Regular readers may note that I am rather deeply haunted by a paragraph written almost exactly a decade ago by the late, great Angelo Codevilla. It was, perhaps, his most important warning to us, and it remains one of the few political predictions ever made that keeps me awake at night. In the waning days of the 2016 campaign, after watching the way the entire ruling class had mobilized to deride Donald Trump and to ensure his defeat, Codevilla penned an essay titled After the Republic, in which he forewarned:
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We have stepped over the threshold of a revolution. It is difficult to imagine how we might step back, and futile to speculate where it will end. Our ruling class’s malfeasance, combined with insult, brought it about. Donald Trump did not cause it and is by no means its ultimate manifestation. Regardless of who wins in 2016, this revolution’s sentiments will grow in volume and intensity, and are sure to empower politicians likely to make Americans nostalgic for Donald Trump’s moderation.
The president’s avowed adversaries—those in the Democrat Party and those who abandoned the GOP remade in his image—are, undoubtedly, the people who should heed this warning most readily. Phrases suggesting that Donald Trump “is by no means [the revolution’s] ultimate manifestation” and that someday, “Americans” will be “nostalgic for Donald Trump’s moderation” should scare the bejeezus out of them. If Trump is as awful as they say he is, if he is as dangerous and reckless as they would have us believe, and if “democracy” is as acutely at risk from his actions as they interminably insist, then the prospect that Trump offers but a weak and blurry glimpse of the political horrors to come should easily persuade them that they need to soften their personal and ideological aggression and find ways to lower the proverbial political temperature in the hope of proving Codevilla a false prophet. That they do not do so, that they, instead, fuel rage and hatred of all things even marginally associated with Trump and the present-day Republican Party, serves as proof positive that they do not believe a word of what they say and, in truth, have far different goals than the ones they so solemnly and repeatedly profess. They don’t appear to fear Codevilla’s dystopian future at all, mostly, one supposes, because they intend to be in charge of it, firmly and permanently.
“It is exceedingly difficult to make predictions,” as the Danish physicist Niels Bohr may or may not have said, “especially about the future.” I would, in other words, have to be a fool to try to tell you exactly how all of this will play out going forward. That said, both current events and history provide some idea of what the future may hold. And it’s not pretty.
As you likely know, Graham Platner, the nominal oyster fisherman from Maine, has dropped his bid to be the next senator from his home state. This is good news, of course, given his clear lack of both judgment and self-control. At the same time, however, the behavior of those who supported his candidacy—specifically the lengths to which they went to minimize his faults—is telling and discomfiting.
From the very start of his campaign, it was obvious that, at the very least, Platner was rash, contemptuous of societal norms, and willing to lie to conceal both. The tattoo on his chest was obviously and inarguably a Totenkopf, the symbol used most infamously by the Nazi SS. More to the point, it was obvious and inarguable that Platner knew what the tattooed symbol was, what it meant, and who had used it previously. His insistence otherwise was as perfunctory as it was implausible. To be fair, the presence of the tattoo was not necessarily evidence of Nazi sympathies or even antisemitism but of extremely poor judgment and, in response, dishonesty—both of which, in combination, might otherwise have made him a less-than-ideal candidate for elected office. In this case, however, Platner’s vices were flipped on their heads and turned into virtues. He’s “unconventional,” his supporters insisted. He’s shown that he can make mistakes but grow from them. He’s not willing to bow down before the establishment. Also, he appeals to the common man!
Setting aside the profound insult this pays to the “common man,” this rationalization of Platner’s faults was embarrassingly transparent. The same people who spent days and weeks actively calling Elon Musk a Nazi for raising his arm in excitement decided that Platner’s Nazi tattoo was irrelevant because they saw him as a tool by which to gain political power. Like Platner himself, they knew what the tattoo was, and they knew what it said about him. And they chose to overlook it all because they needed to win that Senate seat. They needed to defeat Senator Susan Collins.
This would become a recurring theme in the campaign. No matter what Platner did or what past behavior was revealed, his supporters—which is to say nearly everyone in the Democrat Party and in the mainstream media—would respond with some version of, “Yeah, well. We need to beat Susan Collins!” The candidate who was supposed to be a thorn in the side of the establishment became the establishment’s best bet to regain power. In early June, just before The New York Times reported (rather half-heartedly) on allegations made by women who had dated Platner that his behavior was “unsettling,” but just after it was revealed that he had “sexted” with several women while he was married, the candidate met with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), practically the embodiment of the Democrat establishment. For his part, Schumer walked away from the meeting smiling, singing Platner’s praises. Why? Because of course he did: “I met with Graham Platner today, we’re going to beat Susan Collins and take back the Senate.”
Last week, after Politico revealed that a former girlfriend of Platner’s said he raped her, most of the candidate’s previously most enthusiastic supporters finally conceded that he was probably not the best choice to represent the state of Maine in the Senate. Ironically, however, they did so not because they had had some shocking revelations that changed their minds about his character and they now regretted supporting a degenerate, but rather for the exact same reason they supported him in the first place: power. We must beat Susan Collins, they again insisted, and Graham no longer fits into that plan.
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Even more ironically, for all of their fussing and fuming about the senior senator from Maine, none of them really care (or ever cared) about Susan Collins specifically. As Republicans go, she’s one of the least offensive to Democrat sensibilities. In ideology and temperament, she is, in many ways, closer to them than to the mainstream of the GOP today. What they care about is Collins’ seat because it holds the potential to give control of the Senate, which, in turn, gives them the power to thwart President Trump. None of this has ever been about Susan Collins. All of it is about Donald Trump, because everything is about Donald Trump.
In brief, Democrats and others on the left were willing to do anything, support anyone, overlook (almost) any character flaw or propensity for vice in their quest to counter Donald Trump. They had to beat Susan Collins, they said, but they really had their sights set on Trump.
Part of this, one supposes, is Trump Derangement Syndrome. Whatever he does, thinks, or believes, they oppose, simply on reflex. He has become their guiding star, albeit in reverse.
A bigger part of it, though, is the politicization of everything, the tendency in modern society to turn everything into a political battle, to make every argument and disagreement a defining political test.
Unsurprisingly, this is hardly the first time that the left has demonstrated its willingness to do anything and say anything and overlook anything in the interest of retaining power and countering Trump. As I noted in these pages two years ago, the treatment of then-President Biden’s mental condition was very much a manifestation of the politicization of everything, the determination to condone any act or display in pursuit of political power. Up until—and in some cases, even after—Biden’s infamous debate performance, his supporters were willing to overlook and wave away any evidence of his mental decline. Beating Trump was simply too important to let such “trivialities” get in the way. Then, as now, this all-consuming politicization is a sign of what the Weimar-turned-Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt called “total war” in the “total state,” i.e., the division of society into friend and enemy groups based not on interests or goals but on arbitrary and impermanent definitions of “values.”
Of course, everyone knows how omni-politicization and the total state turned out in Germany. Weimar’s total war unleashed social and economic chaos, which served as justification for the Nazis to reestablish order at any cost. And the rest, as they say, is history—history that some people choose to commemorate with tattoos on their chests. Again, as with Platner, this isn’t to say that the Democrats are Nazis. They’re not. Moreover, the politicization of everything plagues all of society and both major parties. The Democrats, as the party of the ruling class, tend to exhibit the tendencies associated with the total state more prominently, but they are hardly alone.
In any case, this, then, is how we get from here to there, from Donald Trump to “politicians likely to make Americans nostalgic for Donald Trump’s moderation.” The politicization of everything creates, in the ruling class, a belief in the infallible righteousness of their mission, which, in turn, legitimizes any tactics necessary to take and hold power. After all, the “other side” can’t be allowed to win, and we must defeat them “by any means necessary.” In time, the republic collapses even further under the strain, and the ensuing chaos justifies the re-establishment of order at any cost.
Graham Platner may not be a Nazi, in other words, but the blindness and fervency of his supporters show that it might not matter if he were. Power is the ultimate goal in politics, which means that when politics is everything, then anything can be rationalized in its pursuit.
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