by Michael O’Neill

After the attempted coup on 6 January 2021 by the assorted mob of thousands, not the hundreds originally assumed, of right-wing extremist followers of Donald Trump, led by paramilitary militiamen, ‘American exceptionalism’, which was previously celebrated as the positive political prerogative of the United States, has taken on a negative, if not apocalyptic, connotation.

Who would have anticipated that it would be the Republican Party, the ‘Grand Old Party’ (GOP), the self-proclaimed ‘Conservatives’, who would produce the next failed rebellion against the United States of America after the Civil War (1861-1865) and the issue of slavery! This time the rebellion was based on spurious evidence falsely claiming Trump won the election. Even more relevant to the present - who could have anticipated that three years later, the same cast and crew, the same leader and his MAGA followers, are getting ready for another performance?

Precedent

The precedent was set on 17 October 1974, when Republican President Gerald Ford pardoned former Republican President Richard Nixon, who was guilty of crimes surrounding his victory over Democrat George McGovern in the 1972 election. Nixon had resigned from the presidency on 9 August 9 1974, to be succeeded by Ford, before he could be impeached and removed from office. He was in danger of being charged with crimes after leaving the presidency. Ford’s pardon was controversial and contributed to his defeat by Jimmy Carter in the following election for the presidency in 1980. Trump, who admired Nixon and cultivated his friendship, has made an art of avoiding accountability for most of his civil, and so far all of his criminal, law violations.

Many of the same negative political developments, before and after the advent of Trump, have manifested themselves in other countries. They have become an international plague of jingoism and racism, anti-immigrant hate, threats and acts of violence, violations of international humanitarian law in the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. The latest on the horizon is Argentina. A would-be Trump, Javier Milei, a crackpot extremist libertarian ‘populist’, who has insulted the pope and called him a communist, and who maligns ‘social justice’, has just won the presidency. He was congratulated by Trump.

Perhaps the truest thing I ever wrote in Open House was after 6 January 2021, when I said that the Republican Party should disband or be disbanded. They haven’t, and the prospect of a second Trump presidency seems to be alarming more and more people, even some of his first term cabinet, like Bill Barr. He was head of the Justice Department and acted more like Trump’s consigliere and enabler than the people’s independent law enforcement officer, until he bailed out before 6 January 2021.

Ever the opportunist and ‘reality TV’ showboat, though by this time under the strain of a hundred criminal charges, with their related potential convictions and prison time, Trump took advantage of the Justice Department’s more-than-two-year delay in charging him. His crimes were obvious to anyone who took the time to watch the independent and incontestable video evidence of 6 January 2021, or the House select committee’s hearings in 2022, where most witnesses were Republicans. Trump could rely on Fox News, the Republican Party’s propaganda broadcasting twin, and the Sinclair radio empire, the largest in the country, as well as its television local news conglomerate, to continue to support him. No matter the big lie of his self-proclaimed election victory, and the documented evidence of the thirty thousand lies he told during his four years as president.

Next year

The stage is set for next year. As a retired member of the legal profession, I live in a state, Florida, where the profession has been corrupted by a governor, Ron De Santis, who has packed the courts with Republican political appointees to do his bidding. He is running for president by trying to out-Trump Trump. Fortunately, so far, he hasn’t succeeded. Though a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, he supports banning books, undermining public schools, politicising the state university system by attacking professors for teaching what he wants to suppress, such as black history, and dumbing down education by outlawing the humanities. He is never heard acknowledging his privileged university education, and rarely that he attended a Catholic grade school.

Such is apocalyptic ‘American exceptionalism’.

Michael L. O’Neill is a retired assistant public defender

Photo by Jacob Morrison on Unsplash