What a resurgent MAGA presidency means for policy and resistance

~ Louis Further ~

It is a week since the elections, and our preliminary assessment of how and why Donald Trump – a twice impeached convicted felon, and an incompetent, largely economically ignorant white supremacist, misogynist and serial rapist – was legitimately elected to the US presidency.

That such a thing could happen is still sinking in for many people. It will probably take until early next year for us to have the true measure of it all, after Trump is inaugurated and takes his place alongside recent history’s more violent, destructive, dictatorial, intolerant, and dangerous figures.

While 19th century predecessors like Andrew Jackson, James Polk and Ulysses Grant also attracted opprobrium for being ‘Caesars’, this is essentially different. Globalisation, the benefits of a much richer and diverse society, and climate collapse, all make the stakes much higher.

Obviously, it’s going to be a difficult two months, as we see developments towards Trump’s and the new MAGA-heavy Congress shape and announce their plans. Much will be rumour, some will be ‘announcements’ with largely provocative value. But a lot will be clear indications of the damage, death, and destruction about to be inflicted; and seemingly impossible to stop.

Last time, apparently many potentially disastrous and illegal steps were quashed by Trump’s advisors, and by government agencies to the exercise of power and expertise of which the Supreme Court’s Chevron decision at the end of July put paid. As promised, those moderating forces are all gone. The guard rails are non-existent. The brakes are off.

Alarm

The transition process itself is already going against precedent: Trump has missed several deadlines and has so far refused to submit the ethics pledge which he is required to do by law before he can be sworn in. Many fear that there will be no (enforceable) sanctions for such actions, because he has managed to avoid all legal consequences for his crimes over the last four years. He has also pressured Congress to approve appointments during the months between election and inauguration. So far, Republicans have failed to push back.

The news is currently dominated by announcements of who will take the senior positions in his administration. For instance, racist bigot Stephen Miller is to fill the post of deputy chief of staff for ‘policy’ from January. Just as disturbing, New York anti-environmentalist Republican congressman Lee Zeldin will head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Zeldin consistently voted against such EPA initiatives as replacing lead service lines, funding for clean school buses, cleaning up toxic brownfields and Biden’s climate law in 2022.

Tom Homan is a loud-mouthed vulgar racist, who Trump has appointed to oversee his threatened mass deportation of non-white people. One of its most probable outcomes is going to be the separation of children from the adults who care for them… something Homan revelled in during the last Trump administration, while the United Nations suggested that it amounted to torture. It will again.

The Law

Trump is still facing four major legal cases: falsification of business records in the furtherance of his bid for the presidency (New York); although he’s due to be sentenced on 26 November, he will most likely run the appeal process for two more months until he becomes president. Legal opinion argues that it could then be paused until 2028, assuming that he leaves office (which he has promised not to have to do – although that could be just provocation). Those pursuing the case against him for his illegal misappropriation of classified documents are almost certain to be sacked, and the case nullified. Even if it were now ever to go ahead, attempts to hold Trump accountable for inciting an insurrection on January 6, 2021 seem likely to fail.

The same applies to all cases involving Trump with his MAGA cult. Attempts to pin down, say, the involvement of those in the 6 January attempt in overturning the 2020 elections with violence are likely to fail, because most defendants argue that they were merely doing as their leader exhorted. Trump, though, claims he couldn’t control them. It looks as if the legal establishment is already following a course which expert of fascism, Timothy Snyder calls ‘obeying in advance’. Most of those whose appointments have been announced so far voted to overturn the results of the 2020 elections anyway.

So where do we stand?

Wisps of ‘resistance’ have begun. Some states have announced their plans to try and Trump-proof themselves. But no apologies are offered for again drawing attention to a set of speculative, but wholly possible, developments suggested by the Lincoln Project made up of ex-Republicans. Over time, Trump could push the United States into unrecognisably dire and dangerous places.

It looks as though Trump has a tall pile of executive orders waiting for implementation in January. We should expect the enshrinement into law of white supremacist hatred – probably including the start of mass deportations of non-white guest workers; misogynistic regulation – perhaps a national abortion ban; suppression of any kind of dissent – including the press and media; and economic measures – which will benefit the rich and significantly harm the rest of the people in the United States.

Trump is also in the process of preparing the first tranche of executive orders to hasten climate collapse. As 2024 shapes up to be the hottest year on record, he is expected to withdraw United States support for wider initiatives to curb emissions. Drilling for fossil fuels, as threatened, seems likely to be increased sooner rather than later.

Trump is also feared to augment support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, where an average of 67 children are being murdered each day by Israeli terrorists. Mike Huckabee, the new US ambassador to Israel, has said, “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian” and been an ally of the settlers in Israel who are illegally annexing Palestinian land.

This week the MAGA cult also introduced a bill which would allow Trump to close down non-profit organizations of which he disapproves. This is a little-discussed threat which, if passed into law, could have enormous implications for the country.

Why?

Commentators of many stripes have understandably been falling over themselves to examine “why it happened”, and to advise on “what the Democrats need to do now”. Unsurprisingly, almost all published and broadcast opinions fail to recognise that the Democrat election campaigns of 2024 still supported the United States version of capitalist ‘liberal democracy’. Harris, Walz, and the congressional candidates never adopted an approach designed to defeat MAGA as a socio-historical phenomenon. After all, as members of the élite, they were partly responsible for enabling its creation and growth.

Voters’ choices had many causes, not all of which are known. Ignorance certainly plays a huge part: many voters – perhaps a majority – have little or no idea of even the simplest historical context, let alone the tools to understand that their economic grievances will never be addressed by a move to the right. Similarly, they distrust the Washington ‘insider’ culture – but their vote does nothing to remedy this.

To be sure, there is a sizeable slice of the electorate that fervently believes in the supremacy of white males and that the United States belongs to them against all-comers. They are arguably right in concluding that MAGA has granted them an unashamed, overt right to hate and bully. But black and Latinx demographics accounted for many decisive votes for Trump, as did those of the working class. For some, Trump was simply a better alternative to a black woman.  

Empirically, the outcome of MAGA voting patterns does present a very gloomy assessment of the mess in which the United States now finds itself. Effectively, the country is in the process of ‘remaking’ itself. But even that is only half the story. Varieties of such outcomes are inevitable for societies like that of the United States.

Grievances

In other words, the question is not where ‘the Harris campaign’ went wrong, but why, where, and how the system under which the United States operates makes that irrelevant. Alarmingly, but hardly surprisingly, no observers from the kind of ‘news’ sources of which most people are likely to avail themselves have, do or will ever ask such a question. Ways out of this are depressingly hard to discern.

The closest they come is when soft left commentators like CNN’s Michael Smerconish ask has Trump changed America or revealed ‘its’ true nature – as though one could generalise for the whole country. In truth, Trump has done both. Most alarmingly, he has made the hatred, intolerance, misogyny, supremacism, criminality, mendacity, reliance on oppressive fear, and generally offensive transgressiveness of the élite become the norm. It is more readily acceptable by more people for whom the ends of an aggressively white male pragmatically white and oppressive state have been the aim all along.

Another highly pertinent question – especially given the many millions of people worldwide whose lives will now be negatively impacted, and in many cases ended – is what form response takes. Safety pins, marches, op-eds, placards, rallies, and ‘Resist’ badges won’t do it. Not that they ever would. Civil disobedience, non-compliance, and effective passive resistance may be appropriate.