The right wing populist era

Right-wing authoritarianism doesn't seem wrong to about half of Americans.

Each era sows the seeds of its own reversal.  We are in a new era.

William Jennings Bryan, populist

The post-Civil War era of robber baron industrialists saw economic growth marred by stock swindles, dangerous factories, unsanitary slaughterhouses, and concentration of wealth in competition-stifling monopolies. The era created a response, the Progressive Era of trust busting and reform. That era gave us the direct election of senators, the initiative, and the referendum to circumvent corrupt legislatures. Women got the vote. At the zenith of the reform impulse, people voted for Prohibition.

The 1920s were an oscillation back away from all that do-good reforming. It was back to laissez faire. Small government was good, after all. Business and businessmen were good. The Great Depression ended that era.

The New Deal Era had bi-partisan consensus. It lasted almost 50 years. People understood that government was necessary to do big things. Government ended the Depression; it built dams; it won WWII; it built an interstate highway system; it put people on the moon; it ended racial segregation; it established Medicare; it fought proxy wars against communism; and it began cleaning up our air and water. Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford were New Deal presidents. The era ran aground with the failed war in Vietnam and the intractable inflation of the 1970s. Americans decided government wasn't so competent after all.

Reagan inauguration: "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem."

In 1980 Ronald Reagan said that government was the problem, and that sounded about right to a majority of people. Democrats got elected by bending in that direction. Both Democrats and Republicans agreed to trust markets -- the bond market, labor markets, and free trade markets between countries. The public liked spending on ourselves but not being taxed. The debt grew. Businesses liked the cheap labor of immigrants and Democrats liked treating poor immigrants with compassion. That problem grew. Free markets made richer the people with capital, but it put America's blue collar workers into direct competition with workers in Mexico and Asia. That problem grew. It was unaddressed because the people with political influence -- the educated donor class -- were doing just fine. However, a growing number of people, enough people to swing elections, were not.  A political constituency was ready for an oscillation into worker and middle class populism. By 2016 that came to a head. 

On the left Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders blamed corporate greed and suggested a European-style social welfare state. He thrilled some Democrats and frightened others. Democrats had a safe, establishment alternative in Hillary Clinton. She was a comfortable choice for college-educated Democrats, but not for blue collar ones. On the right Trump pointed at immigrants and said we needed to be self-interested and tough -- cruel if necessary.  

DRAIN THE SWAMP

Trump's presidency was marked by high drama and chaos. A plurality of GOP voters liked it. Trump shook up the Supreme Court; he adopted patriotic and religious symbols; he insulted the people and institutions that condescended to the populist right. The American establishment underestimated the public's frustration with the status quo and its longstanding institutions. Trump called all those institutions corrupt: Congress, courts, corporations, medicine, academia, the career Civil Service, and the media. He said they are all part of an amorphous but pervasive Deep State conspiracy to oppress Americans -- and him.

Trump purged the GOP of dissenters. He is open and frank about the purges. Either you say nice things about him and agree, or you are an enemy. It is a credible threat. Republican politicians hasten to "kiss the ring," as Nikki Haley puts it. She is in the political wilderness, along with the people who until recently led the GOP -- the Bush family, the Cheney family, the McCain family, the Romney family. They are RINOs now. He has cleaned out potential opposition within his party.

Trump has been straightforward about his plans for a second term. He is going to drain the swamp, which means ignoring Congress and the courts, prosecuting political opponents, shaking up NATO, attacking "woke" corporations, aligning the Justice Department with him personally, and most important, addressing the immigration problem decisively and without regard for accusations of cruelty or high handedness.  

The checks, balances, and institutional guardrails against lawless government were just barely adequate in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Trump has succeeded in discrediting and eliminating those guardrails. Trump promises decisive action. The alternative to that is the sluggish, piecemeal, court-stymied, checked-and-balanced action of a constitutional republic. The prior era advantaged one kind of American to the disadvantage of the working class. It set the stage for a populist leader who is openly contemptuous of the laws and institutions that would say "no" to him.

It is not a given that Americans want a republic. A near majority of the American public has lost patience with it. It didn't serve their needs. Trump is possible because the era has changed. Historians will look back at this as the Populist Era. 

Of course, the fear is that historians will look at this as the Post-Constitution Era. Or the Fascist Era.

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