The Trumpistas don't care about American democracy
They care only about their own tribe
In the debate over whether the Trump presidency poses an existential threat to American democracy, there's at least a shared assumption among all parties that the system is worth protecting ... right?
Well, maybe not.
The latest syndicated column by Pat Buchanan, still largely underrated as the intellectual architect of President Trump's successful campaign, is an extraordinarily revealing piece of evidence that suggests the answer is no. It's worth quoting at length:
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The tribe. Buchanan later baldly claims that the aforementioned geopolitical trend proves that "nationalism trumps democratism" — itself a revealing turn of phrase. The epithet "democratism," as I recall, was used by Buchanan and other paleocons to deride the militaristic bent of post-9/11 neoconservatives. Winning the war on terror, in the latter's view, ultimately required the forced conversion of autocracies into democracies. To the extent this could be called an ideology, "democratism" was as useful a descriptor as any.
Now Buchanan uses it to describe the internal politics of already-existing democracies.
Of course we all know which "tribe" Buchanan prefers: white Christians of European descent. But that's just one of the democracy-skeptical tribes in Trump's corner. Another is what you might call the Thielites. This tribe rejects the 20th-century consensus under which equality of material opportunity was seen to be inextricably tied to democratic inclusion. Jonathan Chait limns the core convictions of this group of uberwealthy libertarian types in a 2016 column about the "libertarian-authoritarian alliance" undergirding the Trump coalition:
One can see this elite fear in particularly crude and apocryphal form in the below tweet by noted Tocqueville scholar Donald Trump Jr.:
Which brings us lastly to the final Trumpist tribe: evangelicals. Michael Gerson laments the political bargain they've made with the White House:
Gerson's charge makes sense as a criticism of short-term coalition transactionalism. But the truth is worse: Many evangelicals fear that American democracy has become synonymous with a hostile secular humanism in which orthodox Christianity has no safe harbor. They don't believe in protecting the system because the system won't protect them.
There in three legs — race, class, and religion — is the stool of antidemocratic Trump tribes.
There's a reason they're not worried about Trump and the erosion of democratic norms. They not so secretly welcome our post-democratic future.
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Scott Galupo is a freelance writer living in Virginia. In addition to The Week, he blogs for U.S. News and reviews live music for The Washington Post. He was formerly a senior contributor to the American Conservative and staff writer for The Washington Times. He was also an aide to Rep. John Boehner. He lives with his wife and two children and writes about politics to support his guitar habit.
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