It looks as though Donald Trump will be indicted — again.
Federal prosecutors have informed him that he’s a target of their investigation into the Jan. 6 riot and efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
This would be Trump’s third criminal indictment and counting. Prosecutors in Georgia are still considering charges.
It should feel like the fulfillment of America’s commitment to justice that Trump is finally facing some accountability for his recklessness and ruthlessness, for his disavowal of constitutional concerns and apparent contempt for the law.
So why does it feel so anticlimactic? Why does the feeling of foreboding remain? Why is there no sense of finality in the air?
It feels that way because there’s no guarantee that we’re reaching the end of Trump’s era of menace. On the contrary, there’s every indication that he has no intention of bending or breaking — that he’d rather destroy our democracy than be accountable to it.
America is undergoing an extreme stress test, and no one truly knows how it will emerge.
There are the chronic optimists who hold to the hubristic view that America can defy history and not be subject to the well-recorded and almost universal rise and fall of empires. Not me: I recognize America’s precariousness. I see the soft, fleshy spots where a shiv could be plunged and do the most damage. And I’m not alone.
For too many Americans, though, hearing someone say that our democracy is in danger sounds like a partisan exaggeration, a sky-is-falling attempt to sway public opinion. They doubt that Trump will fundamentally and permanently change what our country says that it stands for.
But Trump keeps indicating that an unraveling democracy is precisely his plan. Just this week, The Times reported that should Trump be re-elected, he plans on “reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.”
And many of the people who follow and support Trump either know this and enthusiastically support it or turn a blind eye to it. Either way, they’re all in.
Some political observers naïvely believed that a critical mass of Trump’s supporters could be released from his spell when they were confronted with his corruption.
They failed to recognize that Trump has infected his followers’ faith. They believe in nothing more than they believe in him. They wanted their biases confirmed rather than challenged, and Trump filled the need. He’s become a symbol, an inspiration and an aspiration. He’s become an idea, which is far more dangerous than an individual.
Trump achieved this by capitalizing, to an almost unprecedented degree, on Americans’ addiction to celebrity culture. He’s not the first president to accrue and employ celebrity: John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did so, too.
But each of those men married his celebrity to our politics; Trump has used his celebrity to pervert our politics. He sensed the fragility of our political system, its overreliance on precedent, norms and decorum and its inability to anticipate chaos — chaos that he was able to weaponize.
Trump recognized that for many Americans, celebrity was more powerful than character or civics. That celebrity allowed for a curated reality, one that acknowledged the flower but hid the thorns.
In this environment, some people’s desire to belong and be affirmed and validated transcended truth and reality. And in that space, he could be the captain of their team, the leader of their band and the minister of their church.
For them, Trumpism became a form of identity entertainment, a carnival for the like-minded guided by an impresario who mixes amusement with anger, fear and grievance.
In this environment, it’s also easy for Trump to fend off challengers who appeal more to the mind than to the soul.
His closest rival for the Republican nomination is Ron DeSantis, whose campaign is struggling as Republicans continue to rally around Trump. DeSantis possesses no magic. Never has. He’s dull and boring, a beta male cosplaying bravado.
DeSantis thought his provincial pettiness would scale to a national level without alteration or adjustment. He thought he could unseat the MAGA oracle with his state-level report card.
But Trump needs the nomination more than DeSantis wants it. For Trump, re-election would be the most effective protection from prosecution and possible imprisonment.
Trump understands that the political calendar and the legal one can be played against each other.
Unless the country denies Trump re-election — an outcome still too early to predict — the country courts its own undoing.
Trump has three things working for him: the fact that America’s systems of accountability still haven’t adjusted to his novelty, a die-hard flock of supporters and time.
Time may prove to be the most important of the three because time is the thing that the country itself is running out of.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
