America's continuing crisis of cancelling democracy (or, when will the martial law dictatorship officially begin?)

Trump's administration will be remembered as a pivotal moment in which, after a century of steadily expanding presidential powers, to rule the country by administrative decree rather than decisions made with discussion by a public body, the conservative party set out to destroy what remained of "democratic" and liberal (involving real citizens' liberties) constitutional government. The point was simply to destroy the government of the United States as we know it and replace it de facto by a dictatorship. This was obviously planned, and it suited the billionaire class that basic runs the world and whose governments must answer to it, enough that protests on the part of liberal and Democratic Party-related elites were as limited and ineffective as liberal efforts to stop movements towards fascism have always been. (Whenever such tendencies have been fought, as in Republican Spain, it was not the liberal capitalist class but radical socialist movements based in the working class, that did most of the work of fighting to keep "democracy" alive, often wanting to expand it in the process).

A careful testing process took place under the apparent aegis of an impulsive narcissistic president. This man is not democratic in his style of thinking, but is a strategist. He built a business empire by being one. He thinks strategically, and his off-the-cuff remarks may be impulsive but a basic thinking is operative.

Now, at the end of his term, Trump blatantly floats the idea of not handing over power if he loses the election. He will do this by contesting the election's results, and seemingly on some sound, though flimsy, basis.

The presidential contender is openly considering (he has pointedly not said no when asked) expanding the Supreme Court. This would be done legally, but of course it does push 'normal' ideas of Constitutional government. This doesn't mean he would be wrong to do that, but it does mean he's caught up in a process he cannot control that may seem to call for extra-legal or extra-normal actions. And so making his own possible government and actual candidacy part of a process of governmental abnormalization and de-democratizing, de-politicization.

Trump's madness may have a method in it. He has consistently said and done things that amount to testing the waters, trying to provoke the listening public and so the whole country, elites who make opinions and masses who react both, in actions that it would be mistaken and foolish to treat as the mere pranks of a childish leader with infantile longings for omnipotence (or magnipotence), whether or not that can be said.

Personalizing criticisms of the deeds of politicians are a widely-used effective tactic (something is a tactic if it serves a purpose, regardless of whether or to what extent it was premeditated or engaged in with this purpose in mind) that depoliticizes a situation. In the decisive years (1970-73) when neoliberalism was introduced by global capital and key Western governments, with the ascension of Thatcher and Reagan later that decade, a shift was needed to depoliticize American culture, which was famously said in a study influential in Washington that claimed that American society had an excess of democratic tendencies causing a crisis of "governability," - at roughly the same time, a president (Nixon) was subject to impeachment proceedings. What this accomplished was to shift a mood of growing popular opposition to the Vietnam War from opposition to American foreign policy as such, which dangerously suggested opposition to capitalism, a point Martin Luther King had begun to make shortly before his assassination in 1968, the year Nixon was elected, to opposition to dishonesty and unfairness in government. Nixon's team was found guilty of the crimes of electronically bugging both the offices of the Democratic Party in an election season when its candidate (George McGovern) was anti-war, and of the psychiatrist of the leading whistleblower of the day, Daniel Ellsberg, whose revelations published by the New York Times and the Washington Post, the nation's leading liberal newspapers, had been key in influencing public opinion against the war. So Nixon's crimes were actually directed at opposition to the war, and are better thought of as aimed at suppressing serious dissent than as a rule-breaking dishonesty, even on the part of a paranoid man. That people should want to play by the rules is a point often made in American politics, and seems to be one of the things that kept Barack Obama from being bolder in his proposals, since he was so eager to show that the Republicans in Congress should be treated like the other players in a game based on good sportsmanship. Of course, the Republican and conservative forces in this country are much more unscrupulous and unhesitant than liberal Democrats, who struggle much more with issues of conscience and considerations of fairness and propriety, as befits a party whose mostly Harvard and Yale Law School associated elites at the top levels are the kind of people who usually think and care about good government, and not just advancing their own partisan agenda by any means necessary. It is well that the conservative activists whose organizing in the 50s and 60s steadily led to the triumph of Ronald Reagan in 1980 have always been quite focused and disciplined on getting what they want. This is common; more liberal politicians are generally known for being thoughtful and conscientious. It is indeed a virtue, though its liabilities are not enough understood. During Nixon's presidency, and following a major Vietnamese victory in 1968, Walter Cronkite, the influence CBS television news anchor, had already announced that the war was "unwinnable," and that meant that American men were dying in numbers too large to justify the war. These men were unusually likely to be black or hispanic, because college student men were given draft deferments. But the real problem of the war was misrepresented as a mistake (not in the "national interest") when arguably it was much more of an atrocity, and it was the outstanding sore thumb in a very long series of foreign wars and military expeditions or covert interventions from 1946 at the beginning of the Cold War until the end of the Communism, when the enemy shifted to Middle Eastern "radical" (militant) Islam, because of oil. The Congressional proceedings against Nixon were for dishonesty. This led to the election of a down-to-earth church-going man who was thought very honest, Jimmy Carter. But the reframing as a personal crime apparently stemming from some kind of very neurotic paranoia on Nixon's part (which itself is a staple of American politics and the anti-Communist hysteria of the decade or so after World War II, which made both Nixon's career and Reagan's, who would very pointedly continue it, applying the "Communist" label in the way it had generally been used: to designate as an enemy any regime globally that attempted to remove its own economy from global capitalism and so the profits of the US and its Western European and Japanese allies.

So making the political personal by attacking the morals or psychology of a president is nothing new. It's a common recourse of the media, which naturally inclines to scandals because scandals and threats or fears (paradigmatically and at the most basic level, both ordinary crime and crime statistics, and the spectacular crimes that get enough attention to influence policy). This is.a depoliticizing and therefore de-democratizing strategy at the same that it is attractive to liberals (less so of course to the left in any proper sense of the term), who would like to go after the other party any way they can that they think might work with the electorate.

Trump of course has tested the waters with statements like those saying that right-wing thugs who show up at demonstrations and assault or kill liberal and left-wing protestors are acceptable, and sending federal troops to demonstrations against the violence and excesses of policing. Trump does not just appeal to the right, though certainly he does and understanding the far right is certainly important in understanding his administration and what it has sought to do and accomplished in fact.

The fear that this country is moving away from democracy is real enough. That's pretty obvious now. Elites who want this, and there are good reasons why they should, that are grounded in fears of political instability which could pose risks ultimately to capital. The move away from democracy and liberty has been happening in a number of ways, including the disinformation problem, which Trump has characteristically both called attention to and exacerbated.

I feel as if I have a personal stake in this, because, and certainly without much reason if their intent is to go after people like me who are writers and in some sense on the left or in the opposition, or crticising the government sometimes, -- I personally was harassed by the police in New York where I live, and they successfully tried to make it look like I am crazy. This happened in 2015-16 under the Obama administration. I don't think that who is in the Oval Office is the biggest causal determinant of this sort of thing. In the US and UK especially, the police agencies are known to have been involved for a long time in harassing people in political opposition.

If there is ultimately to be some kind of Reichstag Fire, by which I just mean any newsworthy event that the government could seize on as an excuse to move against people (probably arresting thousands of tens of thousands of people overnight, and then making an announcement that certain constitutional protections are suspending in the morning), the government of a nation that is as diverse as ours, and has a history of a volatile, complaining populace that gets upset easily about political events, cares about them, and is vocal, likely to take to the streets or publish essays or make art works somehow criticizing the government, this means that the elites must move carefully.

Trump has moved us closer to dictatorship, or a government by state of exception (that is, the Constitution remains in force with all of our legal liberties, but it and they are suspended because of a declared national emergency). What we citizens should do about this is first of all be aware of it, and of course also know that we cannot, should not, must not, accept it.

Is there a left-wing opposition strong enough to stop the trend? There certainly is a large left and liberal opposition. Of course we are not strong enough to defeat an army sent against us. That ultimately is the recourse of governments in situations of crisis when a popular social movement appears somehow to elites to threaten their hegemony. The facts of the kinds of maneuvers that have been made, including in government leaders' statements, are, whatever else they indicate, also an indication that they fear the opposition, that which exists or will likely emerge.

If Trump lost the election and then cancelled its results, refusing to step down, opposition from within the political class probably would not be enough to make a difference. There would be a lot of Americans taking to the streets. They would be met by police officers or soldiers (they are really the same thing, of course, especially in such situations). Would this be partly a numbers game? I suspect so. Based on events in other countries in recent decades and years, it seems to me most likely that if there are enough people in opposition, the government would have to bend, because it can only shoot so many of them. Would you rather try to preserve democracy without risking your life? Me too.

Perhaps we should hope more than anything that if those protests occur, that they will wind up demanding more than just that Mr. Biden be allowed to assume the office he will have been elected to. Of course we would call for that. And what else besides?

How about for starters: 1) Eliminate the Electoral College with its winner-take-all per state, and establish election of the President by majority of the popular vote. 2) Limit campaign financing to take corporate, wealthy, and interest group funding out of it. 3) Change our method of choosing Supreme Court Justices. They should be chosen by Congress on open political grounds, since those will be the grounds anyway. 4) Limit presidential powers to exclude both war-making and police powers that do not require approval by other persons or governing bodies. (These include the power to start World War III, which only the American President can do without the consent of any other person in the government. The Russian and Chinese constitution do not have the same solo powers).

4) De-militarize the police and reduce their funding and numbers. 5) Immediate release of all prisoners convicted of non-violent crimes, involving drugs or anything else. 6) End police (or medical) harassment of dissidents and people not suspected of an actual and serious crime. 6) Public control of major internet service providers, search engines, and other organizations. They must be responsible to citizens and taxpayers.