Worried That Trump Will Be Bad? You Should Worry He Won't Be Bad Enough

Klaus Marre 11/17/24

A lot of Americans are worried that things are going to get really bad really soon when Donald Trump takes office. That concern is understandable in light of his obvious mental illness and fascist tendencies, the vast propaganda network he can rely on, his twisted vision for America, and the people he surrounds himself with. Sadly, that is the wrong way to look at this. People who care about the country, democracy, and the rule of law should be worried that things don’t get bad enough. Here is why.

As we have pointed out, Trump won this election largely because he was able to convince Americans that they live in an alternate reality in which things are really, really bad, and that he alone can fix things and make everything awesome (again). (Not that everything has been peachy, especially the high rate of inflation early on in the Biden presidency.) On some level, it’s tough to blame them because the right-wing disinformation network is sophisticated and ever-growing. On the other hand, one should expect voters to do a minimum of fact-checking and truth-seeking on their own.

Actually, in order to get (some) Trump voters to recognize that they have been duped, or to realize that his policies are bad for them, it will have to be really, really bad. In any case, the result of this dynamic is that tens of millions of Trump supporters are firmly entrenched in a partisan propaganda bubble — a bubble that has proven to be impervious to rational thought, truth, or facts. In order to pierce it, something extraordinary will have to happen. And, since the GOP now controls all of Washington, DC, that “something” will have to be really bad. Actually, in order to get (some) Trump voters to recognize that they have been duped, or to realize that his policies are bad for them, it will have to be really, really bad.

This isn’t just scaremongering or mere rhetoric; we have been here before. In 2020, Trump lost the election because of the chaos he created, a botched pandemic response that resulted in countless excess deaths, and his apparent incompetence. But even all of those things and a failed coup were not enough to keep him out of the White House four years later. And neither were his racist, xenophobic, fascist, and misogynistic rhetoric on the campaign trail or his idiotic and unworkable policy proposals. To banish Trump and his MAGA cult for good, things will have to be much worse this time around, and millions of Americans will have to feel the pain (we told you this wasn’t going to be an easy read). And we are not talking about weak gross-domestic-product growth, or even a minor recession, modest job losses, a stagnating Dow Jones, or inflation that is higher than it is now. Experienced demagogues like Trump, Elon Musk, or the fine people at Fox News, will always be able to explain that stuff away; that’s what they do (and why we are here).

https://whowhatwhy.org/opinion/worried-that-trump-will-be-bad-you-should-worry-he-wont-be-bad-enough/