Nothing mattered, in the end. Not the probable dementia, the unfathomable ignorance, the emotional incontinence; not, certainly, the shambling, hate-filled campaign, or the ludicrously unworkable anti-policies. The candidate out on bail in four jurisdictions, the convicted fraud artist, the adjudicated rapist and serial sexual predator, the habitual bankrupt, the stooge of Vladimir Putin, the man who tried to overturn the last election and all of his creepy retinue of crooks, ideologues and lunatics: Americans took a long look at all this and said, yes please.
There is no sense in understating the depth of the disaster. This is a crisis like no other in our lifetimes. The government of the United States has been delivered into the hands of a gangster, whose sole purpose in running, besides staying out of jail, is to seek revenge on his enemies.
The damage Donald Trump and his nihilist cronies can do β to America, but also to its democratic allies, and to the peace and security of the world β is incalculable. We are living in the time of Nero. The first six months will be a time of maximum peril. NATO must from this moment be considered effectively obsolete, without the American security guarantee that has always been its bedrock. We may see new incursions by Russia into Europe β the poor Ukrainians are probably done for, but now it is the Baltics and the Poles who must worry β before the Europeans have time to organize an alternative.
China may also accelerate its Taiwanese ambitions. At home, Mr. Trump will be moving swiftly to consolidate his power. Some of this will be institutional β the replacement of tens of thousands of career civil servants with Trumpian loyalists. But some of it will be β¦ atmospheric. At some point someone β a company whose chief executive has displeased him, a media critic who has gotten under his skin β will find themselves the subject of unwanted attention from the Trump administration.
It might not be so crude as a police arrest. It might just be a little regulatory matter, a tax audit, something like that. They will seek the protection of the courts, and find it is not there. The judges are also Trump loyalists, perhaps, or too scared to confront him.
