Trump Apocalypticism

Andrew Bacevich is worried about Donald Trump:

If Trump secures the Republican nomination, now an increasingly imaginable prospect, the party is likely to implode. Whatever rump organization survives will have forfeited any remaining claim to represent principled conservatism.

None of this will matter to Trump, however. He is no conservative and Trumpism requires no party. Even if some new institutional alternative to conventional liberalism eventually emerges, the two-party system that has long defined the landscape of American politics will be gone for good.

I find this puzzling. Why would a Trump nomination destroy the Republican Party? It has thousands of office holders from the Senate to school boards. It will go on, regardless of how many party members feel that they have to renounce their Presidential cadidate. But Bacevich worries that Trump will do much worse:

Should Trump ultimately succeed in capturing the presidency, a possibility that can no longer be dismissed out of hand, the effects will be even more profound. In all but name, the United States will cease to be a constitutional republic. Once President Trump inevitably declares that he alone expresses the popular will, Americans will find that they have traded the rule of law for a version of caudillismo. Trump’s Washington could come to resemble Buenos Aires in the days of Juan Perón, with Melania a suitably glamorous stand-in for Evita, and plebiscites suitably glamorous stand-ins for elections.

That a considerable number of Americans appear to welcome this prospect may seem inexplicable. Yet reason enough exists for their disenchantment. American democracy has been decaying for decades. The people know that they are no longer truly sovereign. They know that the apparatus of power, both public and private, does not promote the common good, itself a concept that has become obsolete. They have had their fill of irresponsibility, lack of accountability, incompetence, and the bad times that increasingly seem to go with them.

So in disturbingly large numbers they have turned to Trump to strip bare the body politic, willing to take a chance that he will come up with something that, if not better, will at least be more entertaining. As Argentines and others who have trusted their fate to demagogues have discovered, such expectations are doomed to disappointment.

In the meantime, just imagine how the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library, no doubt taller than all the others put together, might one day glitter and glisten—perhaps with a casino attached.

This strikes me as apocalyptic fantasy, with a strong dash of wish fulfillment. Seems to me that Bacevich really wants something to shakeup the American system. He would prefer a different kind of shake-up, but if Trump is the only wrecking ball available, Bacevich will give him an extra push.

I just don't see America as such a rotten, hopeless polity that one term of Trump would destroy our system.