The Mysterious Timing of Trump’s Ascent
The atrociousness of Donald Trump’s cult is obvious, as is the embarrassment of how one of the parties in a two-party political system has effectively been eliminated, making a mockery of the conceit that the United States is the leader of the free world.
But what about the timing of this national unravelling? Why is this pure anti-American demagoguery that’s meant to destroy the country’s institutions and aggrandize a grossly ill, wannabe autocrat happening in the early twenty-first century?
As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, there’s some continuity between Trump and earlier outbreaks of inhumanity in the GOP, from Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign and Richard Nixon’s paranoia to Ronald Reagan’s prolongation of the Cold War and Newt Gingrich’s reckless sabotage of Congress, to the political and religious envelope-pushing of Fox News and right-wing talk radio, to George Bush Jr’s incompetence and Sarah Palin’s populism. So Trumpism isn’t exactly an aberration. Still, Trumpism is far worse than any of the preceding shenanigans of the Republican Party that have disgraced the US since the 1960s.
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