The Hollow Men

Despite or rather because of its length this 112-page essay by Will Saletan is essential reading.

Saletan uses the device of undertaking an excruciatingly detailed account of how Lindsey Graham went from being one of Donald Trump’s fiercest Republican critics to one of his most passionate supporters to create a more general narrative of what happened and is happening to the Republican party in the Trump and post-Trump years.

This is a valuable project, because:

(1) It reminds anybody who needs their recollection refreshed of how utterly lawless and authoritarian Trump was during his first term in office. During the short-lived DeSantis boomlet, there was a tendency among some progressives to argue that DeSantis was a bigger threat to liberal democracy than Trump, because Trump was too lazy and inept to achieve any genuine authoritarianism. This is just flat denial. Trump managed to create plenty of genuine authoritarianism during his first term, and clearly learned as he went along, with the nearly successful coup attempt being the culmination of this ongoing process.

(2) It highlights how the Republican party has spent the last seven years transforming itself into an authoritarian cult of personality. That transformation is now complete. The very idea that someone other than Trump is going to be the nominee because that person will defeat Trump in the GOP presidential primaries is laughably oxymoronic. You don’t remove the leader of a fully weaponized authoritarian cult by holding elections, and the fact that people like DeSantis and Nikki Haley are toying with undertaking such an absurd quest is merely a testament to their wishful thinking that Trump will drop dead or perhaps be imprisoned, even though the latter development would not of course actually cost Trump the nomination, and isn’t going to happen anyway.

(3) The various legal processes now pursuing Trump are merely making his hold on the Republican party even more unshakeable. To attack the leader is to attack the party, which is to attack America. Eventually — and that eventuality is right now for anyone not keeping up with current events — The Leader, the Party, and the Nation are one and the same, so the very idea of holding this entity responsible for anything via the courts becomes essentially unthinkable in the minds of the Leader’s followers.

A brief excerpt from Saletan’s conclusion:

Normalization and polarization are enough to create a mass authoritarian movement. People get used to a strong-willed leader, and their partisan reflexes kick in. If the leader is in your party, you may feel an urge to attack anyone who goes after him. You become part of his political army.

Exposure of the authoritarian’s crimes galvanizes his base. His supporters turn against the media, the legislature, law enforcement, and any other institution that investigates him. They view his accumulating scandals as more evidence that the true villains are out to get him.

Demonization of the opposition paves the way to tyranny. It lowers the moral threshold for supporting the leader. You must defend him, no matter what he does, because his enemies are worse.

A party detached from its principles becomes a cult. Once the party begins to shed prior beliefs in deference to a leader, it loses independent standards by which to judge him. The party becomes the man, and dissent from him becomes heresy.

Yes this is a very long read in the age of Twitter etc., but it’s very much worth an hour or two of your time.