While, at this point, Donald Trump is one of my least favorite topics, I feel that I must at least make a comment on the recent turn of events, with the U.S. midterm elections precipitating the collapse of the MAGA movement. I am not particularly interested in political history, but one of the main themes in American politics has been the interplay between populist movements and corporate interests. During the Gilded Age, from 1870 to 1900, people such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan and Leland Stanford became fabulously wealthy. When Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901, he launched a progressive era, during which monopolies were broken up. But, in 1929, poor policy choices and stock market speculation precipitated the Great Depression, which lasted until 1939. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was president from 1933 to 1945, ushered in a major progressive era which protected ordinary people. He introduced the FDIC, the SEC, the CCC, the WPA, the TVA, the Social Security Act, and the National Labor Relations Act. After FDR, progressive policies wavered and were revived by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1963. But, by the time Ronald Reagan became president in 1981, corporations had taken a greater interest in controlling government policies and began grooming their own candidates.
Reagan, I think, was a very good fit for the time, and his résumé met corporate ideals quite well. When his acting career tanked, he became a spokesman for General Electric in 1954, and he became the governor of California in 1967. Although I don't think that he was very bright, he was a model Republican candidate, because he embodied a poor populist background and was supportive of corporate interests through the Republican Party. Since his presidency, starting in 1981, he has been followed by a series of Republican presidents who flunked the populist test and generally lacked political talent: George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Donald Trump. During this period, I don't think that the Democratic Party has had good presidents either. Reagan's "Reaganomics" morphed into the neoliberalism that was subsequently absorbed by the Democratic Party, particularly under Bill Clinton. One of the reasons why the Democratic Party has been weak in recent years is that it has adopted Republican funding methods and is dependent on corporate support.
In trying to understand the Trump phenomenon, I see the underlying causes of his ascent to have been the corporate infiltration of both the Republican and Democratic parties, along with a decline in news quality and the endless distractions generated by social media. As of 2015, I mainly thought of Trump as a stupid TV personality. But, after he was elected president in 2016, it was obvious to me in January, 2017 that he was generally incompetent. During his first term, his dishonesty became more apparent, and was completely obvious by the time of his election denial on January 6, 2021. When he took office again, in January, 2025, he soon demonstrated his economic ignorance when he rolled out his tariff "plan." Furthermore, his "DOGE" program seemed chaotic, uninformed and reckless from the start. His ICE tactics were unnecessarily violent and frequently unconstitutional. I don't know why he attacked Iran. And, during his second term, Trump's corruption has been amply documented.
In Trump's first term, some of his appointees were seasoned Republicans from previous administrations, and he wasn't free to follow his whims to the same extent as in his second term. There were also distractions during his first term related to his impeachments and the COVID pandemic, and, apparently, his incompetence escaped the notice of many of his supporters. Unfortunately, though Trump was unpopular in 2020, the Democrats couldn't come up with a better candidate than Joe Biden, who was already too old, and definitely too old for a second term by 2024. In this environment, Trump had plenty of time to plan his second run, and was better prepared when he finally ran against Kamala Harris, though she drubbed him in their one debate.
The result seems to have been that Trump came out as a full criminal at the commencement of his second term. I don't think that he had any coherent plans, and he had surrounded himself completely with sycophants who always agreed with him, even when he was demonstrably wrong. This considerably simplified his decision-making process and allowed him to return immediately to his lifelong professional habit: grifting. With no guardrails and Congress and the Supreme Court missing in action, he undertook the greatest crime spree of his career, with the assistance of his appointees, his family, and various fellow-grifters from across the globe, raking in billions of dollars.
What is striking to me is that Trump's populist credentials were never closely examined, and that it actually took the public ten years to recognize him for what he is. Fortunately, he is unlikely to weasel his way out of this major setback. He is once again exhibiting his innate incompetence: when a problem comes up, fire a top female appointee and promote a dysfunctional male appointee. Obviously, he pines for Roy Cohn, and Stephen Miller is the closest substitute that he could find.
In my view, this is an auspicious time for the rebuilding of the Democratic Party. Although I am not religious, the Christian values of people like James Talarico are similar to the cooperative habits that came to us through evolutionary processes. It would be a pleasant experience to witness Donald Trump's Judgement Day.