Andrew Sullivan on the 1st 2 months of Trump 2
Andrew Sullivan was perhaps, after Dr. King, the most effective crusader for a liberal cause in our lifetimes. The cause was gay rights. Sullivan’s genius was emphasizing the right to marry. However, Sullivan is conservative on many issues. That, perhaps, gives this short excerpt from Sullivan’s Substack—on the first two months of Trump’s second term—even more weight. We strongly suggest that you read the whole piece.
….I’m not naive. As televised and online theater, the first two months have been worthy of Roger Ailes. Deporting foreigners, attacking college students, terrifying legal noncitizens, bullying other countries, brandishing brutality, and mocking left lunacy all have a real constituency. . . . Suddenly, you see how fragile liberal democracy is in the hands of a duplicitous mob-boss like Trump.
But this embrace of indecency, aggression, and lawlessness is also itself fragile. Trump has always known how to craft a reality show. But behind the curtain, there is still a small, bitter, vengeful, incompetent man, surrounded by third-rate sycophants and hacks with no coherent strategy for economic or political success, no serious experience in government, and a record of making enemies of everyone and losing long-loyal friends.
A president who uses ancient laws and police-state tactics shows not only that he is a degenerate and a disgrace, but that he is too weak to do things the right way; he pushes executive orders because he doesn’t have the votes in Congress to achieve anything lasting; he has alienated allies he may well soon need; he has already had his lunch eaten by Putin and Xi and Netanyahu; and he is heading toward a period of tenacious stagflation when his most resilient advantage — that he manages the economy well — may evaporate overnight.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that this shit-show is even worse than many of us expected. It is far more overtly authoritarian than in the first term, far more dangerous in foreign policy, far more reckless in economic policy, far more intolerant of opposing views, completely contemptuous of free speech and free trade and free markets. The two aspects of tyranny I did not see in the first term — war-like territorial expansionism and contempt for habeas corpus and due process — have now fallen into place. My 2016 essay, in fact, now reads as more prescient than at any time since I wrote it. I was wrong in hoping that First Term Trump gave us some reassurance about Second Term Trump. He is still the petty tyrant, corrupt bully, and depraved fool he always was — but now emboldened, unleashed, seeking true revenge.
Our national character — the very meaning of America — is thereby being changed. Trump is now a textbook definition of a tyrant attempting to break a republic, propelled by propaganda, fueled by bigotry, contemptuous of law. And so, so many Americans are here for it. This, I truly fear, is not a drill.