Julian Zelizer: Seven Reasons a Second Trump Term Would be Dangerous

Another installment in the left's full-court Trump Will Be a Dictator, Part Deux press. 

   They've been saying this stuff since Trump came down the escalator. This newest phase seemed to start with that piece I posted recently (can't remember the title or author) that argued that the media has been insufficiently hysterical in its anti-Trumpery. This sort of thing has become basically SOP on the left. In addition to their freelance propagandizing, we often get coordinated talking points, and hear almost exactly the same thing from different left-leaning outlets.

   As I see it:

(a) It's clear that the left has come unhinged--and clear that it is particularly unhinged with respect to Trump.

(b) They were decisively proven wrong by Trump's first term

(c) Up until he lost the election of '20, at which point he completely lost his shit, and more or less became who they said he was all along.

   This leaves us--or me, anyway--in an even more precarious position than in '20. In that election, I think it was pretty clear that Trump represented the lesser evil. But Trump stabbed us all in the back (OMG HE USED A METAPHOR THE NAZIS USED!!!!!111). He showed that, for all their TDS, the blue team got something importantly right about Trump that I (and other reluctant Trump voters) got wrong: he really was unwilling to give up power when he lost. He did not do what many blue-teamers said he would do--basically declare martial law and proclaim himself dictator for life. But I don't care about that. What he did do was bad enough: repeatedly assert crazy theories about mass outright voter fraud. Thus he (a) impugned our elections and (b) turned the mass fraud hypothess into an article of faith for many conservatives. It really has become a kind of axiom for many on the right.

   Now another election looms, and our position is even worse. We now know Trump to be worse than we knew him to be in '20. (I'll leave open the question of whether the blue team had the relevant knowledge. We could say that Trump revealed himself to be the man the left knew him to be all along. Or we could say that, finally, Trump happened to live up (or down) to the hysterical rantings of the left.) The left is also worse. Not only have they come even more unhinged, but they themselves are doing the things Trump has been warning us about. It's now clear that there is something like the deep state, and it is willing to promote mass propaganda against anyone who challenges it. And, crucially, it is willing to use lawfare to defeat such a person. Cross the progressive elite establishment profoundly enough, it will use even the courts, going so far as to try to put you in jail for life, on the basis of whatever absurd charges it can scrape up.

   From my own perspective, burbling cauldron of concerns that I am, it worries me that so many (smart, reasonable) people I know think that the choice is obvious. They basically think that Trump is Orange Hitler, and basically think that the Democrats are just fine. I understand thinking that this is a gut-wrenching choice, but that Trump is the greater evil. I think that is perfectly reasonable and possibly true. I might easily slide over a little bit and end up there. I also, of course, understand the mirror-image position: gut-wrenching choice + Trump is the lesser evil. I suppose I'm basically still there, so obviously I think it's a reasonable position. I absolutely do not understand abject horror at Trump + few concerns (or sanguinity) about the left. (Of course I also don't understand those on the right who think Trump is the greatest thing since sliced bread.) 

   And now we basically know that Biden is a crook--roughly the kind of crook Trump was accused of being. And the media is covering up for him. And Trump was impeached basically for inquiring into Biden's criminal--or quasi-criminal--activities. The left has built itself an echo chamber--partially made out of an ideologically-captured media. This alone should concern us all greatly...

...But that's it for now.