We begin today with George T. Conway III writing for The Atlantic that Americans should have known about the man they elected this past Tuesday night.
We knew, and have known, for years. Every American knew, or should have known. The man elected president last night is a depraved and brazen pathological liar, a shameless con man, a sociopathic criminal, a man who has no moral or social conscience, empathy, or remorse. He has no respect for the Constitution and laws he will swear to uphold, and on top of all that, he exhibits emotional and cognitive deficiencies that seem to be intensifying, and that will only make his turpitude worse. He represents everything we should aspire not to be, and everything we should teach our children not to emulate. The only hope is that he’s utterly incompetent, and even that is a double-edged sword, because his incompetence often can do as much as harm as his malevolence. His government will be filled with corrupt grifters, spiteful maniacs, and morally bankrupt sycophants, who will follow in his example and carry his directives out, because that’s who they are and want to be.
I say all of this not in anger, but in deep and profound sorrow. For centuries, the United States has been a beacon of democracy and reasoned self-government, in part because the Framers understood the dangers of demagogues and saw fit to construct a system with safeguards to keep such men from undermining it, and because our people and their leaders, out of respect for the common good and the people of this country, adhered to its rules and norms. The system was never perfect, but it inched toward its own betterment, albeit in fits and starts. But in the end, the system the Framers set up—and indeed, all constitutional regimes, however well designed—cannot protect a free people from themselves.
Conway is laying it on too thick in that second paragraph for my tastes but his ultimate thesis is right. A majority of Americans should have known better and probably did but made the choice that they made.
Oh well, I don’t have that kind of vote on my conscience, at least.
Heather Cox Richardson writes for her “Letters from an American” Substack that the amplification of disinformation didn’t help matters
Pundits today have spent time dissecting the election results, many trying to find the one tweak that would have changed the outcome, and suggesting sweeping solutions to the Democrats’ obvious inability to attract voters. There is no doubt that a key factor in voters’ swing to Trump is that they associated the inflation of the post-pandemic months with Biden and turned the incumbents out, a phenomenon seen all over the world.
There is also no doubt that both racism and sexism played an important role in Harris’s defeat.
But my own conclusion is that both of those things were amplified by the flood of disinformation that has plagued the U.S. for years now. Russian political theorists called the construction of a virtual political reality through modern media “political technology.” They developed several techniques in this approach to politics, but the key was creating a false narrative in order to control public debate. These techniques perverted democracy, turning it from the concept of voters choosing their leaders into the concept of voters rubber-stamping the leaders they had been manipulated into backing. [...]
Many voters who were using their vote to make an economic statement are likely going to be surprised to discover what they have actually voted for. In his victory speech, Trump said the American people had given him an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.”
The disinformation told Trump’s voters what they wanted to hear. Many (if not most) of his probably knew that at least some of it wasn’t plausible or truthful. They just didn’t care, what with the price of eggs and all...
Zack Beauchamp of Vox discusses much of what America voted for Tuesday night.
Throughout the campaign, Trump has proven himself obsessed with two ideas: exerting personal control over the federal government, and exacting “retribution” against Democrats who challenged him and the prosecutors who indicted him. His team has, obligingly, provided detailed plans for doing both of these things.
This process begins with something called Schedule F, an executive order Trump issued at the end of his first term but never got to implement. Schedule F reclassifies a large chunk of the professional civil service — likely upward of 50,000 people — as political appointees. Trump could fire these nonpartisan officials and replace them with cronies: people who would follow his orders, no matter how dubious. Trump has vowed to revive Schedule F “immediately” upon returning to office, and there is no reason to doubt him.
Between a newly compliant bureaucracy and leadership ranks purged of first-term dissenting voices like former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Trump will face little resistance as he attempts to implement policies that threaten core democratic freedoms.
And Trump and his team have already proposed many of them. Notable examples include investigating leading Democrats on questionable charges, prosecuting local election administrators, using regulatory authority for retribution against corporations that cross him, and either shuttering public broadcasters or turning them into propaganda mouthpieces. Trump and his allies have claimed unilateral executive authority to take all of these actions.
Kimberly Atkins Stohr of The Boston Globe discusses her feelings about Harris’ as a Black woman. I find her criticism of all of the “_________ for Harris” Zoom organizing calls fascinating.
America was given the opportunity to let a Black and Asian American woman move us beyond a decade of Trump’s racist, sexist, and toxic form of grievance politics with a broad agenda grounded in joy, compassion, and opportunity. And America, specifically the majority of white Americans, said: “No thanks. We’re good.” [...]
...support was most clearly demonstrated by the flurry of Zoom organizing calls hosted by pro-Harris groups of every conceivable demographic. There were Geeks and Nerds for Harris! Health Care Providers for Harris! Knitters, Swifties, and Dead Heads all had a dedicated place to support the vice president’s bid. This grass-roots movement was, unsurprisingly, kicked off by Black women. Their Zoom call organized mere hours after Harris entered the race drew more than 40,000 participants and was streamed to another 50,000 more. That served as a template for all the other groups to reproduce to drum up support.
But here is what even that groundswell of Harris support showed us: Our politics are driven by identity, no matter how much we tell ourselves it’s not. Identity begins literally and figuratively with the letter I. It’s not about the greater good. It’s about doing what makes us comfortable, staying in our silos, and not thinking too much or too hard about the consequences for others.
The surfer dudes and the knitters and the cat ladies, even as they united to support Harris, felt better doing that among those who are just like them. And that is just what Trump seized on. He “othered” his way back to the White House, using fear, lies, and grievance to make his supporters come together to fight what they saw as their enemies. He created a picture of a nation in a zero-sum war for survival against immigrants and transgender people and the fictional criminals taking over urban areas. In Harris, a brown daughter of immigrants, he saw the perfect foe. His attacks on her were part of his appeal. He showed that misogynoir can win and his voters proved him right.
Kyle Paoletta of Columbia Journalism Review previews the shoe salesman’s future assault on the press.
Next year, Trump’s assault on the press will become a fusillade of discrete attempts to quash whatever reporting he views as antagonistic. Access to the West Wing will be limited, perhaps by aides only credentialing journalists from conservative outlets—or even closing the White House briefing room outright. More consequential are the plans of Trump and his allies to turn the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission against the media, which will entail a raft of leak investigations, the politicization of broadcast licenses and antitrust litigation, and the potential indictment of journalists for espionage. Reporters covering protests and immigration enforcement will face detention from not just local police, but the Department of Homeland Security. It’s possible that Trump may even seek congressional action to reform libel laws or otherwise criminalize dissent.
This onslaught against the press will be destabilizing. Rather than wilt under the pressure, the news media needs to use the next two months to prepare for all the potential challenges we will face in 2025.
In the early weeks of the new administration, the most urgent threat against the press will be the prosecution of reporters covering mass demonstrations. When Trump was inaugurated in 2017, nine journalists were arrested while covering the protest that ensued in Washington, DC, including several who were charged with rioting. That set a tone for the next four years, over which more than two hundred reporters faced criminal charges for covering protests. The vast majority of those charges came in 2020, after the police murder of George Floyd, as journalists scrambled to chronicle the racial-justice protests that seized the nation. According to Kirstin McCudden of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, it was a year of unprecedented attacks, with a “record shattering” six hundred and forty assaults on journalists, and nearly a hundred and fifty arrested.
Finally today, Paul Taylor of the Guardian previews the consequence of Trump’s election for Europe.
There is nothing but bad news for Europe in Donald Trump’s US election victory. The only question is just how bad it will get. Europeans stand to suffer strategically, economically and politically from his “America first” policies, as well as from his unpredictability and transactional approach to global affairs. The undermining of Nato, the emboldening of illiberal nationalists everywhere, a transatlantic trade war, and a battle over European regulation of US social media platforms, AI and cryptocurrencies are just some of the major risks of a second Trump presidency.
Moreover, Europe is at risk of being squeezed in a deepening US-China trade conflict, with the prospect of coming under severe pressure from Washington to curtail economic ties with Beijing, while facing a potential flood of cheap Chinese goods diverted by prohibitive tariffs from the US market.
The prospect of severely strained transatlantic relations catches Europe at a moment of great fragility. European economies are lagging behind the US and China in innovation, investment and productivity. Germany and France are weakened by political crises. Rightwing populists, playing on fears of globalisation and migration, are on the rise across Europe, too. And Russian troops are slowly grinding forward against Ukrainian defenders, while the west is not delivering enough support for Kyiv to prevail.
It is far from clear whether EU countries will be able to unite in defence of common interests if a Republican administration presses ahead with threatened tariffs on all European goods – or if Trump tries to throw Ukraine under a bus and cut a deal with Russian president Vladimir Putin to end the war on terms humiliating for Kyiv. History is not encouraging.
