A time will come—maybe in two years, maybe in three, maybe in five, but the time will come—when this country comes to its senses and realizes how dangerous and terrible Donald Trump was.
Just as the Civil Rights Movement was a reckoning, and Watergate was a reckoning, and Stonewall was a reckoning, and the Suffrage Movement was a reckoning, and so many other moments in history were reckonings, someday most people will agree that Trump did deep, lasting damage to the United States.
Just as this country removed monuments to slave owners and confederate leaders, and changed the names of streets and buildings, we will remove Trump’s name from everything he sullied. Congress will pass laws, as it did after Vietnam and Watergate, to limit presidential power and prevent this type of authoritarianism. It won’t be perfect, but it will be a statement: This was a disgraceful time.
Just as the associates who allowed Jeffrey Epstein to operate openly as a child rapist are starting to face accountability (again, imperfect and limited, but what’s the last time a British prince was stripped of his title and exiled from the Royal Family?), the people who empowered Trump and bowed down to his horror show will start to be held accountable.
Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and the rest of the technorati who gave up their humanity to worship Trump in the interests of even more wealth will become pariahs. The Republicans in Congress who went along with Trump’s takeover will lose their seats and be political outcasts. The members of the Supreme Court who allowed this to happen will resign in disgrace or be impeached.
We will boycott Meta and Amazon and Tesla, and the boards of those companies, like the board of Uber, will have to dismiss the founders who became toxic.
Every member of Trump’s cabinet will face prison time (just as many of Richard Nixon’s inner circle did).
The people who stood up to Trump at the risk of their lives and freedom will be seen as heroes.
I’m not saying the entire system of late-stage Capitalism will collapse, or that we will eliminate all money in politics. Those reforms might take a while.
But five years from now, if the United States still exists as a nation, the people who either helped Trump or stood by and let it happen will be ostracized from politics and society. A “former Trump official” or “former Trump ally” will become the equivalent of “a friend of Jeffrey Epstein.”
I wonder if any of them realize that.
Tyrants fall, and they bring their toadies with them. The authoritarians who control Russia, China, and a few other countries have lasted because their population has no tradition of democracy. The US, for all its flaws, is not going to tolerate this for much longer.
It will happen, and when the reckoning comes, politicians and business leaders will scramble to save their reputations, just as Epstein’s enablers are scrambling, but in the end, everyone will ask: When it mattered, what side were you on?
Happy Presidents’ Day.
