Come on People...
There is, as usual, much going on in the world that does not revolve around the electoral and partisan peregrinations of the United States. I’ve just gotten back from a conference in India about U.S.-India tech cooperation, and while many wanted to know about Trump and the drama, they were also focused on their own state-level elections, the status of Modi and his ruling party (the BJP), rising competition and tension with China, and the rapid evolution of mobile payments.
That said, the continued partisan sorting in the wake of Trump’s victory stands out for now in the United States as the major challenge. And judging from the first few weeks, it would appear that a portion of American society remains unprepared for a second Trump term.
By that, I don’t mean what many are saying, namely that a second Trump term puts the United States on the brink of an authoritarian state. What I mean is that too many of us are acting as if Trump is an illegitimate president because of what it is assumed he will do to democracy. And that stance, at this juncture, just as during the same period at the end of 2016 and into 2017, is a real problem.
The most recent brouhaha involved the decision of prominent MSNBC news anchors Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who had been intense and vociferous critics of Trump, to trek to Mar-a-Lago to meet with the president-elect and bury the proverbial hatchet. Not that they suddenly endorsed Trump, but they did say in explaining the meeting that it was an effort “to restart communications.”
The reaction was swift and excoriating. One of their MSNBC colleagues accused them of “normalizing Trump.” Others were not so kind. A Nation columnist said that they were “returning to the MAGA fold.” Jeff Jarvis on a CNN panel said, “The fascist is now in charge…It is journalism's job to cover it that way, not to back off and say — okay, well that's it, we lost, let the fascism happen. No.” You get the drift, if you hadn’t already heard it.
Whether or not you think Donald Trump is a fascist-in-waiting, he is also about to become president of the United States and the head of a large and complex executive branch that touches most of us on a daily level. As I've argued before, and will continue to do, most of the ways we interact with the federal government are not under the discretionary power of the president. For example, a president cannot simply order the Social Security Administration to stop sending checks. The central issue is that Trump will be the president, which prompts the question: what exactly are those condemning the Morning Joe hosts suggesting should be done instead?
This is more than just a catty fight among journalists and television people in an era where their influence is waning (I’m not saying that cattily, just observationally in terms of shrinking audiences and expanding platforms outside the 20th century mainstream names like CNN or most magazines and newspapers). The refusal to engage with Trump is a reflection of widely held attitudes on the left that mirror the same refusenik attitudes on the right had Harris and the Democrats won: namely, “the winner of the election is illegitimate, and an existential threat, and we will not accept it.”
Ok. Let’s say Trump is a fascist. First, it is not clear what most people mean when they say that, not journalists, not angry Twitteristas, not academics, not Trump’s former staff. Fascism was a relatively short-lived movement in the 1920s and 1930s, with Hitler and Mussolini and Franco and perhaps a few others along the way (Peron? Not really but a little?). But let’s grant more latitude and say that the word is now used as a catchall for not respecting the rule of law, believing instead in the rule of one man and not interested in following the law or deep precedent when those stand in the way of desired policies, and willing to use the coercive force of the state to those ends.
The question then is what are we supposed to do about that when Trump is the duly elected president of a democracy? Yes, Hitler came to power democratically and then subverted that, so it is in the realm of human history that something similar could happen. Chavez in Venezuela also came to power democratically, as did Orban in Hungary and others in other countries who came to assume autocratic control.
For now, however, there is a wide gap between what Trump and the presidency might become and what it is. In fact, right now, it isn’t anything at all. Biden is still president. So, if Trump is a fascist, does that mean no journalist of good standing ought to speak with him or his team other than in a public, adversarial forum? Does that mean that whatever policies his administration proposes should be covered only under the rubric of “steps towards fascism” rather than on their merits or lack thereof? Does that mean that no one of good faith can work for a Trump administration, from the Comptroller of the Currency to the head of the Small Business Administration to administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to the White House Chief of Staff? Is everyone who then goes to work for the government in a senior position starting in January 2025 complicit in the road to perdition? What would happen if every competent Republican let alone Democrat decided that they couldn’t work for the government? Would Trump have to resign? Of course not. It’s a big country, full of capable people and incompetent ones as well.
The failure to consider the real-world consequences of this knee-jerk opprobrium is extraordinary. There is no scenario in which Trump or any president-elect would be unable to find people – anyone, someone – to staff the appointed positions of the federal government. Arguing that because Trump personally is bad, bad, bad and threatens the country, no one can work for his administration at a senior level is absurd. In fact, following that argument to its logical conclusion leaves a gaping problem that could, in a few fantastical scenarios, create the very chaos that wannabe autocrats crave.
Demonizing anyone who 'normalizes' Trump simply by engaging with him, his team, or the executive branch lacks a logical endgame. It disregards the reality that Trump and his confirmed appointees—and those not requiring Senate confirmation—are lawfully, legally, and democratically in their positions.
So, honestly, come on people (not you who are reading this, but you know, people…). If and when Trump or any in the executive branch starts infringing on the rule of law, then react. Then fight that specific act. If someone joins the government, they deserve some benefit of the doubt, and they should certainly be worked with and engaged and/or contested by those who oppose their policies. Boycotting the entire White House in advance is a fool’s errand, and denouncing those who refuse that boycott is its own form of thought-policing that so many Americans appear to reject.
And one more point, there is already an extraordinary ratcheting up of the opposition to Trump’s proposed mass deportations as exhibit A of the march to fascism. Personally, I find the rhetoric from many in Trumplandia about immigration ugly and repellent. I think aggressively going after people who have been in the country for years without documentation who have been working needed jobs is wrong, even if it is wrong that they came and stayed without legal status.
But if you are going to condemn Trump’s proposed policies, then it is vital to acknowledge and understand that these are the polices of successive administrations, including Democratic presidents Clinton and Obama. Obama’s moniker as “deporter-in-chief” was earned, and removals and deportations were actually lower under him than under Clinton and Bush. Yes, different presidents emphasized or did not enforce removals of people in the interior of the country who had been here for years and broken no laws, but immigration policy has been neglected by Congress for decades. As the scholar Zeke Hernandez brilliantly points out in his work, we have an incoherent system that has led to decades of both harsh and ineffective enforcement that got particularly inept under Biden in 2021-2022.
Why is it important to frame Trump’s proposed deportation policies in the context of past administrations? Because assailing his administration for mass deportations as if that is a substantial break from the past is factually and morally incorrect. You can assail our system and a militarized enforcement full stop, in which case Trump will be simply the latest in a long line of presidents who have selectively, arbitrarily and cruelly enforced competing laws. Contest that. Fight that. Or celebrate that. But using it as proof for how Trump and his team are uniquely outside of our democracy is factually wrong and leads to an inability to grasp that these challenges didn’t begin either in 2017 or 2025, and likely won’t go away until we collectively come together to solve the issues.
In short, there is no practical alternative to engaging with the president-elect, executive branch, and the federal government. There is no 'government in exile'—only the government that we, the people, elected, whether we like it or not. Accepting and working within that reality is the only choice, for now.
The problem with "the rule of law" is that when people use the expression they really mean the rule of the laws they approve of. If, say, you don't approve of deportation, then you are free to regard what is technically illegal entry into the US as legitimate. and you're willing to violate that so called-rule of law. Think of the many who broke the law in their opposition to slavery. The only way to assure respect for "the rule of law" is to abide by the laws as such until they are revised or revoked. Many people find this impossible. So as I say, there is no such thing as "the rule of law." It's an empty expression like so many others we use continually in political discourse as a means of persuasion. And that includes "fascist." (as per Orwell).
I think it's also good to remember the election was only two weeks ago, though it feels more like two months. We've moved from one period of anticipatory anxiety into another, where the threat itself is still amorphous but the legitimacy of that threat now feels all but certain to a sizeable chunk of Democratic voters. That sort of ambiguity tends to drive people crazy, so the current level of freakout isn't surprising.
I hope that once he actually takes office and starts giving us something tangible to rail against, the catch-all denouncements will wane. But given that he'll likely continue to say despicable things and lie like a morally vacuous 5 year-old, I'm not holding my breath.