Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic

by David Frum

The thing to fear from the Trump presidency is not the bold overthrow of the Constitution, but the stealthy paralysis of governance;

Trump gambled that Americans resent each other’s differences more than they cherish their shared democracy. So far, that gamble has paid off.

Institutions do not matter for themselves. They matter because of the way they serve, or fail to serve, the people of the country.

To shrug and say, “What does it all matter?” is not only to dismiss the poor and the vulnerable but to submit your own interests to the mercy of the greedy and unscrupulous. It is to submit to life as a subject rather than a citizen.

Trump gained the presidency thanks in great part to voters disgusted by a status quo that was ceasing to work for more and more of them.

Members of his party may denounce him in “on background” interviews. His own staff will leak their disgust at his antics and cruelties. Yet whatever these powerful people say in private, they continue to enable him in public. It is their public actions, despite their private qualms, that sustain Trumpocracy.

Here’s the way we see it and the country should see it—that the people have spoken and we respect the majesty of the democratic system.

Since the election of Donald Trump, the hard and painful floor seems to be rising toward us faster and faster and faster.

Trump has contaminated thousands of careers and millions of minds. He has ripped the conscience out of half of the political spectrum and left a moral void where American conservatism used to be.

The Trump administration may exist to fulfill just such a destiny: to remind other peoples in other countries that while constitutional government may sometimes look like an endless and pointless squabble, the promises of superior results from supposed strongmen are always self-serving lies.