WOULD TRUMP’S RE-ELECTION BE THE “END OF DEMOCRACY?”

 

… Supporters of President Trump fire cannons mounted to a barge demonstrating against a boat parade in Sandusky Bay, Ohio.

 

Is this the “most important election of our time?”

 

Things are so raucous in today’s US politics, that a documentary filmmaker has concluded that a re-election of Trump would be the, “end of democracy”.

A psychiatrist author of his new book on America’s internal chaos, he chose for his book-cover, an image from the movie: “Planet of the Apes.”  It’s the picture of a charred, half-buried, Statue of Liberty.

Yes, that’s how bad the state of the nation seems to be.  And it appears to be with a significant portion of our nation.

On the Trump side of this equation, a US minister who believes that America is God’s chosen nation.  He has decided that a Joe Biden win would mean a crushing of the nation’s political essence.

In other words, one week before Americans is to choose their path forward, for some, America’s crossroads reeks of total despair.

This election has become what is called “the most important US election of our time”.  In fact, this 2020 vote is taking place within the country during a historically dark mood.  The nation is low on hope, running on spiritual empty, and convinced that the wrong outcome will bring disaster.

As an example of the situation, President Trump's personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani appeared at a rally in New York, where Trump supporters clashed violently with counter-protesters.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Frank Luntz, a long-time Republican political consultant who has been having focus groups of undecided voters for seven different presidential cycles. “Even the most balanced, mainstream people are talking about this election in language that is more cataclysmic than anything I’ve ever heard.  If you are a believer in climate change, reelecting Trump is literally the end of the world. [If your a Republican,] taxes are your issue, you think a Biden victory will bankrupt you. If your top concern is health care, you think a Biden loss will kill you.”

There’s a long history of lurid foreboding in American politics. Among the nation’s founders were those pamphleteers who made their reputations by declaiming the dire future the colonists faced if their revolution failed.  But the current language is so dire, that even those who are steeped in extreme conflict, even they have become alarmed.

“I didn’t take it seriously for a long time, but in the last six weeks, it’s become very concerning,” said Michael Barkun, a political scientist at Syracuse University who studies political extremism. “This idea that the other side winning the election will produce a precipitous decline and the disintegration of institutions is completely at variance with American history.”

Historians say that in past bouts of insecurity and self-doubt, Americans often focused on foreign threats.  As examples were the ideological battle with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and the unrest in the Middle East after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

But now, the worry on the right is that a Democratic win would plunge the nation into catastrophic socialism.  While the fear on the left is that a Trump victory would produce a turn toward totalitarianism.  Both groups have created “a perilous moment”.  It’s the idea that if the other side wins, “We’re really in for it,” said Peter Stearns, a historian at George Mason University.  (The illegal maneuvers of Mitch McConnell in the US Senate for dealing with the Supreme Court nomination has made these issues even more dire.)

“The two sides have come to view each other not as opponents, but as deeply evil,” he said. “And that’s happening when trust in institutions has collapsed and each group is choosing not to live near each other. It seems there’s no middle ground.”

The rejection of the other side is so thorough that 31% of Biden supporters in Virginia say they would not accept a Trump victory as legitimate and 26% of Trump supporters are similarly unwilling to accept a Biden victory.  This is according to a new Washington Post-Schar School poll.

From rumors of coming modern civil war, to the GOP's current voter intimidation, Americans’ concerns about the election and its aftermath have arisen. 

This is all as once-fringe ideas have leached into the mainstream.

One-third of Republican voters said in a Daily Kos/Civigs poll this fall, that they think there’s truth to the QAnon theory of a “Deep State Elite” that secretly controls the government. The FBI concluded in May that QAnon and similar “political conspiracy theories very likely will foster increasing political tensions and . . . criminal or violent acts.”

Americans are especially susceptible to a dark, pessimistic view of the country right now. 

This is because several powerful forces are undermining institutions that people have trusted for centuries.  This is according to scholars who have studied the shift in popular attitudes.  Examples are:  A populist president with a showman’s predilection for apocalyptic language;  A flowering of unfounded beliefs, such as QAnon, “fake news” and fear of rampaging immigrants;  A revolution in technology and some biased media that has significantly altered how Americans consume news and learn about politics, (such as from today's social media).

And when President Trump made the following statement on the 2020 election: 'The survival of our nation is at stake'

Add a frightening, deadly pandemic, the protest and anger about racial deaths and inequalities, the sudden economic collapse, and the result is pervasive mistrust.  There is a fear that the world’s most powerful nation can no longer come together in common cause.

“We’re facing a difficult time,” Political Scientist Barkun said. “The threat - the virus, being invisible, that makes it even more frightening. There’s an increasingly widespread belief that authority — scientific, political, informational — is suspect. It can be more comforting to believe in an unpleasant outcome than to embrace uncertainty.”

In sharp contrast with other presidents, Trump has positioned himself not as a unifying ambassador of hope, but as a fellow victim.  Trump tweets conspiracy theories, accuses of “hoaxes” aimed at him, devoted his inaugural address to a deadly vision of “American carnage,” and he campaigns for reelection as being against anarchy in American streets while predicting a bogus Biden plot against the suburbs.

For many years, a rule of thumb in American politics was that the candidate with the sunnier outlook was likely to win. Other presidents elected in the past three decades appealed to American optimism and aspirations: Bill Clinton ran as “the man from Hope.”  George W. Bush presented himself as a “compassionate conservative.”  Barack Obama centered his campaign on “hope and change.”

But Biden has instead warned that “the country is in a dangerous place”.  Our trust in each other is ebbing.  Today, hope seems difficult at best.  Too many Americans see our public life as “an occasion for total, unrelenting partisan warfare.”  And President Trump has supported that possibility.

After Trump repeatedly suggested that he might refuse to accept the results of the election, Biden last month expressed concern about “whether Trump generates some kind of response in a way that unsettles the society or will cause some kind of violence.”

Trump is supporting that idea by arguing that the country will collapse into “mob rule” if Biden wins. “No one will be safe,” the president said.

The reality is that today, with this president, anything is possible, and yes, this the proof that this truly is: “the most important election of our time”.

Copyright G. Ater 2020