Robert
Kagan is a distinguished scholar of foreign policy.
He
wrote this important article for
The Washington Post about the danger that Donald Trump poses to our nation.
He
excoriates the GOP leaders who are meekly falling into line behind him in the
name of party unity.
I
am 77 years old. This is the most crucial presidential election of my lifetime.
If
Trump should win, if he should appoint one or two Supreme Court justices, every
major progressive decision would be rolled back, including Roe v. Wade.
“The
Republican Party’s attempt to treat Donald Trump as a normal political
candidate would be laughable were it not so perilous to the republic. If only
he would mouth the party’s “conservative” principles, all would be well.
“But
of course the entire Trump phenomenon has nothing to do with policy or
ideology. It has nothing to do with the Republican Party, either, except in its
historic role as incubator of this singular threat to our democracy. Trump has
transcended the party that produced him.
"His growing army of supporters no
longer cares about the party. Because it did not immediately and fully embrace
Trump, because a dwindling number of its political and intellectual leaders
still resist him, the party is regarded with suspicion and even hostility by
his followers. Their allegiance is to him and him alone.
“And
the source of allegiance? We’re supposed to believe that Trump’s support stems
from economic stagnation or dislocation. Maybe some of it does. But what Trump
offers his followers are not economic remedies — his proposals change daily.
"What offers is an attitude, an aura of crude strength and machismo, a boasting disrespect for the niceties of the democratic culture that he claims, and his followers believe, has produced national weakness and incompetence. His incoherent and contradictory utterances have one thing in common: They provoke and play on feelings of resentment and disdain, intermingled with bits of fear, hatred and anger.
"His public discourse consists of attacking or ridiculing a wide range of “others” — Muslims, Hispanics, women, Chinese, Mexicans, Europeans, Arabs, immigrants, refugees — whom he depicts either as threats or as objects of derision. His program, such as it is, consists chiefly of promises to get tough with foreigners and people of nonwhite complexion. He will deport them, bar them, get them to knuckle under, make them pay up or make them shut up.
"What offers is an attitude, an aura of crude strength and machismo, a boasting disrespect for the niceties of the democratic culture that he claims, and his followers believe, has produced national weakness and incompetence. His incoherent and contradictory utterances have one thing in common: They provoke and play on feelings of resentment and disdain, intermingled with bits of fear, hatred and anger.
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"His public discourse consists of attacking or ridiculing a wide range of “others” — Muslims, Hispanics, women, Chinese, Mexicans, Europeans, Arabs, immigrants, refugees — whom he depicts either as threats or as objects of derision. His program, such as it is, consists chiefly of promises to get tough with foreigners and people of nonwhite complexion. He will deport them, bar them, get them to knuckle under, make them pay up or make them shut up.
“That
this tough-guy, get-mad-and-get-even approach has gained him an increasingly
large and enthusiastic following has probably surprised Trump as much as anyone
else. Trump himself is simply and quite literally an egomaniac. But the
phenomenon he has created and now leads has become something larger than him, and
something far more dangerous.
“Republican politicians marvel at how he has “tapped into” a hitherto unknown swath of the voting public. But what he has tapped into is what the founders most feared when they established the democratic republic: the popular passions unleashed, the “mobocracy.” Conservatives have been warning for decades about government suffocating liberty.
"But here is the other threat to liberty that Alexis de Tocqueville and the ancient philosophers warned about: that the people in a democracy, excited, angry and unconstrained, might run roughshod over even the institutions created to preserve their freedoms.
"As Alexander Hamilton watched the French Revolution unfold, he feared in America what he saw play out in France — that the unleashing of popular passions would lead not to greater democracy but to the arrival of a tyrant, riding to power on the shoulders of the people.
“This
phenomenon has arisen in other democratic and quasi-democratic countries over
the past century, and it has generally been called “fascism.” Fascist
movements, too, had no coherent ideology, no clear set of prescriptions for
what ailed society.
“National socialism” was a bundle of contradictions, united chiefly by what, and who, it opposed; fascism in Italy was anti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-Marxist, anti-capitalist and anti-clerical. Successful fascism was not about policies but about the strongman, the leader (Il Duce, Der Führer), in whom could be entrusted the fate of the nation. Whatever the problem, he could fix it. Whatever the threat, internal or external, he could vanquish it, and it was unnecessary for him to explain how.
Today, there is Putinism, which also has nothing to do with belief or policy but is about the tough man who single-handedly defends his people against all threats, foreign and domestic.
“National socialism” was a bundle of contradictions, united chiefly by what, and who, it opposed; fascism in Italy was anti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-Marxist, anti-capitalist and anti-clerical. Successful fascism was not about policies but about the strongman, the leader (Il Duce, Der Führer), in whom could be entrusted the fate of the nation. Whatever the problem, he could fix it. Whatever the threat, internal or external, he could vanquish it, and it was unnecessary for him to explain how.
Today, there is Putinism, which also has nothing to do with belief or policy but is about the tough man who single-handedly defends his people against all threats, foreign and domestic.
“To
understand how such movements take over a democracy, one only has to watch the
Republican Party today. These movements play on all the fears, vanities,
ambitions and insecurities that make up the human psyche. In democracies, at
least for politicians, the only thing that matters is what the voters say they
want — vox populi vox Dei.
"A mass political movement is thus a powerful and, to those who would oppose it, frightening weapon. When controlled and directed by a single leader, it can be aimed at whomever the leader chooses. If someone criticizes or opposes the leader, it doesn’t matter how popular or admired that person has been.
"He might be a famous war hero, but if the leader derides and ridicules his heroism, the followers laugh and jeer. He might be the highest-ranking elected guardian of the party’s most cherished principles. But if he hesitates to support the leader, he faces political death.”
"A mass political movement is thus a powerful and, to those who would oppose it, frightening weapon. When controlled and directed by a single leader, it can be aimed at whomever the leader chooses. If someone criticizes or opposes the leader, it doesn’t matter how popular or admired that person has been.
"He might be a famous war hero, but if the leader derides and ridicules his heroism, the followers laugh and jeer. He might be the highest-ranking elected guardian of the party’s most cherished principles. But if he hesitates to support the leader, he faces political death.”