Category Archives: Politics

Comparing the Former Guy to a Tired Comedy Act

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His act has gotten very old. Maybe that will contribute to a crushing defeat in 2024. From Matt Lewis of The Daily Beast:

There was a time when D____ T____ made news with his rallies—when he said things that utterly shocked us. Who could forget the firestorm he started, for example, when he went after Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players who knelt during the national anthem in 2017, or earlier that year when he called Barack Obama “the founder of ISIS”?

T____’s performance in Arizona on Saturday night—his first rally in months and his much-hyped chance to respond to the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot—was neither shocking nor terribly newsworthy.

It didn’t even merit a mention on The Washington Post’s homepage Sunday morning. The New York Times only used T____’s speech as a peg to write a broader story under the headline: “T____ Rally Underscores G.O.P. Tension Over How to Win in 2022.”

A few years ago, T____ rallies spawned breathless coverage and drove multiple news cycles. But The Times’ story isn’t even about the rally, and their mentioning it is mostly perfunctory. . . .

TV sitcom showrunners sometimes react to declining ratings by introducing a “Cousin Oliver”—which, quite often, is a cute kid whose smart-alecky sass is meant to liven up a tired atmosphere. Sometimes it works, sometimes it’s evidence a show [is desperate]. But T____’s never been an ensemble cast type of personality. He’s the whole show, and the surrounding players are as replaceable and ephemeral as Spinal Tap’s exploding drummers.

The Arizona rally may have been the unofficial kickoff of his 2024 campaign. But this time around, T____ will have to work harder to break through—and not just because the media is less likely to give him ample air time free of charge.

Call it the Andrew Dice Clay conundrum: If your entire schtick is based on shock value, eventually the audience grows inured, and the lack of substance becomes embarrassingly plain.

T____ made assertions in Arizona Saturday night that might once have garnered buzz (on Sunday morning, at least). But they’re getting little play. In its writeup of the rally, Politico said T____ “issued a blistering response to Democrats” and that he “opened his speech by falsely claiming ‘proof’ that the 2020 election was ‘rigged.’” A more telling fact is that this “blistering response” was not deemed worthy enough to be the site’s lead story. What might have spawned outrage and wagging tongues a few years prior now elicits a collective chorus of yawns.

Here’s the thing about moving the Overton Window: The process of shifting standards and assumptions matters greatly at the societal level. It’s bad when news consumers become desensitized to a former president erroneously claiming an election was stolen. It also cannibalizes one of T____’s greatest assets: his ability to shock and awe. His schtick is tired, and that can often equate to a professional death sentence.

T____’s rock-concert rallies provide enough of his greatest hits for the fans and groupies who actually attend them. But for performers to remain relevant, they require new material. And politics is more stand-up comedy than rock and roll.

The Rolling Stones can play their more-current hits a million times, yet we will still keep clamoring for “Sympathy For The Devil.” But can you imagine Chris Rock getting an HBO special and doing 2016 material? The same goes for T____. Nobody wants to hear a political retread who rehashes his same tired conspiracy theories ad nauseam.

T____ seems like the sort of man who could appreciate the temporal, consumerist, and disposable culture of modernity. We fetishize what is new and what is next. Yet, T____’s obsession with relitigating an election that is now two calendar years past runs contrary to this modern American tendency. In this regard, his ego T____s his marketing savvy.

To be sure, T____ also benefits from the (bogus) sense he was wronged. But it’s hard to see how such a backward-looking 75-year-old man can remain in the vanguard. On Saturday night, T____ wasn’t just stuck in 2020—he was also stuck in the 20th century. There were numerous references to communism (more so than usual), including a reference to the Jan. 6 Commission’s witness interviews, which he compared to Stalinist show trials.

You might forgive T____ for such fanciful attacks on Nancy Pelosi and Congressional Democrats, since his criticism of Joe Biden isn’t terribly effective. T____ isn’t skilled at prosecuting a substantive policy critique . . .  (the best T____ could do was mock him for seeming dazed and confused). All this is to say, the new material didn’t kill on Saturday night.

The theme was “Make America Great Again
Again” . . .  But does lightning ever really strike twice? For every “Godfather II” masterpiece there’s dozens of “Ghostbusters II” failed sequels.

We’d be fools to count T____ out entirely. . . .  But he needs new material, and fast, because if his Arizona rally shows anything, it’s that the old routine just doesn’t land anymore.

The Best Argument Against the Filibuster: It’s Unconstitutional!

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There’s a rumor that Krysten Sinema (“Dem” – AZ) thinks her career — including being elected to the Senate — has been so impressive that her logical next step is to run for president. That’s why she doesn’t care that protecting the filibuster is killing the Democratic agenda and that, as a result, Democrats in Arizona hate her. She’s planning to run for president in 2024 under the banner of “bipartisanship”. It’s a ludicrous idea, but her big money donors are willing to fuel her fantasies. 

Filibuster reform may be dead for now but Thomas Geoghagen explains why the filibuster is  unconstitutional. From The New Republic: 

Over the course of many years and many think pieces, the case against the filibuster has been laid out. Typically, critics of the Jim Crow relic invoke various historical facts (some of which have apparently been lost on, or willfully ignored by, certain critical members of the Senate), as well as an array of practical and prudential bases. Onto the pile, however fruitlessly, let us add another: The filibuster is a plot against Vice President Kamala Harris—to take away her constitutional right to vote.

Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution makes it plain: Harris, as chair of the Senate, is given the responsibility to vote “when the Senate is equally divided.” In all the furor over the filibuster blocking voting rights legislation, keep in mind it is blocking Harris from this constitutional right, as well. The supermajority rule that ran counter to the Founders’ desires, now upheld by the filibuster’s status quo, is not just aiding in the disenfranchisement of voters by blocking meaningful voting rights legislation from passage—it’s also disenfranchising the woman sent to Washington to resolve the disputes of a divided Senate.

It would be fitting if Harris, given the chance to gavel the filibuster out of existence to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, reclaimed her rights at the same time. She can put that to the Senate on January 17 when any rules changes are being considered—by starting with a declaration that the filibuster is not just unfair or undemocratic but unconstitutional, as well.

The filibuster is not just a technical violation of Article I—though it is precisely that—it’s also a repudiation of its original design. That design created a bicameral legislature, with each house operating by majority rule, to replace the single legislative chamber that operated under the Articles of Confederation by supermajority or unanimous consent. By sneaking in a supermajority rule on the sly, as a procedural rule of debate, the Senate has essentially brought back a form of the obsolete Articles of Confederation. It shouldn’t really come as any surprise that the republic now faces a similar impetus toward disunion to the one it faced when the Articles were in place. The plot against Kamala Harris is not just a plot against the Constitution—it’s a force that threatens the existence of the United States itself.

It is without doubt a fact that the Framers wanted a deliberative legislative body. That’s why they divided the Congress into two houses—to provide a vital check and balance. Supermajority rule in the Senate upends the Framers’ intentions: It places too great a check on the House—without the House’s consent. More specifically, it inflicts an institutional injury on the House, as the “active principle of government” that the House is unable to redress. This is exactly what worried James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and others who bitterly criticized supermajority rules.

Yes, as defenders of the filibuster point out, the Senate has a right to make rules as to its own proceedings, but trifling with majority rule crosses textual red lines. Beyond the aforementioned Vice President Voting Clause in Article 1, Section 3, there is also the “Presentment Clause” of Article I, Section 7, which says in two places—yes, twice—that any bill or resolution passed by the House and Senate, “shall, before it becomes law, be presented to the President,” and if sent back, then it must be “approved by two thirds of each House.” The Presentment Clause would make no sense if the Senate required more than a majority to send it to the president in the first place. Finally, there is the Enumeration of Super Majority Rules, the seven times in the text of the Constitution that specifically lay out where and when a supermajority is expressly required.

One might nevertheless ask, why not by majority rule permit Congress [to institute] rule by supermajority? Of course this is an academic question—for Congress, by vote of both Houses, has never adopted a supermajority rule. The filibuster is simply a rule of the Senate, which has the effect of limiting the ability of the Congress to act. But Congress itself has never approved it. Yes, there has long been a cloture rule for the so-called “talking” filibuster. In 1917, the Senate adopted such a rule, which then required a two-thirds vote—now reduced to three-fifths. And while this rule did have a disgraceful and pernicious effect in race-related matters, the talking filibuster of old only on rare occasions held up a majority vote, maybe once or twice a year or not at all. But in our time, the talking filibuster for which the rule was intended is gone; no one has to talk to block a bill. And what was a procedural rule to get to a vote faster is now a rule that stops a vote from happening at all.

No, Congress has not adopted and never would adopt such a rule. Why would the House consent? As it now exists, it lets the Senate place a much greater check on legislation passed by the House than the Framers ever intended. It’s bad enough that this upsets the balance of power between the Senate and House, but it also upends the balance of power between the federal government and the states. The Senate, representing the states, is blocking the House, representing the people.

For the sake of argument, let us assume the text of the Constitution is less explicit than it actually is. Allowing Rule 22, which bars a vote by the majority without even active debate, still violates two fundamental canons of constitutional interpretation. The first canon, or rule, is the expressio unius principle—listing the exceptions for supermajority implies the exclusion of all others. That principle is basic in constitutional interpretation. In the case of Powell v. McCormack, the Supreme Court barred the U.S. House from excluding Adam Clayton Powell as a member because of “unethical conduct.” That was not one of the bases listed in the Constitution, and the listing of those bases implied the exclusion of others.

Additionally, to allow the Senate to add a supermajority rule would violate a second canon, the so-called Federalism Canon—which calls for the balance between federal and state power to be left alone. The filibuster changes the relative balance of power between the Senate, representing the states, and the House, representing the people. It is no accident that in blocking voting rights legislation, it is being used to protect the states from being regulated.

Harris, as chair, could reach the same conclusions. Rather than just hope a Senate majority uses the “nuclear option” to rid us of the filibuster, she could press the button. For the reasons above, she could declare the supermajority for cloture to be in conflict with Article I.

She may fail in the attempt. A majority can overturn a ruling of the chair. It is not so easy even for some Democrats in the Senate to give up the filibuster. There are many, many other bills that the senators take up other than voting rights legislation. So individual senators are caught in a dilemma worthy of a class in game theory—though glad to remove it for A, they do not want to remove it for B, or maybe C, or maybe D, or maybe an unknown X that will arrive later in their six-year terms. So the filibuster remains in place forever—except now for the budget and for nominations to judgeships and political positions. In these two cases, the budget and nominations, there is no choice but to get rid of the filibuster or there would be institutional collapse of the courts and of the executive branch.

However, with the John Lewis Act and Freedom to Vote Act, we are speaking about the institutional collapse of democracy itself. Protecting the integrity of federal elections from state interference is necessary to the integrity of the federal government—it is an obligation that is set forth in the original Elections Clause, Article I, Section 4. It is the only clause, the only text, that says Congress can override any state regulation of a federal election. Ever since 1787, Article I, Section 4 has been in there, the original nuclear option, to protect the national government from institutional collapse. It is an outrage to use the filibuster to block even the power of the national government to save itself. Surely that must have at least the same priority as enacting a budget by majority rule.

Let the vice president show some muscle in defense of her country. Let the debate start on January 17 with a ruling from the chair that Rule 22 is in conflict with her own right to cast a vote when the Senate is evenly divided. Then let her dare the Senate to overrule her. To reclaim the right to vote in the blocked legislation, she should begin with reclaiming her own right to vote, as well.

By a quirk of history, the plot against America is now also a plot against a Black woman’s right to vote. Who says the vice president has nothing to do?

President Biden Remembers January 6th, Challenges His Predecessor’s Lies and Looks Ahead

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Here’s most of the president’s speech, delivered at the Capitol this January 6th (the video is available here):

To state the obvious, one year ago today, in this sacred place, democracy was attacked. Simply attacked. The will of the people was under assault. The Constitution, our constitution, faced the gravest of threats.

Outnumbered in the face of a brutal attack, Capitol Police, the DC Metropolitan Police Department, the National Guard and other brave law enforcement officials saved the rule of law.

Our democracy held. We the people endured. We the people prevailed. 

For the first time in our history, a president had not just lost an election; he tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the Capitol. But they failed. They failed.

. . . I’m speaking to you today from Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol. This is where the House of Representatives met for 50 years in the decades leading up to the Civil War. It is on this floor where a young congressman from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, sat at desk 191.

Above him — above us — over that door leading into the rotunda is a sculpture depicting Clio, the muse of history. In her hands, an open book in which she records the events taking place in this chamber below. Clio stood watch over this hall one year ago today, as she has for more than 200 years. She recorded what took place. The real history. The real facts. The real truth. The facts and the truth that . . . you and I and the whole world saw with our own eyes. . . . 

Close your eyes. Go back to that day. What do you see? Rioters rampaging. Waving, for the first time inside this Capitol, the Confederate flag that symbolizes the cause to destroy America. To rip us apart. . . .  The mob breaking windows, kicking in doors, breaching the Capitol. American flags on poles being used as weapons, as spears. 

Fire extinguishers being thrown at the heads of police officers. A crowd that professes their love for law enforcement assaulted those police officers. Dragged them, sprayed them, stomped on them. Over 140 police officers were injured.

We all heard the police officers who were there that day testify to what happened. One officer called it “a medieval battle” and that he was more afraid that day than he was fighting the war in Iraq. They’ve repeatedly asked since that day, how dare anyone, anyone, diminish, belittle or deny the hell they were put through? We saw with our own eyes. Rioters menaced these halls, threatening life of the Speaker of the House, literally erecting gallows to hang the Vice President of the United States of America.

But what did we not see? We didn’t see a former president who just rallied the mob to attack sitting in the private dining room of the Oval Office in the White House watching it all on television and doing nothing for hours.

Police were assaulted. Lives at risk. The nation’s Capitol under siege. This wasn’t a group of tourists. This was an armed insurrection. They weren’t looking to uphold the will of the people; they were looking to deny the will of the people. They’re weren’t looking to uphold a free and fair election. They were looking to overturn one. Then weren’t looking to save the cause of America. They were looking to subvert the Constitution.

This isn’t about being bogged down past. It’s about making sure the past isn’t buried. That’s the only way forward. That’s what great nations do. They don’t bury the truth; they face up to it. . . . 

We are a great nation. My fellow Americans, in life there’s truth and tragically there are lies. Lies conceived and spread for profit and power. We must be absolutely clear about what is true and what is a lie. And here’s the truth: The former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election.

He’s done so because he values power over principle, because he sees his own interest as more important than his country’s interest, than America’s interest. And because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our Constitution.

He can’t accept he lost even though that’s what 93 United States senators, his own attorney general, his own vice president, governors and state officials in every battleground state have all said: He lost.

That’s what 81 million of you did as you voted for a new way forward. He’s done what no president in American history, in the history of this country, has ever, ever done.

He refused to accept the results of an election and the will of the American people. While some courageous men and women in the Republican Party are standing against it, trying to uphold the principle of that party, too many others are transforming that party into something else. They seem no longer to want to be the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan, the Bushes. . . . 

So at this moment, we must decide: What kind of nation are we going to be?

Are we going to be a nation that accepts political violence as a norm? Are we going to be a nation where we allow partisan election officials to overturn the legally expressed will of the people? Are are going to be a nation that lives not by the light of the truth but in the shadow of lies? We cannot allow ourselves to be that kind of nation.

The way forward is to recognize the truth. To live by it. The “Big Lie” being told by the former president, and many Republicans who fear his wrath, is that the insurrection in this country actually took place on Election Day, November 3, 2020. Think about that. Is that what you thought? Is that what you thought when you voted that day? Taking part in an insurrection? . . . Or did you think you were carrying out your highest duty as a citizen and voting?

The former presidents’ supporters are trying to rewrite history. They want you to see election day is the day of insurrection and the riots that took place here on January 6 as a true expression of the will of the people. Can you think of a more twisted way to look at this country, to look at America? I cannot.

Here’s the truth. The election of 2020 was the greatest demonstration of democracy in the history of this country. More of you voted in that election than have ever voted in all of American history. Over 150 million Americans went to the polls and voted that day, in a pandemic, some at great risk to their lives. And they should be applauded, not attacked.

Right now, in state after state, new laws are being written not to protect the vote, but to deny it. Not only to suppress the vote, but to subvert it. Not to strengthen and protect our democracy, but because the former president lost instead of looking at the election results in 2020, and saying they need new ideas or better ideas to win more votes. The former president and his supporters have decided the only way for them to win is to suppress your vote and subvert our elections. It’s wrong. It’s undemocratic. And frankly, it’s un-American.

The second “Big Lie” being told by the former president’s supporters is that the results of the election of 2020 can’t be trusted. The truth is that no election, no election in American history has been more closely scrutinized or more carefully counted.

Every legal challenge questioning the results in every court in this country that could have been made, was made and was rejected. Often rejected by Republican-appointed judges, including judges appointed by the former president himself. From state courts to the United States Supreme Court. Recounts were undertaken in state after state.

Georgia, Georgia counted its results three times, with one recount by hand. Phony partisan audits were undertaken long after the election in several states. None changed the results.

In some of them, the irony is the margin of victory actually grew slightly. So let’s speak plainly about what happened in 2020.

Even before the first ballot was cast, the former president was preemptively sowing doubt about the election results. He built his lie over months. It wasn’t based in the facts. He was just looking for an excuse, a pretext to cover for the truth. He’s not just a former president. He’s a defeated former president.

Defeated by a margin of over 7 million of your votes. In a full and free and fair election. There is simply zero proof the election results are inaccurate. In fact, in every venue where evidence had to be produced, an oath to tell the truth had to be taken, the former president failed to make his case. Just think about this: The former president and his supporters have never been able to explain how they accept as accurate other election results that took place on November 3rd. Elections for governor, United States Senate, House of Representatives, elections in which they close the gap in the House.

They challenged none of that. . . . Governor, senators, House of Representatives, somehow those results are accurate on the same ballot. . . . The only difference: the former president didn’t lose those other races. He just the lost . . . his own.

Finally, the third “Big Lie being” told by the former president and his supporters is that the mob who sought to impose their will through violence are the nation’s true patriots. Is that what you thought when you looked at the mob, ransacking the Capitol, destroying property, literally defecating in the hallways, rifling through the desks of senators and representatives, hunting down members of Congress? Patriots? Not in my view. . . . 

You can’t love your country only when you win, you can’t obey the law only when it’s convenient. You can’t be patriotic when you embrace and enable lies.

Those who stormed this Capitol and those who instigated and incited and those who called on them to do so held a dagger at the throat of America and American democracy. They didn’t come here out of patriotism or principle. They came here out of rage. Not in service of America, rather in service of one man. Those who incited the mob, the real plotters who were desperate to deny the certification of this election, to defy the will of the voters. Their plot was foiled. Congress, Democrats, Republicans stayed. Senators, representatives, staff, they finished their work the Constitution demanded. They honored their oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. 

Look folks, now it’s up to all of us, we the people, to stand for the rule of law, to preserve the flame of democracy, to keep the promise of America alive. The promise is at risk, targeted by the forces that value brute strength over the sanctity of democracy, fear over hope, personal gain over public good. . . . We’re living at an inflection point in history, both at home and abroad.

We’re engaged anew in a struggle between democracy and autocracy, between the aspirations of the many and the greed of the few, between the people’s right of self-determination and self-seeking autocrat. From China to Russia and beyond, they’re betting that democracy’s days are numbered. They actually told me democracy is too slow, too bogged down by division to succeed in today’s rapidly changing complicated world. And they’re betting . . .  America will become more like them . . . They’re betting America’s a place for the autocrat, the dictator, the strong man. I do not believe that. That is not who we are. That is not who we have ever been. And that is not who we should ever, ever be. 

Our founding fathers, as imperfect as they were, set in motion an experiment that changed the world, literally changed the world. Here in America, the people would rule. Power would be transferred peacefully . . .  

The former president’s lies about this election and the mob that attacked this Capitol could not be further away from the core American values. They want to rule or they will ruin, ruin what our country fought for at Lexington and Concord, at Gettysburg and Omaha Beach, Seneca Falls, Selma, Alabama. What were we fighting for? The right to vote, the right to govern ourselves. The right to determine our own destiny. . . . 

As we stand here today, one year since January 6 2021, the lies that drove the anger and madness we saw in this place, they have not abated. So we have to be firm, resolute and unyielding in our defense of the right to vote and to have that vote counted. . . . 

I did not seek this fight brought to this Capital one year ago today. But I will not shrink from it either. . . . I will defend this nation, and I’ll allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of democracy.  . . . This is not a land of kings or dictators or autocrats. We’re a nation of laws, of order, not chaos, of peace, not violence. Here in America, the people rule through the ballot, and their will prevails. So let us remember together. We’re one nation, under God, indivisible, that today, tomorrow and forever at our best, we are the United States of America.

The 2024 Election Could Make History (Dismal History)

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Unless all 50 Senate Democrats agree to protect voting rights this year, our next president might be someone who got fewer votes and didn’t even win the Electoral College. Here’s a brief preview from a profile of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) in The New Republic:

These next three years will test our democracy in ways it hasn’t been tested since the 1860s, or maybe ever. The scenario is pretty straightforward. The Republicans retake the House in the midterms. Immediately, any chance of Biden passing meaningful legislation is dead, but that’s the least of it. The GOP will launch hearing after hearing, issue subpoena after subpoena; they will find some flimsy rationale on which to impeach Biden, and they will stretch it out as long as possible. T____ will run—as Raskin put it, “for psychological, political, and financial reasons”—and he will be the GOP nominee, Raskin has little doubt. Assuming Biden seeks reelection, the election will probably be close, because elections just are these days.

If Biden wins by a matter of several thousand votes in a few states, as he did in 2020, the T____ machinery will kick into gear to steal the election. Republican election commissioners and state legislators and even some governors will put forward pro-T____ electors. The House of Representatives will not vote to certify Biden’s win in January 2025, which will toss the election to the House, which will make T____ president. (When a presidential election gets thrown to the House, under the Twelfth Amendment, the vote is by state delegation, so North Dakota has the same voting power as California; Republicans now control, and will likely in 2025 still control, a majority of state delegations, and Liz Cheney will probably be gone, meaning that Wyoming will go pro-T____.) For the second time in the history of the United States, the other time being 1824, Congress will have installed as the president a candidate who did not win a plurality of votes in either the Electoral College or the popular vote.

“D____ T____ [and Republican officials have] now converted every formerly ministerial step of the process into a moment for partisan rumble and contest,” Raskin told me. “So when we’re talking about the certification of the state popular vote, the governors’ certification of the electors, the electors meeting, and then the January 6th joint session receipt of the electors 
 all these phases of the process have now been turned into yet another opportunity for partisan combat.” There is no question in Raskin’s mind that this is what T____ and his supporters will try to do.

The [House] select committee on January 6 ties in directly here. Aside from trying to get to the bottom of who did what before and on the infamous date, Raskin wants the committee to try to take steps to safeguard democracy from attack by T____ or any future T____ wannabe. “Our select committee, I believe, should do whatever it can to reform the Electoral Count Act, to make it conform as much as possible to the popular will,” he said, referring to the 1887 act that spells out—confusingly, ambiguously, contradictorily—the presidential election certification process.

That obviously won’t be possible if Republicans retake the House. In the majority, the GOP will likely do all it can to subvert democracy and preemptively make people distrust the electoral process. 

A Canadian Sees Us as the Weimar Republic Before the Deluge

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A Canadian observer, Thomas Homer-Dixon, says his country faces a major threat from its troubled neighbor:

By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship.

We mustn’t dismiss these possibilities just because they seem ludicrous or too horrible to imagine. In 2014, the suggestion that D____ T____ would become president would also have struck nearly everyone as absurd. But today we live in a world where the absurd regularly becomes real and the horrible commonplace.

Leading American academics are now actively addressing the prospect of a fatal weakening of U.S. democracy.

This past November, more than 150 professors of politics, government, political economy and international relations appealed to Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, which would protect the integrity of US elections but is now stalled in the Senate. This is a moment of “great peril and risk,” they wrote. “Time is ticking away, and midnight is approaching.”

I’m a scholar of violent conflict. For more than 40 years, I’ve studied and published on the causes of war, social breakdown, revolution, ethnic violence and genocide, and for nearly two decades I led a centre on peace and conflict studies at the University of Toronto.

Today, as I watch the unfolding crisis in the United States, I see a political and social landscape flashing with warning signals.

I’m not surprised by what’s happening there – not at all. During my graduate work in the United States in the 1980s, I sometimes listened to Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio talk show host and later television personality. I remarked to friends at the time that, with each broadcast, it was if Mr. Limbaugh were wedging the sharp end of a chisel into a faint crack in the moral authority of U.S. political institutions, and then slamming the other end of that chisel with a hammer.

In the decades since, week after week, year after year, Mr. Limbaugh and his fellow travelers have hammered away – their blows’ power lately amplified through social media and outlets such as Fox News and Newsmax. The cracks have steadily widened, ramified, connected and propagated deeply into America’s once-esteemed institutions, profoundly compromising their structural integrity. The country is becoming increasingly ungovernable . . . 

According to Harvard’s renowned sociologist and political scientist Theda Skocpol, in the early 2000s fringe elements of the Republican party used disciplined tactics and enormous streams of money (from billionaires like the Koch brothers) to turn extreme laissez-faire ideology into orthodox Republican dogma. Then, in 2008, Barack Obama’s election as president increased anxieties about immigration and cultural change among older . . .  members of the white middle-class, who then coalesced into the populist Tea Party movement. . . .  The GOP became, Dr. Skocpol writes, a radicalized “marriage of convenience between anti-government free-market plutocrats and racially anxious ethno-nationalist activists and voters.”

Now, adopting Mr. Limbaugh’s tried-and-true methods, demagogues on the right are pushing the radicalization process further than ever before. By weaponizing people’s fear and anger, Mr. T____ and a host of acolytes and wannabees . . .  transformed [the Republican Party] into a near-fascist personality cult that’s a perfect instrument for wrecking democracy.

And it’s not inaccurate to use the F word. As conservative commentator David Frum argues, T____ism increasingly resembles European fascism in its contempt for the rule of law and glorification of violence. Evidence is as close as the latest right-wing Twitter meme: widely circulated holiday photos show Republican politicians and their family members, including young children, sitting in front of their Christmas trees, all smiling gleefully while cradling pistols, shotguns and assault rifles. . . .

In the weeks before the November, 2016, U.S. election, I talked to several experts to gauge the danger of a T____ presidency. I recently consulted them again. While in 2016 they were alarmed, this last month most were utterly dismayed. All told me the U.S. political situation has deteriorated sharply since last year’s attack on Capitol Hill.

After four years of Mr. T____’s bedlam, the U.S. under Mr. Biden has been comparatively calm. Politics in the U.S. seems to have stabilized.

But absolutely nothing has stabilized in America. The country’s problems are systemic and deeply entrenched – and events could soon spiral out of control.

The experts I consulted described a range of possible outcomes if Mr. T____ returns to power, none benign. They cited particular countries and political regimes to illustrate where he might take the U.S.: Viktor Orban’s Hungary, with its coercive legal apparatus of “illiberal democracy”; Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil, with its chronic social distemper and administrative dysfunction; or Vladimir Putin’s Russia, with its harsh one-man hyper-nationalist autocracy. . . . 

But there’s another political regime, a historical one, that may portend an even more dire future for the U.S.: the Weimar Republic. The situation in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s was of course sui generis; in particular, the country had experienced staggering traumas – defeat in war, internal revolution and hyperinflation – while the country’s commitment to liberal democracy was weakly rooted in its culture. But as I read a history of the doomed republic this past summer, I tallied no fewer than five unnerving parallels with the current U.S. situation.

First, in both cases, a charismatic leader was able to unify right-wing extremists around a political program to seize the state. Second, a bald falsehood about how enemies inside the polity had betrayed the country – for the Nazis, the “stab in the back,” and for T____ists, the Big Lie – was a vital psychological tool for radicalizing and mobilizing followers. Third, conventional conservatives believed they could control and channel the charismatic leader and rising extremism but were ultimately routed by the forces they helped unleash. Fourth, ideological opponents of this rising extremism squabbled among themselves; they didn’t take the threat seriously enough, even though it was growing in plain sight; and they focused on marginal issues that were too often red meat for the extremists. (Today, think toppling statues.)

To my mind, though, the fifth parallel is the most disconcerting: the propagation of a “hardline security doctrine” . . . Jonathan Leader Maynard argues that extremist right-wing ideologies generally don’t arise from explicit efforts to forge an authoritarian society, but from the radicalization of a society’s existing understandings of how it can stay safe and secure in the face of alleged threats.

Hardline conceptions of security are “radicalized versions of familiar claims about threat, self-defence, punishment, war, and duty,” he writes. They are the foundation on which regimes organize campaigns of violent persecution and terror. People he calls “hardliners” believe the world contains many “dangerous enemies that frequently operate in and through purported ‘civilian’ groups.” Hardliners increasingly dominate T____ist circles now. . . .  Fear of “true believers” shifts the behaviour of the movement’s moderates toward extremism. Sure enough, experts I recently consulted all spoke about how fear of crossing Mr. T____’s base – including fear for their families’ physical safety – was forcing otherwise sensible Republicans to fall into line. . . . 

Beyond a certain threshold, other new research shows, political extremism feeds on itself, pushing polarization toward an irreversible tipping point. This suggests a sixth potential parallel with Weimar: democratic collapse followed by the consolidation of dictatorship. Mr. T____ may be just a warm-up act – someone ideal to bring about the first stage, but not the second. Returning to office, he’ll be the wrecking ball that demolishes democracy, but the process will produce a political and social shambles. . . . Then the stage will be set for a more managerially competent ruler, after Mr. T____, to bring order to the chaos he’s created.

A terrible storm is coming from the south, and Canada is woefully unprepared. Over the past year we’ve turned our attention inward, distracted by the challenges of COVID-19, reconciliation, and the accelerating effects of climate change. But now we must focus on the urgent problem of what to do about the likely unravelling of democracy in the United States.

We need to start by fully recognizing the magnitude of the danger. If Mr. T____ is re-elected, even under the more-optimistic scenarios the economic and political risks to our country will be innumerable. Driven by aggressive, reactive nationalism, Mr. ____ “could isolate Canada continentally,” as one of my interlocutors put it euphemistically.

Under the less-optimistic scenarios, the risks to our country in their cumulative effect could easily be existential, far greater than any in our federation’s history. What happens, for instance, if high-profile political refugees fleeing persecution arrive in our country, and the U.S. regime demands them back. Do we comply?

. . . Canada is not powerless in the face of these forces, at least not yet. . . .  The Prime Minister should immediately convene a standing, non-partisan Parliamentary committee with representatives from the five sitting parties, all with full security clearances. . . .  It should receive regular intelligence analyses and briefings by Canadian experts on political and social developments in the United States and their implications for democratic failure there. And it should be charged with providing the federal government with continuing, specific guidance as to how to prepare for and respond to that failure, should it occur. . . .Â