Fintan O’Toole is a columnist for the Irish Times who also writes frequent political articles for The New York Review of Books. He titled an analysis of our recent election “The Second Coming.”
O’Toole considers Trump a “world historical personage,” one who, like Napoleon, changes the course of history. Trump’s second coming follows a pattern common to other modern authoritarian rulers: “a strongman gets elected, is thrown out of office and then makes a triumphant return.” This was true of Hungary’s Victor Orban, Jaroslav Kaczynski in Poland, and Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel.
The second coming of such rulers is important, O’Toole writes, because the second time, the strongman “returns as a more radically authoritarian ruler ... infused with the swagger of impunity.”
Writing only two days after the election, O’Toole’s explanation of the reasons for Trump’s victory anticipates much of what we have seen in the American press: he attracted more male voters than Harris did female voters, his unfiltered language and vulgarity made him seem “more real and sincere” to many voters. Then there was also the price of eggs.
Also, Harris refused to clearly distinguish herself from an unpopular Biden. She may have lost the election when, in the October 8 interview on “The View” on ABC, she said “No” to the question, “would you have done some things differently than President Biden during the past four years?”
Trump is a con man in a double sense, according to O’Toole: he conned “much of his electorate” with his lies, “but they gave him the benefit of their nonchalant belief that he was not destroying American norms, [but] merely restoring an imagined American normalcy.”
The term “imaginary” in the previous sentence is a key to understanding both why and the ways in which O’Toole believes this election was pivotal, a real turning point. Rather than restoring America to an imaginary golden age of the 1950s, “Trump’s victory decisively shifts the idea of who is a normal American.”
O’Toole believes that Trump’s presidency will be marked by vengeance against his enemies, will give fundamentalist Christians control of federal education and health care policies, as well as a role in court appointments. We can see this happening, in the weeks since O’Toole wrote, in the men and women Trump has chosen for leadership in his cabinet and leading government agencies.
The Trump administration will “roll back the gains made over many decades for the rights of women, LGBTQ+ people, and people who just believe that they should be allowed to live their lives as they see fit.” This is a pivotal development in American social and political life.
O’Toole also predicts the rise of oligarchs, people like Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy and other rich corporate leaders, who “will be allowed to do as they see fit, whether in a free-for-all of oil and gas drilling or in already dangerous areas like social media disinformation, AI, and cryptocurrencies.”
We have seen the development of such an oligarchy (rule by the rich few) in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, where the economic life of the state (and much public money) goes to a few oligarchs in return for loyalty to Putin. The ship of state in America, O’Toole fears, will be turned over to “libertines and libertarians, control freaks and fanatics.”
While this is happening, the press will be preoccupied by the latest outrageous statement by a Trump official or by video images of mass deportations. O’Toole foresees “spectacles of mass roundups and treason trials for the amusement of the many millions who are, it now seems abundantly clear, entertained by exhibitions of cruelty.” Is this what America really wants?
Trump has turned real discontent into hatred and fear, and does not offer real solutions. He has also moved American politics “away from process and toward performance.” A new Democratic (or just democratic) leader, O’Toole suggests, will have to “play on that stage.”
Is there a charismatic person out there willing to audition for a role as the next “world historical personage?” If so, this person needs to catch the train carrying the coming backlash to Trump’s “second coming.”
It will be coming to a station near you sooner than you may think.
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| Tip Jars |
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