Trump may be a Fascist, but he’s no Hitler
The coming of a new year brings out the prognosticator in all of us. This year, people are wondering, not just about what the coming year will bring, but the next four years, as we prepare for another presidential term for Donald Trump.
You can count me as one of the optimists — or at least one of the less pessimistic people. That is, I think Trump’s term will be horrible: there will be more tax cuts for the rich, leading to even more gargantuan debt, and if he follows through on his plans for the imposition of tariffs and the removal of immigrants, the economy will be in worse shape. In foreign policy, he will anger our allies and strengthen our enemies, especially his old pal, Vladimir Putin.
But I think fears of Trump becoming a dictator are overblown. It’s not that he wouldn’t love to be one. It’s just that establishing a dictatorship requires a degree of competence that Trump lacks.
I came to this realization recently, after watching an episode of Foyle’s War, a British detective show set during World War II. The show presents a pretty convincing picture of what everyday life was like during the war. While documentaries and textbooks show the British putting up a united front against the Germans, it isn’t the whole truth — there were a fair number of Nazi sympathizers in England, at least in the early stages of the war.
In one episode, an English right-winger talks about how Hitler has raised Germany up from a humiliated loser of the first world war to an industrial and military powerhouse. And that’s when it hit me — Trump will never be another Hitler because Hitler had a certain amount of competence.
Hitler had ideas — horrible ideas, to be sure — but he had a consistent set of ideas and a plan based on them, and he carried it out. Of course, that plan eventually resulted in his country’s cities being flattened by Allied bombers. But for a time, even the English had to admit that he was a success.
I can’t see Trump having even temporary success because of his lack of focus. Lately, for example, he’s been obsessed with Greenland. Is acquiring Greenland a part of a plan he’s held for years? He did bring the issue up in his first term, but is it part of a plan, or just another thing he latches onto from time to time before going on to the next obsession? I believe it was the latter.
Remember when he was obsessed with the wall? In 2016, he told us that all we had to do was build a wall from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific, and our immigration problems would be solved. But even with Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, Trump never got funding for more than a small portion of the wall. You don’t hear much about the wall anymore; he’s still obsessed with immigration — his xenophobia is the one consistent thing in his rhetoric — but now it’s mass deportations.
Trump’s lack of success with Congress last time brings up another reason why Trump will not be another Hitler: the U. S. constitution. I know it has recently become fashionable to talk of the constitution as a fragile thing, and while it is true that the constitution is maintained only through the citizens’ vigilance, and we must not be complacent, we must also not underestimate its power.
Hitler came to power by taking advantage of weaknesses in the constitution of the Weimar Republic, which was only 14 years old when Hitler effectively ended it. He held the position of chancellor, a powerful post appointed by the German president, after his Nazi party won a plurality, but not a majority, of seats in the legislature, the Reichstag. After Hitler had been in office just a few weeks, the Reichstag’s building was burned in an arson attack, and Hitler used the occasion to invoke Article 48 in the Weimar Constitution, which allowed the government to suspend civil rights in times of emergencies.
No such clause exists in the American constitution; although presidents have claimed emergency powers on several occasions in the past, such power grabs have always been controversial. But the main check on presidential power is the constitution’s separation of powers, with the judiciary and congress acting to balance the president’s strength. Judges are appointed by the president with the approval of the Senate, but once in office, judges are independent.
More importantly, our congressmen are elected by different groups of people than the president, and they are more interested in pleasing their own voters than doing the president’s will. Thus, Republican senators from Democratic-leaning states and Republican representatives in Democratic-leaning or toss-up districts will not always be marching lockstep with the president.
The Republican-led congress will probably give Trump his tax cut — cutting taxes is just what Republicans do — but they will be much more reluctant to cut government programs that benefit their constituents. Even on issues that Republicans seem to agree on, like denial of the reality of climate change, there is likely to be pushback when it comes to budget cutting: representatives whose districts have benefitted from government money for clean energy programs are not going to want to see those programs cut. Trump can fire or otherwise get rid of lots of good government workers, but he can’t eliminate programs without congressional approval.
As for the judiciary, Trump can threaten to go after his political enemies with a weaponized Department of Justice, but he can’t put them in jail without finding actual evidence that actual laws have actually been broken. He’ll have to find judges willing to oversee those cases, grand juries willing to indict, and juries willing to convict. Of course, even the threat of a lawsuit is a huge inconvenience, and it is always very expensive. But there will probably be plenty of people willing to help fund the legal representation of the brave few who have stood up to Trump.
And Trump’s record in court lately has been less than stellar. He doesn’t do well in an environment that requires constant adherence to the truth, and neither do his lawyers. His attempt to use the legal system to overturn the 2020 election was an abject failure. In two civil trials, he has been found liable of fraud, defamation, and sexual assault. And in the one criminal trial that went to court before the election, he was found guilty of falsifying business records.
He did win a couple of surprising opinions from the courts — Judge Aileen Cannon’s dismissal of the stolen documents case on the grounds that the appointment of a special prosecutor was unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court’s judgment on presidential immunity — but those were ultimately stalling actions. If Trump had lost the election, the appeal of Cannon’s ruling would’ve proceeded, and the elections interference case would’ve gone on within the boundaries of the Supreme Court ruling. In both cases, judges seemed to be bending over backwards to do Trump’s will, but judges are more likely to bend over backward to protect the rights of the accused than to support the prosecution of an iffy case.
That same Supreme Court ruling, by the way, will make it difficult, if not impossible, for Trump to go after Joe Biden, as he has threatened to do.
Here’s what I see happening: Trump will issue lots of executive orders; many of those orders will be challenged in court; the courts will act with their usual slowness; and by the time any of the cases will be resolved, it will be the mid-terms, when the Democrats will take back the House and prevent Trump from doing much more. Meanwhile, Republicans in the House will continue their in-fighting, which will lead to very little getting done, as in the last session; perhaps even less will be done, since their majority is even slimmer.
There will be chaos and confusion, but the damage will hopefully be such as can be repaired. In four years, the American public will be ready to break up with Trump, and perhaps, as in Bob Dylan’s great break-up song, “Don’t think twice, it’s all right,” we’ll be telling Trump: “You just kinda wasted my precious time.”
