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Is Trump a Serious Threat to Democracy?

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  RalRosche
  .

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Question by

RalRosche

(edited for length):

...And yet. Of course, while there is no end of propogandic hyperbole in this world. A large part of what has people so unfathomably combative right now is that there does seem to be in many ways a threat to US democracy that is unparalleled in recent history.

I believe I remember the key step that allowed Hitler to step up from being a politician and become a dictator. The Reichstag Government building was set ablaze by an extremist who had no qualms about killing politicians. In the aftermath, everyone was so frightened and desperate to prevent a perceived threat to overthrow the government, that the head chancellor gave Hitler Emergency Powers allowing him to curtail people's rights in order to crush dissent. Soon after, Democracy died.

That sounds...awfully relevant to the current political environment. We have a thousand tons of extremist dynamite just waiting to go off. Some of it did, yesterday. But there's still a whole lot of live nitroglycerin left to ignite.

Hitler was much more competent at achieving his goals than Trump. I readily agree. I'm just doubtful that matters.

Hitler never had this much democratic support. Hitler's party did not ever win highest office through fair election. The last mostly free election the Nazi party ran in had them taking 43 percent of the votes.

The difference between 43% and 51% is vast. Even in a properly functioning state, Democracy is mostly just a word meaning "the rule of the majority." There are few limits on how nightmarish a democracy can be, once the majority has allowed it.

Our government and constitution is not so brittle as 1930s germany was. But it still looks quite vulnerable to me.

I do not consider myself a very educated person in the matter of politics, so maybe I made a big mistake in my logic. If so, please tell me where I went wrong.

We have three branches in government. If Trump wins, he heads the executive branch, can dismiss anyone in it at his leisure, and chooses all the appointment candidates for the head positions of that branch.

The Supreme Court is already overwhelmingly Republican. Even if they still have some principles guiding their actions, they seem to be gradually trending more in the direction of the goals that Trump wants.

Suppose then that the Republican party also ends 2024 holding a majority in both the House and Senate. It hardly seems unlikely. And while it is far from unanimous, it seems that there are very many politicians at the top of the docket who display an unwavering loyalty to Trump.

What is the mechanism that will stop Trump from overthrowing democracy if he tries to? The rest of the Republican party? Do you expect that a full 50% of Republican politicians are ready to oppose their president, no matter how much harassment and threats and attempts to remove them from office are made? As you have keenly noted, both sides now see the other party as basically the devil. Which makes people increasingly reluctant to try to undermine "their side."

We have a constitution and amendments. But we also have a great deal of experience finding loopholes around them. I imagine you would say that this is what happened in the past. For example, when an amendment made for the purposes of equal treatment eventually resulted in businesses taking quotas on how many minorities they need to hire.

A law based on a loophole can be stricken down as unconstitutional. But who is going to strike it down? Not Trump. Not the Democrats. Probably not enough of the Senate or House Republicans.

Maybe the Supreme Court. But is that what we are hanging the fate of hundreds of millions of lives on? Whether the number of judges willing to go along with Trump's insanity numbers 3 or 5?

What else is there? What else is likely to stop him if he wins?

This is a genuine and heartfelt question. I would love to hear about whatever these other safety valves might be. Then I could rest a bit more easily, and stop making contingency plans to move to Portugal the second Democracy enters its final death throes.

I'm not sure if you accept a long question like this, or if you wanted a more succinct question. If the latter is what you were seeking, I would phrase it thus:

"If the Republican Party wins a majority in the House and Senate. And Trump wins, and makes it to the end of his term without suffering a heart attack. Is the chance of the 2028 election being decisively rigged in favor of Republicans more or less than 10%? And what are the main factors that cause you to think the odds are as low as you claim they are?"

~

Response:

It’s funny you mentioned Portugal: My wife and I are moving to Spain later this year or the very start of 2025. But not because of Trump. To answer your final question briefly: Less than 10%. And I think the democratic system will stop Trump, but also Trump will stop Trump. Because he has no core values other than his own contradictory selfish needs. He doesn’t have any wider goals beyond his own interests, and his interests are mostly egocentric and financial, not dictatorial.

Ok. For starters, thank you very much for the astute, fair, and well-thought-out question. (And apologies for seeing it so late!) I have a few thoughts here.

First: There is a massive difference between 1930s Germany and 2024 America. Two main things ultimately brought Hitler to Power:

1.    World War I reparations

2.    The Great Depression

The German economy was hobbled badly by the reparations decided at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. The United States, using the Dawes Plan, granted huge loans to Germany after the war to help them pay for the reparations and rebuild. But when the stock market crash of 1929 struck, the U.S. stopped loaning money, which in turn threw Germany into a depression tailspin. Inflation rose crazily. People were out of work, humiliated and angry.  

That’s the economic factor.

Culturally, there was, in the 1920s and 1930s, the global reality of antisemitism; the ole “stab in the back” theory, the notion that the Jews were actually the ones responsible for Germany’s failure in the war. (World War I.)

Hitler tried multiple times to foment revolution in Germany and thus take down the government. It didn’t work and he ended up in prison for a while (where he wrote Mein Kampf). In the end Hitler grasped that he would have to do things legally and democratically in order to get to his stage of horror. He lost the election but did well enough to take second after Hindenburg. Hindenburg, therefore, appointed him second in command, vice-chancellor, and a little later chancellor. This was during the democratic Weimar Republic. Hindenburg was legal president.

It was when Hindenburg—who was old and frail—died that Hitler immediately dissolved the government and appointed himself Fuhrer. *(Read my lengthy 6,000-word essay on Hitler for more details on this.)

Trump is not Hitler and our system is not 1930s Germany and our economics are nowhere near the same and our culture is much different.

First: A few crucial things to remember about Trump.