Donald Trump’s recrudescence

A previously unknown word (to me, anyway) that is making the rounds on social media these days is the word “recrudescence.” It means the unwelcome return of something awful. It has two applications, one medical the other generic. In the medical sense it’s the reemergence of a dread disease that had previously disappeared or had been in remission. For us these days it’s useful as an explicit way to describe the horrible and unexpected return of Donald Trump to the sacred presidency.

Recrudescence can be traced back to the Latin word crudus, meaning raw. It is, appropriately, an ancestor word of cruel or crude. Trump is both of course. It’s a 17th century word. So something as horrid as Trump’s return is at least familiar to our predecessors and is nothing new.

The return of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to Iran in 1979 was a recrudescence. Like Trump the Ayatollah was an unsmiling exponent of absolute rule, hatred and vengeance. As a radical Islamic leader he opposed the Iranian monarchy, a fairly awful regime in and of itself. When he returned from exile to lead the “Islamic revolution” he installed himself as Iran’s absolute ruler, and transformed that moderately progressive country into a hell of oppression and corruption.

So as I say, this kind of thing is nothing new to history. But it is unusual. I suppose some 19th century politicians regarded Grover Cleveland’s return to the presidency after a four year hiatus as a recrudescence of a kind. And certainly some anti-monarchists regarded the restoration of the monarchy in the person of Charles II after Cromwell’s interregnum as a recrudescence. But again, that kind of thing doesn’t happen too often in history. But I can think of only one other instance in history when it has been completely and unequivocally worse than all others.

Ordinarily anyone exiting America’s highest office at the age of 74 has written their political epitaph by then. No sane person expected Trump to come back, especially after he’d staged a failed insurrection. Particularly since we have as our historical guide the most horrific recrudescence known to us, the return of Adolf Hitler. Like Trump, Hitler staged a failed coup. Unlike Trump he actually did some jail time for it. But his Phoenix-like rebirth as Germany’s “Fuhrer” shocked the nation and ultimately horrified the world. The similarities between Trump and Hitler are too awful to contemplate. They are also too awful not to.

Naturally I must include a disclaimer here. For shapeless and unspecified reasons we are sometimes admonished by certain historians and pundits that it is in bad taste to compare Hitler to anybody. I categorically reject that dictum. I have broken that much-written unwritten rule many, many times. And I will do so again. If we can’t use Hitler as a cautionary tale, what good is he? And just look at the abundance of Hitler admirers that infest the MAGA crowd, including Trump himself. Trump has employed the Hitler playbook many times. This time he has his very own Mein Kampf in the form of Project 2025. What could be more appropriate than to compare such a monster as Trump to another monster like Hitler?

So we should take this Trump reincarnation, this recrudescence, with deadly seriousness. We must do everything in our power to block and subvert his plan of evil. When Trump persecutes whole peoples because of their identities we must hide them. When Trump rapes Mother Nature we must protect her. When Trump alienates our allies we must welcome them. Our job is to be, each of us, little anti-Trumps, and make his recrudescence as brief and ineffectual as we possibly can. Above all, brothers and sisters, take care of yourselves, and, if you can, take care of someone else too.

Robert Harrington

Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.