The real MAGA problem
When 56 year old Adolf Hitler took his own life, dejected and defeated in his Berlin bunker, that was the effective end of the National Socialist German Workers
Party. Certainly imitators followed, but Hitler WAS the Nazi Party as it then existed.
Unfortunately, Donald Trump is not MAGA. When Trump dies, MAGA will live on. Republicans will still have to continue to deal with Donald Trump’s dumbest and most disagreeable and most dangerous child.
Now imagine some young, smart, charismatic and, above all, cynical politician out there who sees MAGA for what it is, his or her ticket to the presidency. And not just any presidency. President for Life. He or she must be out there somewhere thinking exactly what I’m thinking. It’s not possible that this idea occurs only to me.
The next time a Republican wins the presidency they very well may be this person that I now imagine. They might follow the Trump agenda and declare martial law as part of the Insurrection Act, imprison or kill their political rivals and opponents, immunise America’s police from criminal prosecution and establish concentration camps for foreign-born Americans they don’t happen to like. They might abolish all elections and shut down all media opposed to them. We already know that the majority of Republicans have absolutely no problem with that kind of behaviour, those kinds of dictators, because a majority of them just named Donald Trump their choice for the Republican nomination for president.
America’s military, the FBI and the CIA are already heavily MAGA, so a new Republican president predisposed to despotism could easily co-opt those powerful entities to enforce Trump’s extremist agenda. A ready-made army prepared to follow the next Donald Trump into hell already exists. All that is required is the will to do so.
What if next time the next Trump is a war hero and a genuinely successful business person? What if they’re as good looking and as quick and as eloquent as John F Kennedy? What then? Imagine how the mainstream media would promote them!
Trump’s popularity is diminished by the tangible fact that he’s a clown, an idiot, a bone-headed, bone-spurred rapist. Imagine someone who is everything Trump is not: smooth, funny, self-effacing. I can, and it scares the hell out of me. So much so that I see the end of the Republican Party as the only solution. I’ve said it before and I say it again: the Republican Party must go.
Too far, you say? Imagine a chance to live 1933 all over again. Would it be going too far to declare the Nazi Party illegal then? Would it have been going too far to Constitutionally block the elevation of Hitler to Germany’s chancellorship given what we know is going to follow? Of course it wouldn’t. In fact it would be imperative.
Well it’s imperative now. While it’s true that the election of 2024 is vitally important to the continuation of American democracy, in the larger picture it could turn out to be a fairly minor election. After all, Joe Biden has a strong chance of winning, and Donald Trump’s chances of going to prison are increasing.
But what about the next election? What about 2028? It will be one Republican running against one Democrat, neither given the advantage of incumbency, neither hindered perhaps by political baggage. By then the pendulum may have swung the other way to the point that the great majority of political fence sitters are ready for a Republican president again. And if it turns out to be a MAGA Republican, what the hell do we do then?
No. The Republican Party must go. There is no other way. If we continue to allow this terrorist organisation equivalent power it will retake the presidency and all of Congress again one day. That will be the day that America dies. That persistent threat is unsustainable. The Republican Party must go. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.