The Spartacus Moment
In what has already been the longest year of the longest presidency of the longest century, it’s been a very long week. But after nearly four years of no relief from the endless bombast and outrage, there was a palpable shift in the national mood this week — for the first time you can feel the people turning against the regime.
It took a plague, an economic crash, a national lockdown and more than a few martyrs, but our national Spartacus moment has arrived. One by one, the silent majority is rising and taking their places alongside the righteous. As any apostate will tell you — and there have been many who have been humiliated by Trump and his trolls since 2016 — it’s a thankless task to step forward from the ranks of the silent. There are so many incentives to keep your mouth shut and go along with the mob. That’s why, at first, you see only a lonely few — Mitt Romney, John McCain, the Bushes — and they are relentlessly ridiculed. But then there’s a moment of truth — and we have just experienced it — and suddenly the tipping point is reached.
The Silence of the Damned
One of the mysteries of history is how Hitler and his merry band of Nazis not only seized power but expanded that power, step-by-step, with the tacit consent of the German people. How could they let this happen? How could so many men and women of good will be taken in by this evil enterprise?
After witnessing the rise of Trump, his crossing the Rubicon and his march unchallenged across the land of Normal, it’s now easy to see why even good people are cowed by the Triumph of the Will. Trump didn’t have the Gestapo at his disposal (only Billy Barr and his secret police) but he has been aided and abetted by an army of enablers — the rabid ranks of sycophants and fanboys, cheered on by a billionaire’s propaganda machine, and funded by a network of deep-pocketed donors.
If bullshit baffles brains, Trump is the crew chief at Baffle House. He’s a time-honored type in American life — the blowhard, the bullshitter, the con man — who raves about the immigrant, the socialist, the enemy. From his time at the knee of Roy Cohn, one of the most despicable men ever to walk the earth, Trump learned to always respond to attacks by hitting back twice as hard and never, ever apologize. His scorched earth campaign purged the ranks of any dissent and made a loyalty test an intrinsic element of the GOP. The result has been a spooky silence from the U.S. Senate and utter complicity by the GOP. They knew Trump was toxic waste but they jumped on board the S.S. Trumptanic as it embarked on its maiden voyage, unsinkable and unprecedented.
The result was baffling to anyone with a brain, a heart or a healthy liver. No matter what obstacles thrown in his path — court challenges, protests, investigations, outrage — Trump rolled on like the German army did from 1939–42. Despite burning allies, embracing dictators, putting children in cages, reversing any progress on climate change and running the economy on a credit card, Trump just forged ahead. The worse he got, the more they loved him. Evangelicals flocked to him. Money adored him. Farmers stood by him. As the economy seemingly improved and the stock market pushed past one record high after another, even holdouts had to take a long look in the mirror and wonder if they were on the wrong side.
And then the ship hit an iceberg.
Trump loyalists will be quick to point out that Trump isn’t responsible for COVID-19 or killing George Floyd. But he’s completely on the hook for how he responded. And the verdict is in: When given a chance to lead, he abdicated. When given a chance to heal, he poured salt on the wound. When given a chance to change, he dug in.
Unlike the right, which sees conspiracies behind every tree and has probably claimed that George Floyd wanted to get killed so it would hurt President Trump, the rest of the country has actually spent the last four years hoping Trump would learn something and improve. No such luck. A leopard can’t change his spots and a snow leopard can’t shed his white.
It’s not the end of Trump. He won’t go easily, and he’ll undoubtedly try to drag us all down with him before this is over. But when historians try to pinpoint the moment when the tide turned, it will almost certainly be this week.
The first-class passengers disembarked first (as always) in a mea culpa ritual that can only be described as a Spartacus moment. As Trump railed against thugs and agitators and terrorists and built yet another wall around the White House, the people rose up, galvanized by the death of another martyr (his agony caught on video in a way that can’t be explained away). The powder keg of race relations has been burning for years, but the newest outrages — the modern-day lynching of Ahmaud Arbery, the unprovoked killing of Briona Taylor and the very unnecessary killing of George Floyd — only pushed the nation to the brink after the tone-deaf response of the Trump administration. Every misstep, every hateful utterance, has been magnified by the roar from the street. And true to form, Trump has responded by doubling down. That’s the dynamic that’s scuttling his ship.
The ship is listing to the right
Whatever happens next the battle lines are drawn. Trump and his loyalists will rave on, lashing out at enemies, real and perceived, as his fortunes slip away from him. The economy may recover, the pandemic might wane, but that eerie veneer of invulnerability has been pricked and he looks increasingly weak and vulnerable. Like that 1949 collection of essays, The God That Failed, the time has arrived when the disillusioned and defeated will cross the street to distance themselves from Trumpism. It will be surprisingly close but enough reliable GOP voters will fail to show up in November. And ten years from now, don’t be surprised if you can’t find anyone who will even admit to having once supported him.
