We should have no illusions about what Trump is doing.
“It tended to inflate the ego of most planters beyond all reason; they became arrogant, strutting, quarrelsome kinglets; they issued commands; they made laws; they shouted their orders; they expected deference and self-abasement; they were choleric and easily insulted.” W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Planter,” Black Reconstruction in America
The speeches Donald Trump made on July 3rd at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, and July 4th in Washington D.C., were two of the most divisive and vile ever uttered by an American president. Trump reaffirmed his contempt for any American who didn’t vote for him, a population numbering in the tens of millions, myself included. Trump told us we don’t count in his twisted version of America.
Fascists constantly shrink the circle of who belongs and who doesn’t. They wrap themselves in patriotic symbols, declare themselves the “real” people, the “true” patriots, while marking everyone else as a dangerous “other.” Simultaneously displaying his monumental ignorance and feral knack for branding, Trump accused Democrats of being Communists intent on taking over the country. The only way to ward off this threat said Trump, is for the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act, a Draconian anti-voting measure that could potentially disenfranchise millions of voters, women in particular, including women voters in red states.
We should have no illusions about what Trump is doing. To understand Trump we must think like a career criminal, a Mob Boss seeking to expand his territory. Over the next few months we will hear an endless stream of propaganda — pushed by Trump on his piddling social media platform, the Fox Disinformation Network, OAN and X; from Cabinet secretaries, Republicans in the House and Senate, and the rest of the right-wing noise machine — about the communist threat posed by Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialists of America and rank and file citizens who want social investments such as Medicare-for-All, affordable childcare, reasonably priced higher education, housing, decent jobs, regulation of AI and higher taxes on the Billionaire Class. Such proposals will be framed as threats and made to sound outlandish, un-American, insane.
Fascists create internal enemies, bogeymen, to strike fear in the pliable minds of their camp followers. The ghost of Karl Marx will hang over America as summer turns to fall. I know it’s hard, but think back to 2018 for a moment, to the months before the midterm elections. What was the existential threat that year? The migrant caravan of women, children and young men winding its way from Central America toward our southern border. Trump claimed it was a hoard, an army, full of drug dealers, rapists, ISIS thugs and many other “bad hombres.” If it wasn’t stopped, America would be overrun. Trump ramped up the fear and sent US troops to the border. Nothing happened, of course, because the migrants weren’t dangerous or armed, they were simply desperate human beings fleeing terrible circumstances. Democrats reclaimed the House in that year’s elections.
There hasn’t been a functioning political left in this country for half a century. The communists, anarchists, socialists and unionists who rose in the last Gilded Age to struggle for labor rights, the right of women to vote, and more transparent democracy were routed in the Red Summer of 1919. During the Cold War and the McCarthy era, communists, real and imagined, were hounded from government, Hollywood and universities. If the policy positions of Democratic Socialists seem radical it’s because our political duopoly has moved so far right. Ask yourself: would America be in this mess if we had a robust political left and more actual democracy? Would entire regions of the country be economic sacrifice zones? Would young people be burdened with crippling student loan debt? Would citizens face bankruptcy for the universal human fate of becoming sick? Would we be as wedded to the fossil fuels that are driving climate catastrophe? Would ordinary citizens, red, blue, male, female, gay, straight, trans or in-between be in such precarious financial straits? Would our government waste billions of dollars on perpetual wars? And would we be suffering under the heavy hand of a rapacious and unaccountable Billionaire Class?
What’s missing in this rotting country is a moderating element. Moderation of cutthroat capitalism is my argument for more social democracy, more balance between public services and private monopoly, between private gain and public good. I’m not arguing for state control of the means of production or centralized economic planning, I accept that this a capitalist country. But for capitalism to work for the many rather than the few, it must be regulated, its base and insatiable instinct tamed. It’s about finding some equilibrium between profit and human needs.
The people Trump identified as internal enemies as America celebrated the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence include those who marched in the No Kings demonstrations, protested against ICE brutality, against Tesla in 2025, against the blatant coverup of the Epstein Files and Trump’s incessant grift and law-breaking. I am clearly an enemy, as are my mates from Indivisible Santa Barbara. We’re guilty of demanding decency, integrity and respect for the rule of law from our government and elected officials. Such an affront! Such criminal behavior! To the Gulag with the lot of them!
I’ll end with a cliched but still applicable thought: the ideas, beliefs and ideology that landed us in this noxious Trumpian Swamp will not help us pull ourselves out. Only by reinvigorating our collective political imagination can that happen.
