Trump’s second term will devastate democracy, erode global norms, and deepen the consequences of America’s collective folly.
We just got a foretaste of the bizarre stream of consciousness that will be emanating from the White House over the next four years: the United States might start expanding territorially by taking over Greenland, the Panama Canal, and maybe Canada as well. Perhaps Senator Marco Rubio, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be secretary of state, should warn his boss that such brilliant geopolitical musings could get the Russians thinking about taking Alaska back.
Trump is a profoundly ignorant man whose knowledge about the world seems to be limited to what he has gleaned from watching television. During his first presidency, world leaders, especially many of the European politicians he met, were transfixed by his mental tabula rasa. The one time he was caught with a book in hand – the Bible, no less – was in the notorious photo-op at St. John’s Church during the George Floyd protests in Washington.
As if ignorance were not bad enough, America’s president-elect has been held liable for sexual assault and is a convicted felon, a friend to nativists and racists, a coup plotter and rabble-rouser, and a serial liar who touts the virtues of fictional cannibals. He is a classic con man – and more than half of America’s voters can’t seem to get enough of him.
Long before the 2024 presidential election, the American political class knew all there was to know about Trump’s unfitness for the job, and they, too, didn’t flinch. Impeached twice during his first term, Trump was twice pronounced fit by his party’s senators to be the leader of the largest democracy in the West. By voting twice to acquit Trump, Republican senators refused to disqualify Trump from the US presidency permanently – and thereby deliberately and directly enabled his return.
The ripple effects of this catastrophe go well beyond putting an ugly face on the American Dream. They undermine the foundations of political order worldwide. What standing do Western democracies have now to demand that any regime or politician abide by international rules and norms? How do we shame with a straight face the Aleksandr Lukashenkos and Nicolás Maduros of this world when they deny the results of elections they lost? What credibility and effect can we expect to have in calling out Vladimir Putin’s lies about his murderous war in Ukraine, when the US has a president who spins alternative facts?
Lenin famously said that the capitalists, out of self-interest, would sell the Bolsheviks the rope with which the Bolsheviks would later hang them. The American political class exceeded Lenin’s expectations. Trump’s enablers wove the rope of lawlessness, tied the noose, put our collective head inside, and hanged the American Republic – all without any assistance from the Bolsheviks.
One day, wise students will show how all this was a consequence of the current information revolution, which is probably having a greater impact on social relations and public discourse than the invention of print once had. Before we attempt to understand why existing institutions seem unable to process these revolutionary changes while safeguarding a liberal democratic order, we should note that this would not be the first time grand and elaborate common endeavors go out with a whimper.
America’s founders, an exceptionally talented group of subtle political thinkers and talented writers, thought through many of the pitfalls that could derail their proposed system of government, defending it brilliantly in The Federalist Papers. But for all their awareness of human folly and personal hubris, they could not erect institutional ramparts to protect the US Constitution from the one-time host of a reality television show and owner of the Miss Universe pageant. A man who reportedly strolled unannounced into a dressing room full of half-naked teenage pageant contestants is pushing the founders’ intricate and inspiring Enlightenment project over the brink.
Trump is not doing this alone, of course. His enablers included not only the American political class but also some extremely wealthy people (including the world’s richest person), and, most importantly, 77 million American voters. The last time a great nation whose weight in world affairs reached far beyond its borders fell for a hatred-spewing demagogue, it took 12 years and 70 million dead before the West could start picking up the pieces.
Building and maintaining a liberal institutional order requires years, if not generations, of hard work, as well as visionary public servants and an occasional miracle. How long will it take to rebuild what Trump will destroy? Under the best circumstances we must wait four years to get an answer. In the meantime – even though a good psychologist friend opined that my sentiment is but a sign of senility – I am not optimistic.
Jan T. Gross, Emeritus Professor of War and Society and Emeritus Professor of History at Princeton University, is the author, most recently, of Golden Harvest (Oxford University Press, 2012).