The same day the media reported the death of Jimmy Carter, a federal appeals court upheld a jury’s decision that Donald Trump had sexually abused E. Jean Carroll in a New York City department store. Carter’s death at 100, at the close of a merciless calendar year and mercifully before the next inauguration, underscored what a discouraged old-timer like me might characterize as a cataclysmic 50-year decline in America’s public integrity.
Dramatic contrasts between the late President Carter and the once-and-future President Trump range far beyond the visual shock, the smiling farmer versus the sneering, snarling predator. The man who promised his constituents “I will never lie to you” versus a man who must have taken a secret oath that he would never tell the truth, and never did. The politician dedicated to “doing the right thing” versus one dedicated only to doing his own thing, at whatever cost. The devout Christian whose 77-year marriage was described by the Carters and all their friends as a great Southern love story versus … my God, it’s too sordid to contemplate … a serial adulterer and multiply accused sex criminal? On the one hand, a humanitarian who hammered nails for poor families’ houses, on the other a fake mogul from reality TV who courted and cheated porn stars.
After Carter’s death, one of his old Atlanta friends eulogized him as “an example of how you want to live your life.” When Trump dies, most of us who survive him will remember him as a perfect example of how not to. Why has the electorate’s taste in leadership changed so violently, in such an embarrassing direction? I have theories, but not one I can present with full confidence. Half a century’s changes have been cosmic, of course. Cynics made fun of Carter because he was such a Boy Scout, a Sunday school teacher who seemed so decent and upright, almost too good to be true. Now we’ve elected — re-elected — a gross felon who has never been suspected of decency, honesty, generosity or even presidential dignity. He peddles gold-painted sneakers, guitars, bibles and fragrances (“Here are my new perfumes and colognes,” e-messages the soon-to- be president of the United States) among other Trump-themed novelties. In 2024 roughly half of America’s voters chose this pushcart vendor for their commander-in-chief, the first time in three tries that he won the popular vote.
Would the Christian virtues that made Jimmy Carter an attractive candidate in 1976 eliminate him from consideration today? Signs of slow culture death are all around us, in America and elsewhere, but the persistent appeal of Donald Trump is a special case. No one thinks he’s a good man; dozens of firsthand witnesses have made the case that he’s a stupid man, and probably a madman. The presidential election left me stunned — not surprised, not at all, but stunned by the potential for agony we’ve inflicted upon ourselves. This man, this job, at this critical moment of combustible geopolitics? It’s like playing Russian roulette with the whole American experiment. If we are to survive this administration, it will take a major stroke of luck. And probably several.
Trump’s first wave of nominations for his cabinet and other key offices seemed so crazy, they raised a painful question I can’t answer. Was this just Trump the belligerent nine-year-old acting out, thumbing his nose and raising his middle finger at his defeated rivals, as in “Take that, Nancy Pelosi” and “Chew on this one, Hillary”? Or is he actually so deep in the twilight zone that he thinks these nominees — Gaetz, Hegseth, Kennedy, McMahon, Gabbard — are appropriate? The second, clueless option is terrifying. Matt Gaetz for Attorney General? His congressional colleagues exposed and censured him because he was caught paying women for sex, but one glimpse of Rep. Gaetz explains why no woman would do it for free. It’s hard to imagine a more outrageous choice for high office. Maybe Trump could pardon Harvey Weinstein and put him in charge of … women’s health?
Would Roger Stone look sharp in the black robe of a Supreme Court Justice? But the most dangerous of all the fringe characters Trump has embraced for his administration is, by far, the mega-billionaire Elon Musk. Musk was reported to have spent a quarter of a billion dollars to get Trump elected. If cash actually produces votes — and a businessman as successful as Musk must understand cost-effectiveness — then it’s not farfetched, considering the close vote, to say that Elon bought the White House for Donald. In return, he gets to head the new Department of Government Efficiency, which promises to cut costs by eliminating professionals from the Washington bureaucracy. But Musk’s ambitions will hardly be satisfied by a place at the table in the White House or at Mar-a-Lago. Who is this man? The world’s wealthiest human is edging closer to running the United States, perhaps, but he has his eye on the whole planet, and beyond.
The X (ex-Twitter) social medium he owns aspires to rule the cybersphere, his Tesla electric cars hope to rule the road, and SpaceX rocketry is his bid for outer space. This is a very strange man as well as a very powerful one, as you know if you’ve read about his domestic arrangements and the names he gives his many children. His eccentricity is not harmless. He has close business ties to China, a history of fulsome praise for Xi Jinping and a telephone relationship with Vladimir Putin. His online outbursts have been increasingly angry and alt-right. And the latest Musk news is that he has embraced the far-right, Nazi-nostalgic Alternative for Germany party in the hope of influencing German politics. Donald Trump and the entire USA are just pawns on the big chessboard where Elon Musk is playing his global game.
What does he want from the simple, pitifully vain, arguably demented Trump except unregulated carte blanche for all his projects? I can’t say what drives this man, but I’m sure it’s even deeper and darker than greed. This unholy alliance between Big Tech and Big Talk, featuring two of the most peculiar autocrats alive, is certain to inflict deep wounds on a fragile democracy. That sinking feeling we can’t avoid is not irrational.
Watching Musk and Trump dismantle America will be like watching psychos microwave puppies.
On the far side of the pain and disgust we’ve already suffered and steeled ourselves to endure, is there some way a patriot can hope to navigate the second Trump administration? Maybe the first step is to stifle any natural temptation to minimize the threat. Trump is more than a dirty joke, an inflated orange-painted clown, a national mortification. He’s a president with “nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution and the rule of law.” That’s not the judgment of a liberal Democrat or another caustic columnist, but his longest-serving first-term chief of staff, John Kelly. Gen. Kelly, the no-nonsense Marine who encountered nothing but nonsense in the Trump White House (he once slammed the MAGA-thug Corey Lewandowski against an office wall), is on record admitting that Trump fits the definition of a fascist and has kind words for Hitler.
Of course it’s as bad as all that. The MAGA cult is as toxic and difficult to eradicate as COVID-19. It’s a carnival of deception and denial where a brutal misogynist and accused rapist can win the votes of a majority of suburban women, not to mention 65% of the nation’s evangelicals, surely one of the most appalling displays of mass hypocrisy in political history. MAGA is reaction in action, where pampered young Republicans who only want to be richer than their fathers mingle socially with fascist commandos who’d be comfortable in SS uniforms. A New York Times reporter who attended the annual black-tie gala of the New York Young Republican Club witnessed that mix at its most naïve, with young men in tuxedos and those mandatory cauliflower haircuts cheering wildly as keynote speaker Steve Bannon called for “retribution” against Trump’s enemies. Many of them even lined up to have their pictures taken with conspiracy Nazi Jack Posobiec, the infamous propagator of Pizzagate. Matt Gaetz, Corey Lewandowski and the British Brexit champion Nigel Farage worked the crowd.
The reporter, Shawn McCreesh, described the merry reactionaries as “baby-faced.” Reading his story, with photos, was like watching an unsuccessful attempt at CPR. America, America. These are the rightward-bound sons and daughters of the plutocrats who were polled for a Nov. 6 Times story headed “Wall Street Is Thrilled” by Trump’s victory. They’re the wannabe Elon Musks and Vivek Ramaswamys of the next digital age. The best seats for their gala cost $4700. I guess I keep hoping, in spite of recent experience, that stories like this one will reach the blue-collar, red-state voters who anchor the MAGA base, and convince a critical few of them that Trump and his rich Republicans are neither their friends nor their salvation.
Set aside the culture wars? I wish. But the most pressing of the critical issues that face this democracy today is income inequality. It’s way beyond outrage. There are over 800 American billionaires, nearly a third of the world’s total, and they increased their wealth by more than a trillion dollars in 2024. Nearly all of them with a ready suitcase seem to be on their way to Washington to help Donald Trump. He’s picked at least 13 billionaires to play key roles in his administration, and his cabinet picks alone are worth $10.7 billion, more than the gross domestic product of New Zealand or Finland. At the same time, the number of homeless Americans has increased by 30% since 2023, to 770,000, and tent cities are springing up all over the map. The number of homeless families with children increased nearly 40% in 2024. In rural areas of the red-state South, as many as 48% of children suffered food insecurity in 2023; in 2024 50 million Americans received charitable food assistance, 10 million more than in 2019.
In a country this rich, these numbers are a national disgrace, capitalism gone cruel. The Democrats, it’s fair to note, haven’t succeeded in stemming the scandalous flow of wealth to those who already own nearly everything. But at least Joe Biden’s cabinet was only worth $118 million, pocket change for Trump’s new fraternity brothers. Even as they promised working people everything and delivered them nothing, Republicans very successfully branded the rest of us, at least the college graduates, as “the elite.” This would be hilarious if it didn’t clearly influence elections. None of my elite friends own private jets or mega-yachts, unlike most of Trump’s gang. In his final column for the Times, the Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman offers us some faint hope: “At some point the public will realize that most of the politicians railing against elites actually are elites in every sense that matters, and start to hold them accountable.”
Don’t hold your breath. While most of Krugman’s American peers are still struggling to locate some light at the end of this dismal tunnel, foreign journalists have been brutally honest. The Irishman Fintan O’Toole, writing in the New York Review of Books, gives it to us straight: “Trump’s second coming may not quite herald the end of the world, but it will hand the ship of state over to a motley crew of libertines and libertarians, control freaks and fanatics … It will be a non-stop show, its cacophonous soundtrack amplified by Elon Musk and the thriving denizens of the digital nanosphere.”
O’Toole even predicts “mass roundups” and Stalin-style show trials. This is not paranoid exaggeration. But when I’m trying to let in a ray of light, I remember an event in Washington just four days after the fatal election. It was a 45th anniversary celebration for old friends of ours. He had served in both the Carter and Clinton administrations, and their Washington friends are predominantly A-list Democrats who held office under Carter, Clinton and Obama. It was a distinguished gathering, unofficially emceed by John Podesta, Bill Clinton’s chief of staff and the chairman of Hillary’s presidential campaign.
Needless to say, the prevailing post-election emotion was grief, if not despair. But the mood lightened gradually, aided by certain beverages, and toward the end of the evening a DJ started playing rock songs of the ‘60s and ‘70s. As we were saying goodnight, I looked back and saw this whole crowd of Democrats in their seventies and eighties stomping, jumping and twisting. I can’t dance anymore, but I left the place grinning. Does hope spring eternal?
Hal Crowther is a longtime journalist whose latest essay collection, “Freedom Fighters and Hellraisers: A Gallery of Memorable Southerners” (Blair, 2018) won the gold medal for nonfiction at the Independent Press Awards, as well as the gold medal for essays at the Foreword Review Awards. A winner of the Baltimore Sun’s H.L, Mencken Writing Award, he is the author of “An Infuriating American: The Incendiary Arts of H.L. Mencken” (Iowa, 2015) and four previous collections of essays. Email delennis1@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2025
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