It’s not surprising that the spectacle of the Trump administration is not to every taste. In pop culture terms, some look at him and see the righteous vigilante — “Dirty Harry,” “The Equalizer,” “Death Wish” — bending the law to do rough justice. Others see the madman in a suit — “American Psycho,” “Dexter,” Hannibal Lecter — dismembering democracy and social norms behind a disarming facade.
For those in the second camp, the real surprise isn’t that a dangerous demagogue could arise with a taste for dividing people, a willingness to demonize “the other,” to inflict verbal and legal cruelty on the poor, minorities, refugees, and children, a shameless enthusiasm for rigged elections, a dangerous preference or tyrants over democratic allies of long standing, and a habit of lying so ingrained it’s not just a personality trait but his identity.
No, the surprise is that 40% or more of the public believed Trump was a righteous vigilante on their side and not a narcissistic opportunist when he ran for office and, all the evidence to the contrary, still believe it as he seeks reelection. In other words, the con worked and is still working. It’s like the old joke: If you look around the poker table and can’t figure out who the mark is, it’s you. Until the spell is broken and his mesmerized mass market awakens, it isn’t clear that anything can be done to curb his reign of terror.
The once admirable Republican Party is now deeply in his thrall, but it is also diminished by defections from those who couldn’t stomach the usurper. Those who remain see no evil, speak no evil, and tolerate daily evils. Thus, Congress is not about to turn into the cavalry riding to the rescue. A great democracy that was once a beacon of light to the world is reduced to a guttering candle in a tempest.
Yes, there’s always the third branch to hope for, but ruthless, systematic, partisan court packing has produced a reactionary, originalist judiciary enthralled by a powerful executive, willing to neuter the legislature, and uninterested in individual liberties unless they concern guns. The judges and justices are thus a slender reed on which to depend for a defense of the Constitution while it is daily flouted.
And yes, Trump’s supporters don’t constitute a majority, but he didn’t win a majority of the vote the last time. The anachronistic electoral college is a bad enough impediment to elections that express the will of the voters, but Trump has also shown an amoral willingness to do anything to game the system — including gerrymandering districts, rigging the census for partisan advantage, and ignoring and perhaps inviting the 2016 attack on American electoral integrity. Lately, he has seemed to be soliciting similar help from abroad for 2020.
That all suggests that grassroots efforts to oust our celebrity-apprentice despot at the ballot box won’t be easy. The only hope in this bleak picture would seem to be the emergence of a persuasive, forceful, mainstream Democratic candidate. It will need to be one able to win the allegiance of the party’s diverse base without appearing so far out as to lose any hope of appealing to a fraction of disenchanted Trumpians.
To pull off that trick the candidate must acknowledge the reality of widespread concern that America’s best days are behind it. Trump exploited this feeling, but didn’t invent it. Candidates have been promising to get us back on the right track since Nixon, including Democrats like Clinton and Obama, Republicans like Reagan and Bush, and oddballs like Ross Perot and whatever Trump is.
He won by dividing. Democrats must resist the impulse to go to their own extreme alternative by promising to favor some over others, but instead propose policies intended to make life better for all. Less pie in the sky, more meat and potatoes, please. Less a fight over a shrinking pie, instead a plan to grow the pie and make America competitive again — economically, educationally, and in terms of our health and welfare.
In pop culture terms, we don’t need a man on horse riding to our rescue, but a leader capable of summoning the better angels of our nature and suggesting what a new New Deal or Fair Deal would look like for our times. Of course, our hero or paladin will also have to go toe-to-toe with Trump and make a better pitch while simultaneously exposing him not as a Clint Eastwood doing rough justice but as a bloated bully who’s not too bright, think Biff from “Back to the Future.”
The recent debates offered an awful lot of wan competitors likely to be trounced by Trump, but we don’t need a Superman or Optimus Prime or even an Indiana Jones. Is there an Atticus Finch in the house? A Virgil Tibbs? An Obi-Wan? Maybe so. Of course, given the nature of the threat, perhaps what we really need is a woman tough enough to stand up to the misogynist-in-chief — a Ripley from “Alien” or a Clarice Starling, capalble of stopping the screaming of the lambs being slaughtered.