By Robert Reich –
Imagine that an impeachment resolution against Trump passes the House. Trump claims itâs the work of the âdeep state.â Fox Newsâs Sean Hannity demands every honest patriot take to the streets. Rightwing social media call for war. As insurrection spreads, Trump commands the armed forces to side with the âpatriots.â
Or itâs November 2020 and Trump has lost the election. He charges voter fraud, claiming that the âdeep stateâ organized tens of millions of illegal immigrants to vote against him, and says he has an obligation not to step down. Demonstrations and riots ensue. Trump commands the armed forces to put them down.
If these sound far-fetched, consider Trumpâs torrent of lies, his admiration for foreign dictators, his off-hand jokes about being âpresident for lifeâ (Xi Xinping âwas able to do that,â he told admirers in March. âI think itâs great. Maybe weâll give that a shot some day.â), and his increasing invocation of a âdeep stateâ plot against him.
The United States is premised on an agreement about how to deal with our disagreements. Itâs called the Constitution. We trust our system of government enough that we abide by its outcomes even though we may disagree with them. Only once in our history â in 1861 â did enough of us distrust the system so much we succumbed to civil war.
But what happens if a president claims our system is no longer trustworthy?
Last week Trump accused the âdeep stateâ of embedding a spy in his campaign for political purposes. âSpygateâ soon unraveled after Republican House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy dismissed it, but truth has never silenced Trump for long.
Trumpâs immediate goal is to discredit Robert Muellerâs investigation. But his strategy appears to go beyond that. In tweets and on Fox News, Trumpâs overall mission is repeatedly described as a âwar on the deep state.â
In his 2013 novel âA Delicate Truth,â John le Carré describes the âdeep stateâ as a moneyed élite â ânon-governmental insiders from banking, industry, and commerceâ who rule in secret.
America already may be close to that sort of deep state. As Princeton professor Martin Gilens and Professor Benjamin Page of Northwestern University found after analyzing 1,799 policy issues that came before Congress, âthe preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.â
Instead, Gilens and Page concluded, lawmakers respond to the policy demands of wealthy individuals and moneyed business interests.
Gilensâ and Pageâs data come from the period 1981 to 2002, before the Supreme Court opened the floodgates to big money in its âCitizens Unitedâ decision. Itâs likely to be far worse now.
So when Trump says the political system is ârigged,â heâs not far off the mark. Bernie Sanders said the same thing.
A Monmouth Poll released in March found that a bipartisan majority of Americans already believes that an unelected âdeep stateâ is manipulating national policy.
But hereâs the crucial distinction. Trumpâs âdeep stateâ isnât the moneyed interests. Itâs a supposed cabal of government workers, intelligence personnel, researchers, experts, scientists, professors, and journalists â the people who make, advise about, analyze, or report on public policy.
In the real world, theyâre supposed to be truth-tellers. In Trumpâs conspiracy fantasy theyâre out to get him â in cahoots with former members of the Obama administration, liberals, and Democrats.
Trump has never behaved as if he thought he was president of all Americans, anyway. Heâs acted as if heâs only the president of the 63 million who voted for him â certainly not the 66 million who voted for Hillary or anyone who supported Obama.
Nor has he shown any interest in unifying the nation, or speaking to the nation as a whole. Instead, he periodically throws red meat to his overwhelmingly white, rural, and older base.
And he has repeatedly shown he couldnât care less about the Constitution.
So what happens if Trump is about to be removed â by impeachment or even an election?
In early April, Sean Hannity predicted that if impeachment began, âthereâs going to be two sides of this that are fighting and dividing this country at a level weâve never seenâ â âthose that stand for truth and those that literally buy into the corrupt deep state attacks against a duly elected president.â
Last summer, Trump consigliore Roger Stone warned of âan insurrection like youâve never seen,â and claimed any politician who voted to oust Trump âwould be endangering their own life.â
A second civil war? Probably not. But the way Trump and his defenders are behaving, itâs not absurd to imagine serious social unrest. Thatâs how low heâs taken us.
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Robert Reich is Chancellorâs Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Republished here under a Creative Commons License from RobertReich.org.
Just when the economy is going good, we do not need a protectionist trade war by a 71 year old President who does not understand that the world economy is very complex and not so easily changed back to the 1950’s era. Even if we could go back, I don’t think most Americans would want to go back to that time. I know I do not want to go back to the old days. I am 74 years old.
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