Cultural Revolution
Those of us who survived Trump 1.0 were ill-prepared for the second round. It’s as if the intervening years threw us off our game. The hyper-alertness that came with COVID slumped during the relief of the Biden presidency. All was well. Normalcy had prevailed. The country was intact, and its institutions were sound. If Trump was a stress test, it ended well, and we returned to the routines of sane predictability.
You may have noticed that the glaciers have melted. We are no longer on the verge of rapid descent but rather hurtling through the hellscape of Project 2025. In a matter of months, the court of John Roberts has assumed a posture of submissive bootlicking. Principled constitutionalism has evaporated in the military, giving way to an era of armored vehicles to take the place of conventional police cars. Trump has extracted vows of obeisance from institutions across the spectrum of civil society. They range from universities to law firms to broadcast media companies. The reason that the Wall Street Journal held firm is that it is run by someone who manages to intimidate Trump. This is not so much a contest of principles as it is a game of chicken between dueling monsters. Murdoch vs. Trump; Godzilla vs. Mothra. Too bad Stephen Colbert had no Mothra to defend him.
None of this is likely to affect future elections. Hitler taught us that voters are blind to abstract issues like civil liberties and militarism in society. They engage on bread and butter questions: the cost of eggs and agricultural subsidies. Either that or salacious scandals. We have a better chance of winning the midterms by beating the drum on Jeffrey Epstein than drawing a red circle around the likely collapse of the Bill of Rights.
But this is a moment when we have to do two things well: pointing to the catastrophe of rural health care and resisting the cultural revolution underway. Along with you, I have been following the second issue closely. The story of the Smithsonian is a case in point. First the museum updated a statement on impeachment to include Donald Trump in its list of malefactors. It spoke plainly about the sins of January 6 and the president’s attempt to manipulate Volodymyr Zelensky. Under obvious pressure from the new administration, it then removed that material from its display case on the presidency. It finally generated a new placard on Trump which is watery and inoffensive, with none of the punch of the original.
What’s happening here is sick and crazy: the remaking of history and the nation’s consciousness by a tin-pot dictator who will not stand for honesty. It’s a sin against the truth and standards of scholarship and fairness. But don’t imagine that this will take care of itself. Only when the midterms are in the bag will we be able to reverse the course on the revolution now unfolding.