The illusion of Donald Trump and the fourth founding of America

I have been chronicling the Age of Trump for more than eight years. This is especially true when the opposition embraces such monikers as a badge of honor and pride as more proof that they are “owning the libs.” With the election of Donald Trump, America will need a fourth founding to defend and renew its democracy against a man and regime who, as promised, will rule like a dictatorship or some other form of authoritarianism modeled after Vladimir Putin's Russia or Viktor Orbán's Hungary. He is empowered by the United States Supreme Court to be a king who can break the law at will without consequences as long he does such things as part of his “presidential duties.” Trump is channeling the Führer principle and what Nazi legal scholar Carl Schmitt described as a “state of exception.” In this model of governance, Donald Trump is the State; his corrupt desires and various failings of character and morality will be made into official public policy; The American people will have to learn to read and respond to Trump’s moods and mercurial nature and impulses if they want to survive. Trump has also threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and the Alien Enemies Act to order a military occupation of “blue states” and Democrat-led major cities as part of a plan to crush dissent. In one paragraph, the Editorial Board of the New York Times summarized the existential danger that Trump and his regime will pose to American democracy and freedom: You already know Donald Trump.