My chosen title for this essay was to have been “Resilience!” It would have expressed my faith in the American system of checks and balances to restrain the worst of Donald Trump’s actions, inclinations and behavior. After all, while our Founders were not perfect, they understood the danger that power presents. Our Constitution was created in response to monarchical rule. At the time, George III was a King with powerful brothers around the world. Now, 250 years later, we have evolved through many struggles and, like the Founders, we too are not perfect. But, in the 18th century the United States was a distant backwater to the “civilized” world. We are now its principal actor. What happens here has consequences everywhere.
At the most difficult period in our history, we had a Republican President who got us through it with determination, wisdom and grace. Abraham Lincoln knew political tactics, and used them, but his core human values were extraordinarily good and decent.
Our situation in 2025 is not the same. Watching Mr. Trump’s behavior since the November election has not been reassuring.
In 2016 Donald Trump saw his rise to power as a license to do as he pleased. “Only I can fix it,” he declared, and, right from the beginning he was successful in benefiting people like himself, giving tremendous tax breaks to big corporations and the super wealthy as he ran giant budget deficits. In other areas his policies were as bankrupt as many of his businesses, but he made sure he kept control of those businesses that were profitable for himself and his family. When COVID hit he could have become a great President. But he didn’t.
A uniquely strange aspect of his first presidency was his support from fringe groups like the Proud Boys, the Patriot Front and, according to his account, from biker gangs and the dissatisfied among rank-and-file police and military organizations. He nurtured that support. Early in his first term, with torches in the air, shouting “Jews will not replace us!” white men marched along darkened streets in Charlottesville, sure that a new America was coming.
A few years later, having lost his re-election campaign, he asked his supporters to come to Washington on January 6, 2021. He did not ask them to support the most glorious of American traditions, the peaceful transfer of elected power. No…they came and he told them to march on the Capitol, to “Stop the Steal.”…and they did. Their goal was to overthrow the electoral process, the very foundation of our democratic republic.
They went and they were stopped…that time.
As he assumes office today, he has announced he will begin by freeing those who violently broke the law in January four years ago. We’ll see where he goes from there.
As concerning as domestic policy is, a deeper, more present danger may be the emergence of a US foreign policy led by a “transactional” President whose first question will always be, “What’s in it for me?” Any “art” in his deals will be based on what might be called a 19th century playbook, when Tsars and Kings and Emperors divided up the world. It’s a world we thought we’d left behind.
By the middle of the 20th century, after two World Wars and untold millions of deaths, something had to change.
International organizations like the UN and NATO were created and diminished the threat of an even more catastrophic–and nuclear—World War Three.
But where is that international world headed now?
With the emergence of Putin and now Trump, with Xi in the mix, things might be coming apart.
Now Trump wants to put his expansionist cards on the table. Take back Panama. Break up NATO by threatening to act like Putin in Greenland and, in the process, give Ukraine to Russia and Taiwan to China.
What could go wrong?
Everything.
Some 60 years ago, as I was studying to become a history teacher, I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer. More recently I read an account of that period written by Eric Vuillard that fits uncomfortably well with events emerging today. Order of the Day is a short, almost “poetic” account of Hitler’s bringing Austria into his new German empire. One reviewer described it as a “dazzling work of black comedy and political disaster.” Hitler loved entertaining the super wealthy of Germany…the Krupps, the Siemens, the Farbens and others…and they had no problem being obsequious to him. That’s where their profits were. Today, the CEO of a Chinese-owned social media giant, Tiktok, will be Trump’s guest, as will the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, and the heads of Amazon and Meta-Facebook. They are “his” people.
I don’t know if there will be a poet at this Inauguration but, if so, I’m sure it won’t be Amanda Gorman.
I am hopeful but deeply apprehensive about our future. No rational person would claim that electoral democracy is perfect. After all, Hitler came to power via an electoral system. We elected Donald Trump and for some of us it was a tremendous error. But our democratic traditions are longer and stronger than were Germany’s at that time.
Still, our capacity for “resilience” will be tested greatly. As the poet Jenny Holzer wrote, “The abuse of power comes as no surprise.”
Jim Walsh is a Nahant resident.
