His only talents are for self-promotion and criminal escape-artistry. A lifetime of low and blatant criminality, and he would have got away with it – if only he had not run for president. Had he been able to control his own obscene ego and greed and childlike need for adulation, had he resisted seeking an office for which he was so manifestly and entirely unfit, he might never have been called to account for his crimes. But now, at last, he might be about to get his come-comeuppance. Whether he is impeached and then indicted, resigns in disgrace or is thrown out by the voters and subsequently prosecuted, he shall have been the author of his own destruction, and justice will be all the sweeter for it.

 

More is to come. Are we be about to witness the annihilation of the Grand Old Party itself? So completely have they bound themselves to Trump that their fates and reputations are utterly entwined. And their extinction is well-deserved and hard-earned. Beneath the shadow of a president less worthy and more dangerous than any in living memory, they have abjectly failed to uphold even the minimum standards of responsibility and decency a democratic republic demands. Consider the lies they have told, the excuses they have made, the grave responsibilities they have absented, the cowardice they have shown, the norms they have broken, the thugs and paedophiles they have sheltered and embraced – they have not so much dipped their hands in the blood as they have wallowed in it. They have finally proven that there is no principle they will not abandon – Christian chastity, universal franchise, limited government, freedom of the press, rule of law, integrity in public office, fiscal responsibility, opposing Russian tyranny and aggression, upholding freedom abroad – no principle save one: the relentless redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich. (Undoubtedly, the only thing Trump could do to lose their unqualified backing is put up taxes). And what of their conduct before the age of Trump? Surely, you have not forgotten their nationwide, decades-long campaign to dismantle American democracy through gerrymandering and disenfranchising black and minority voters? Their chronic and shameless appeals to lizard-brained bigotry and fear? Their monstrous moral hypocrisy; preaching Christian virtue and demonising homosexuals and liberals whilst secretly fucking rent boys and groping interns? Their sustained campaign to delegitimise objective journalism and scientific truth on everything from evolution to climate change? Their transformation of what should be a simple, rational and boring debate on basic safety checks for gun owners into a hysterical culture war? The cover they afforded the Bush administration’s depraved regime of kidnap, torture and secret prisons? Their bankrupting of the Republic with never-ending wars and immense unfunded tax cuts – a mountain of debt, they insist, that can only be paid by eviscerating the welfare payments on which millions of poor Americans subsist? Equivocate not: they are vile beyond redemption, and the existence of the occasional decent Republican is no more persuasive a counterargument than the occurrence of the odd decent Bolshevik[1]. Far from being a disaster, could the election of 2016 become the triumph that doomed the party whose death was long overdue?

 

A little hope is a dangerous thing, and events may play out differently. Mueller may exhaust his leads or be fired before he unearths whatever bodies remain. The Republicans may cling on in 2018; nor does Trump’s defeat in 2020 look vastly more likely than not. So with our hope comes a matching fear: that if we do not prevail, the GOP will not waste their opportunity to further corrode the institutions of the Republic. Combined with the theft of Merrick Garland’s seat, the resignation of Justice Kennedy has opened the door to yet more audacious attacks on voting rights in America. Emboldened, right-wing trolls may switch from online harassment of journalists to physical intimidation. The spread of lies and propaganda will continue unabated. The Department of Justice will be de-clawed. And in all levels of government, officials will begin to take notice that the old moral code has changed. It is terrifyingly and tangibly close: a degraded democracy on the model of Poland or Hungary, where greed and despotism hide behind a faux-populist tissue of lies. Only the obliteration of this criminal president and his monstrous party can save the Republic. Cling to that hope, and be face the danger.

 

Nathan

Friday August 31^st, 2018

London

 

[1]Many of the Republican politicians held up as examples of conscientiousness and integrity are grossly overrated. The saintly terms in which the late, deeply compromised Senator McCain is near-universally described is symptomatic of a republic in which moral standards in public life are in free-fall, and in Senator McCain’s party most of all. It beggars belief that in the country that calls itself the “leader of the free world” a politician can get credit for opposing torture.