With a presidential election soon, the future is up to us. Happy Apocalyptic Holidays | Opinion
It’s probably a little too early for an obituary of the Republic — the MAGA Trumpers won’t take command until January 2025 — but not so early we can’t preview how the new world order might look if they win.
First an assurance: Nobody’s going to be kicking in doors looking for evidence of elitist thinking the day after the inauguration. It’ll be more of a slow drip — a wink to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the Baltic states here, a nod to Christian nationalism’s obliteration of church/state separation there, maybe even a little martial law to energize the base and keep normal people from taking to the streets.
Edgier and more effective than the first Trump go-around, to be sure, but basically a reprise of the cruel ideas and narcissistic ramblings we’ve heard before. His cognitive decline to the contrary, Trump will continue to squeeze more lies and self-adoration out of a 20-word vocabulary than a B movie publicist.
No, the real work of deploying full-on authoritarianism will happen only later, once Stephen Miller, the pardoned Steve Bannon and Mike Flynn, the white nationalist Nick Fuentes and the soon-to-be-disbarred Jeffrey Clark hit the West Wing and put in motion the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for an even more inequitable America.
Trump will shun the hard day-to-day work of the presidency, of course, just as effectively as the House Republicans will avoid legislating, and this will slow the purge and give the more anxious among us time to update our passports and pack our bags. Our best guess — and it’s just a guess, not poll-driven science — is that we’ll be at least a year into the dictatorship before the Supreme Court endorses Trump’s kingly notions of executive power in a 5-4 decision and he pardons himself and the other insurrectionists, censors the press, dismantles federal agencies, freezes the borders, and makes life miserable for anyone not fully on board.
Here in Idaho the consequences of the MAGA-inspired mania will be more keenly felt. Dorothy Moon’s loyalty oaths and litmus tests will drive the state’s moderate Republicans into hiding, and the Idaho Legislature, already distracted by the Idaho Freedom Foundation and its statehouse puppets, will become paralyzed and irrelevant. Responsible budgets won’t get presented or passed, quaint notions of reason and civility will be erased from the lexicon, and the panhandle, already on the brink of catastrophe, will become a Disneyland and arsenal for every race-baiting, conspiracy-burdened, white supremacist bigot in the country.
Meanwhile, roads and critical infrastructure will continue to deteriorate, the state’s vital irrigation water will flow past Milner under federal edict for sale to out-of-state bidders, and crop prices will fall through the floor as Trump ignores diplomacy and ignites another costly tariff war with China. Idaho’s trading partners will steer clear of the chaos and look to more stable sources for commodities and employees. Our kids and grandkids — the real victims in all of this — will graduate from their home schools and private academies armed only with a fake understanding of history and a distrust of science and learning.
For their part, our senators and representatives will silently hole up in Washington, only to emerge briefly, likely on a Friday afternoon, at the nadir of the news cycle, to feign concern about the spreading assault on democracy and test the winds for gutless pathways to political relevance. As Yeats put it, “the blood-dimmed tide will have loosed and everywhere the ceremony of innocence will drown; the best will lack all conviction, while the worst will be full of passionate intensity.”
It can’t happen here, you say? Maybe not. But here’s the thing: The odds of a MAGA Trumper dystopian future will certainly go up if they continue to succeed in conning us that our present worries — all indisputably real — will disappear once we trade in democracy and hope for despotism and fear.
Some of us will take the bait, selfishly thinking that what hurts others doesn’t hurt them and might even assuage their failures and unhappiness.
Others will be more resolute.
If you’re among the latter and have concluded Trump and the MAGA crowd are a clear and present danger, then welcome to the club. And if you’re discomfited by the prospect of having to vote for a Democrat, or not vote at all, to keep him out of the White House and preserve the rule of law, then come to grips with it.
There’s nothing easy about the looming decisions we’re about to make, especially if you’re a Republican and it means breaking ranks, at least for now, with a hijacked party that has discarded your beliefs, your heritage and your common decency like so much roadside trash.
The scale of this thing is bigger than you think. These are not ordinary times.
Douglas Siddoway writes and practices law from his farm in southeastern Idaho.
