By Robert Reich
Trump’s base will stand by him not
because they believe Trump is on their side, but because they define themselves
as being on his side.
Trump has intentionally cleaved
America into two warring camps: pro-Trump and anti-Trump. And he has convinced
the pro-Trumps that his enemy is their enemy.
Most Americans are not passionate
conservatives or liberals, Republicans or Democrats. But they have become
impassioned Trump supporters or Trump haters.
Polls say 37 percent of Americans
approve of him, and most disapprove. These numbers are the tips of two vast
icebergs of intensity.
Trump has forced all of us to take
sides, and to despise those on the other. There’s no middle ground.
The Republican Party used to stand for fiscal responsibility, state’s rights, free trade, and a hard line against Russian aggression. Now it just stands for Trump.
Pro-Trump Republicans remain the majority in the GOP. As long as Trump can keep them riled up, and as long as Republicans remain in control of at least one chamber of Congress, he’s safe.
“Try to impeach him, just try it,”
Roger Stone, Trump’s former campaign adviser, warned last summer. “You will have a spasm of
violence in this country, an insurrection like you’ve never seen.”
That’s probably an exaggeration, but
Trump (with the assistance of his enablers in Congress) has convinced his
followers that the Russian investigation is part of a giant conspiracy to
unseat him, and that his enemies want to replace him with someone who will
allow dangerous forces to overrun America.
Sure, this paranoia is based on the
same racism and xenophobia that has smoldered in America since its inception.
Trump’s strategy is to stoke it daily.
Sure, American politics had polarized
before Trump. Trump’s strategy is to exploit and enlarge these divisions.
A few months ago I traveled to
Kentucky and talked with a number of Trump supporters.
They looked and sounded nothing like
traditional conservative Republicans. Most were working class. Several were
members of labor unions. All were passionate about Trump.
Why do you support him? I asked.
“He’s shaking Washington up,” was the typical response.
I mentioned his lies. “He’s telling
it like it is,” several told me. “He speaks his mind.”
I talked about his attacks on
democracy. “Every other politician is on the take,” they said. “He isn’t. He
doesn’t need their money.”
I asked about his campaign’s
possible collusion with Russia. They told me they didn’t believe a word of it.
“It’s a plot to get rid of him.”
By making himself the center of an
intensifying conflict, Trump grabs all the attention and fuels even greater
passions on both sides.
It’s what he did in the 2016
election, but on a far larger scale. Then, he sucked all the oxygen out of the
race by making himself its biggest story. Now, he’s sucking all the oxygen out
of America by making himself our national obsession.
Trump received more coverage in the
2016 election than any presidential candidate in American history. Hillary
Clinton got far less, and what she got was almost all about her emails.
Schooled in reality television and
New York tabloids, Trump knows how to keep both sides stirred up: Vilify,
disparage, denounce, defame, and accuse the other side of conspiring against
America. Do it continuously. Dominate every news cycle.
Fox News is his propaganda arm,
magnifying his tweets, rallies, and lies. The rest of the media also plays into
Trump’s strategy by making him the defining controversy of America. Every
particular dispute – DACA, the “wall,” North Korea, Mueller’s investigation,
and so on – becomes another aspect of the larger national war over Trump.
It’s the divide-and-conquer strategy
of a tyrant.
Democracies require sufficient
social trust that citizens regard the views of those they disagree with as
worthy of equal consideration to their own. That way, they’ll accept political
outcomes they dislike.
Trump’s divide-and-conquer strategy
is to destroy that trust.
So if Mueller finds Trump colluded
with Russia, or Trump fires Mueller before Mueller makes such a finding, the
pro-Trumps will block any consequential challenge to his authority.
Nothing could be more dangerous to
our democracy and society.
Robert
B. Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of
California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing
Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for
which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries
of the twentieth century. He has written fourteen books, including the best
sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and "Beyond
Outrage," and, his most recent, "Saving Capitalism." He is also
a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause,
a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the
award-winning documentary, "Inequality For All." His latest
documentary, "Saving Capitalism," is streaming now on Netflix.
