This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
In the 2024 election, Kamala Harris lost Democratic voters, including in Black and Hispanic communities. As a result, we now face a four-year replay of Trumpmania. Worse yet, only recently, Joe Biden lent The Donald a distinct hand by pardoning his own son (and so, in a sense, himself) in just about every imaginable way. In doing so, he set the stage for about-to-be-President-(again) Donald Trump, whose election victory was a pardon for him, to do the same for those who took part in what was essentially an attempted coup d'e'tat on January 6, 2020. In the process, it's obvious that Biden also prepared the ground -- or do I mean the graveyard? -- for Trump to someday do the same for himself and his family. (Of course, he beat Biden to the punch in December 2020 by pardoning his father-in-law Charles Kushner, who had pled guilty years earlier to tax evasion and making illegal campaign donations, and only recently -- a surefire topper -- appointing him ambassador to France!)
Yes, we couldn't be in a stranger world" or" gulp" could we?
It's hard for Americans to remember the novelty of the decades after World War II when, for the first time in history, a single power (the United States, of course) largely controlled the globe economically speaking, as well as in other ways. Today, as we await a second round of the man who already Made America Grapes Again (whoops, my mistake, Great Again) and is now planning to take this country down in an even fiercer fashion, it's worth thinking about those Democrats he managed to pull into his camp in the last election season.
Worse yet, as TomDispatch regular John Feffer (whose weekly column at Foreign Policy in Focus is a must-read affair) points out today, there were those liberals who, in some strange fashion, however quietly, admired and supported specific policies of his (on a one-by-one basis) in his first term in office. If, as Feffer suggests, the same were to happen the second time around, the phrase of the moment, it seems to me, wouldn't be morning in America, but mourning in America. Tom
Everyone (Sort of) Loves a Disrupter
Time to Boycott the US?
By John Feffer
Liberals hate Trump, no question about it. He's the definition of illiberal: authoritarian, racist, sexist, and downright nasty. Not only that, he's a living repudiation of the liberal delusion that America runs on meritocracy.
But you want to know a dirty, little secret? In back alleys, encrypted group chats, and off-the-record conversations, liberals will still support Trump on a case-by-case basis. Of course, they'd never vote for the guy, but they'll give two cheers for some of his policies.
I discovered this ugly truth during Trump's last term while writing an article on the shift in U.S. policy toward China from lukewarm engagement to hostile decoupling. The general consensus among the foreign policy elite was that, at least in terms of relations with Beijing, Trump was a useful idiot for slowing China's roll with harsh rhetoric and tariffs.
"Trump is a madman, but I want to give him and his administration their due," one prominent liberal intellectual told me. "We can't keep playing on an unlevel playing field and take promises that are never delivered on. It's really China's turn to respond, and it's long overdue."
It wasn't just China. For years, liberals and conservatives alike were, for instance, pushing the concept of burden-sharing: getting U.S. allies to cover more of the bill for their security needs. But it was only Trump who really made it happen by blackmailing NATO members and other U.S. partners into doing so.
Sure, few warmed to the idea of the United States actually pulling out of NATO, but even many of our European allies, though they publicly grumbled, were secretly happy about The Donald's gaiatsu. That's the Japanese word for outside pressure that enables a leader to force through unpopular changes by blaming it all on foreigners. The self-described liberal leader of NATO, Dutch politician Mark Rutte, even came out in the open after Trump's reelection to praise the American president for making European countries more militarily self-sufficient.
It wasn't just liberals who thrilled to Trump's unorthodox foreign policy during his first term either. Some of those further to the left also embraced Trump the engager (with North Korea's Kim Jong-un), Trump the isolationist (and his threats to close U.S. military bases globally), and Trump the putative peacemaker (for concluding a deal with the Taliban to end the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan).
Trump, in other words, was not just an unanticipated crisis; he was also an opportunity. Deep in their hearts, anyone unhappy with the status quo will support a disrupter. Quite a few Democrats disgusted with this country's border policies, inflation, and its coastal elites even crossed over to vote for Trump in November because they wanted change, regardless of the consequences.
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