Trump Doesn’t Need to Delay an Election to Spoil It
July 30, 2020 (Eudaimonia & Co) --By now, you’ve probably heard that Donald Trump announced he wants to… delay the election. Cue a firestorm. So. How should you read this?
Is it just a stunt? A diversion, from the many, many ways Trump’s Presidency has failed — from 150,000 dead, to the 18th straight week of more than a million filing for unemployment? Or is it something darker? It’s all of that, and more. When an authoritarian — or an aspiring one — makes pronouncements like this, they don’t just serve one function. There’s no need for the binary logic of pundits.
Trump’s call to postpone an election is indeed a stunt and a misdirection — but it’s also just what it appears to be: an authoritarian delegitimizing democracy.
How dangerous is that? It’s very, very, very dangerous.
It’s deeply — deeply — naive to say something like: “Trump can’t postpone the election because he doesn’t have the power to!” Delaying an election is an abuse of power, the kind authoritarian collapses are made of, and Trump’s whole Presidency has been one long abuse of power, leading up to this, the big one. The Constitution? Don’t kid yourself. Trump doesn’t care about it much, from emoluments to aiding enemies to protecting people’s rights. Power, abusing it, is what you can get away with in a collapsing society. The question is: “can Trump get away with delaying or thwarting the election?”
And the answer to that is…well, first let me put that in more context. The pundits at this moment are busy trying to calm the Twitter masses — by saying that Trump “can’t” postpone the election. “Can’t” is a big word, especially coming from pundits about Trump. These are the same folks who’ve been wrong — catastrophically, for Americans — about every single thing Trump’s done. They’re the ones who scoffed at the idea he’d build camps, throw people in them, purge the government, raid towns, and so forth. Are they wrong again?
The short answer is: yes, but. Again, it’s not binary.
Those of us who’ve survived authoritarianism will tell you: this is exactly how authoritarians work. Stepwise. One step at a time.
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