Last week, I was standing at a busy bus stop in the late afternoon and a young man danced-walked up to me (he moved like Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk – while going forward). He was smiling and very happy. He leaned in towards me and announced that, “Black people, we are time travelers! It all makes sense! This is a spaceship! I can see it all so clearly now! Black people are time travelers!” I paused for a few seconds. I then replied, “Damn right. We are.” The young man danced-walked up to another Black person several feet away from me and shared his personal revelation again. He continued dance-walking down the long city block, the time-traveling Black town crier was waking up all those who would listen.
I wondered if I was stuck in my own version of Terry Gilliam’s film “12 Monkeys” or its French original “La Jetée.” I concluded that this time machine, if it does exist, must be broken — or perhaps it is just operating in a way that I do not fully understand.
Donald Trump has now been president for almost five months. It seems like a much longer amount of time has passed. The “anniversary” of Trump’s first 100 days back in power took place in April. That date was met by many essays and other commentaries and analyses by the news media and political class. One hundred days felt like a natural moment to pause and seek out respite from Trump and his forces’ unending shock and awe; the long Age of Trump and the flooding of the zone allows no such peace.
In hindsight, Trump’s first 100 days back in power now feels more like an arbitrary landmark in what will be a very long and very difficult journey. Unfortunately, many Americans who begin this journey will not survive to see the end of it.
As politics and religion expert Matthew Taylor counseled in a recent conversation with me here at Salon, “Here is a warning about this 'first 100 days' framework. It is a media construct that Trump and his people play along with because it’s a Washington convention that they don’t hate. But Trump and his people have no intention of slowing down after the first 100 days.”
There is an America Before Trump and an America After Trump; Trump has cleaved American history into two parts.
The next 30 days between April 20 and May 20 felt even longer while at the same time going by very quickly. Time dilation is a common experience of societies and individuals experiencing great stress.
At the time of this writing, Donald Trump will be president for at least 1,320 more days. Marking every month of Trump’s presidency and his growing authoritarian power is not sustainable emotionally, intellectually, psychologically, physically or spiritually. Thus, the challenge of continuously documenting and sounding the alarm about how abnormal and dangerous the Age of Trump is while never normalizing it as being somehow quotidian, and therefore numbing.
On this, Masha Gessen warns in a very important new op-ed essay at the New York Times that:
The United States in the last four months has felt like an unremitting series of shocks: executive orders gutting civil rights and constitutional protections; a man with a chain saw trying to gut the federal government; deliberately brutal deportations; people snatched off the streets and disappeared in unmarked cars; legal attacks on universities and law firms....
We humans are stability-seeking creatures. Getting accustomed to what used to seem unthinkable can feel like an accomplishment. And when the unthinkable recedes at least a bit — when someone gets released from detention (as the Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi was a few weeks ago) or some particularly egregious proposal is withdrawn or blocked by the courts (as the ban on international students at Harvard has been, at least temporarily) — it’s easy to mistake it for proof that the dark times are ending.
But these comparatively small victories don’t alter the direction of our transformation — they don’t even slow it down measurably — even while they appeal to our deep need to normalize. They create the sense that there is more air to breathe and more room to act than there was yesterday.
And so just when we most need to act — while there is indeed room for action and some momentum to the resistance — we tend to be lulled into complacency by the sense of relief on the one hand and boredom on the other.
As I have been chronicling and trying to make better sense of Donald Trump’s disastrous return to power, there is one image that keeps haunting me. I will never forget watching then-President Biden welcoming Donald Trump back to the White House a week after Election Day. Time Magazine described the surreal event in the following way:
The logs were stacked high and flames filled the Oval Office fireplace as President Joe Biden sat next to President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday.
Biden smiled and extended his hand in welcome. It was a meeting Biden hoped could bring down the temperature in American politics but the halting introductions betrayed the awkwardness of the moment. It hadn’t been that long since Biden had called Trump a threat to democracy and national security and Trump had called Biden “crooked” and “low I.Q.”
“Mr. President elect, and the former President, and Donald, congratulations,” Biden said. “And, uh, looking forward to having a, like we said, smooth transition, do everything we can to make sure you are accommodated, what you need.” Trump replied: “Good.”
With that, Trump was welcomed back to the same office he left four years earlier after trying and failing to overturn Biden’s election victory.
None of this was normal. Donald Trump is America’s first elected autocrat and an aspiring dictator. On Jan. 6, as part of the larger plot to nullify the 2020 election, Trump and his MAGA followers broke the country’s centuries-long tradition of a peaceful transition of power. As I have explained here at Salon and elsewhere, there is an America Before Trump and an America After Trump; Trump has cleaved American history into two parts.
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In his writing and interviews, D. Earl Stephens, who is a journalist and a former editor of “Stars and Stripes,” has been among the most vocal critics of the Democratic Party and their failures to mount an effective defense of democracy in the Age of Trump. Stephens shares my sentiments about the incongruity of President Biden warmly receiving Donald Trump in the Oval Office after the 2024 Election.
Via email, Stephens told me that:
Try as I might, I just can't get past Joe Biden's reaction to Trump’s win in November and the return of MAGA to the White House and the rapidly rising dangers of fascism. As I've written before, Biden’s response was appalling at best, heartless at worst, and struck an incomprehensible tone. His double-talk and verbal whiplash were stunning in its ineffectiveness, and instead of paving a way forward, left a trail of smoke. It took Biden but a week to invite Trump, the man who tried to overthrow our government back to our White House where he seemingly couldn’t wait to welcome Trump by the fire while literally smiling and saying, “Welcome back!” Can somebody explain to me what the hell that was about? And, of course, it only got worse, because during those final days his “welcome back” had turned into “warning, warning!” when he addressed the nation on national TV and solemnly warned us, ‘an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy …’
Thanks, pal. Most of us were well aware of that eight years ago. Now HE’S gone, his family is safe, and WE are left holding the bag.
Ultimately, the thought of Biden and Trump together in the Oval Office makes me sad and angry at the same time. The image of those two men in that moment is heavy with symbolic weight about a Democratic Party and its (ongoing) failures to protect American democracy and the American people.
During the 2024 campaign, the Democrats repeatedly accused Donald Trump of being the next Hitler and the greatest threat to the country in modern times, if not all of its history. Yet, President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris still welcomed Trump back to the White House.
On January 6, 2025, Congress certified the Electoral College results that formally made Donald Trump the 47th president of the United States. During the ceremony, no Democrats protested or otherwise signaled their disgust at Donald Trump’s return to power. If Donald Trump really was and is so horrible and existentially dangerous to the United States, why did no Democrat or other member of Congress speak up during the ceremony? The coroner’s report and epitaph of American democracy will likely include a sentence that “the Democrats were very polite as American democracy died.”
The Democratic Party’s national leadership has responded to Donald Trump’s unprecedented assaults on democracy, the institutions, the rule of law, the Constitution, as part of his plans for permanent MAGA rule by doing such things as sending President Trump angry letters and singing, holding up signs during his speech to Congress, going on book tours, and sitting on the steps of federal buildings and offices in protest against his agenda — while also communicating how they will cooperate when possible with the Republicans and the Trump administration “to advance the interests of working people.”
The Democrats’ weak response to Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans has been met with much-earned mockery by pro-democracy voices and others who want a real Resistance, most notably the Democratic Party’s own base voters. The Democratic Party’s leadership has repeatedly shown that they have no taste for such political battle. With few exceptions, it appears that they are listening to James Carville’s advice to roll over, play dead, and then swoop in after Trump and the Republicans make terminal political errors.
Again, I am made angry and sad (and frustrated) at the same time. I am not alone in having such feelings: Public opinion polls show that these general feelings of disgust, exhaustion, and frustration at the country’s broken politics are common among a large percentage, if not the majority, of Americans.
D. Earl Stephens also shared his thoughts about the Democratic Party’s failed branding and messaging:
The Democratic Party has a severe image problem, and is viewed by more than 70 percent of registered voters as out of touch and ineffective, because it turns out that is exactly what it is. As unpopular as Trump is, the Democrats are viewed in an even dimmer light.
In fact, since we started keeping track of such things 35 years ago, they have never been more unpopular. So, how are they reacting to this? By doing absolutely nothing to change the way they are going about their business, and in the Democratic National Committee’s case, relitigating insider elections in their fancy club and ignoring people like us who pay their bills.
Unless there are some changes — I mean REAL RADICAL changes — the Democrats are going to get their butts handed to them again and again on a national level, because they are not capable of showing themselves to be a viable alternative to the radical right-wing hell that is overrunning us.
Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new book “Original Sin” has received a great amount of attention from the news media and general public because of its “revelations” about the role that Biden’s age and alleged infirmities played in the Democratic Party’s defeat by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans in the 2024 Election. As Richard Tofel observes at The Columbia Journalism Review, "Joe Biden failed the country by deciding to seek a second term. But the press also failed in its job to confirm, in undeniable fashion, what the voters already knew. Unlike Biden, journalists will likely get another chance — and must do better." I am again made sad and angry at the same time.
Future historians and others with the benefit of a more full view of the past, will likely conclude that President Biden, because of the weathering caused by time, stress, and many decades of public service, should have stepped aside much earlier to allow for Kamala Harris or another candidate to take the reins of the party. This was not a sufficient factor by itself to lift Donald Trump back to the White House, but the evidence suggests that it did play a huge role.
As I chronicle the rapid collapse of American democracy and how the Age of Trump and the MAGAverse are rapidly cementing their growing power, I have been meditating on the dangers of hubris as explained by historian Alistair Horne in his book "Hubris: The Tragedy of War in the Twentieth Century."
Horne writes:
The ancient Greeks defined hubris as the worst sin a leader, or a nation, could commit. It was the attitude of supreme arrogance, in which mortals in their folly would set themselves up against the gods. Its consequences were invariably severe. The Greeks also had a word for what usually followed hubris. That was called peripeteia, meaning a dramatic reversal of fortune. In practice, it signified a falling from the grace of a great height to unimaginable depths. Disaster would often embrace not only the offender, but also his nearest and dearest, and all those responsible to him.
In another version of this timeline, President Biden and his closest advisors would have realized the great folly of their hubris in the 2024 Election and the peril it represented for the future of the country and the American people.
The universe and the Fates can be very cruel: they are now mocking President Biden and the Democrats — and the American people (or at least those Americans who believe in real democracy and want a return to normalcy and something approaching a healthy society).
Several weeks ago, President Biden announced that he has a very aggressive form of prostate cancer. When did he and they know? Why didn’t they tell the American people? The weight of this national tragedy keeps growing. Again, I am sad and angry at the same time.
Donald Trump initially responded to this sad announcement about Biden’s health with human empathy and concern. Almost immediately, Trump returned to insults and demagoguing. In a series of posts on his Truth Social propaganda platform Trump either directly stated or shared messages that Biden is “scum,” a "decrepit corpse," and that he does not deserve sympathy because he is a "vicious person." Last Sunday, Trump went even further when he shared a conspiracy theory that President Biden was a clone, i.e., not a real person, a type of Manchurian candidate, and thus an illegitimate president and usurper. “There is no #JoeBiden - executed in 2020. Biden clones, doubles & robotic engineered soulless mindless entities are what you see. #Democrats don't know the difference.”
There are 1,320 days to go in Trump's presidency — which assumes he will leave office and not find a way to "win" a third term. Pro-democracy Americans and others who believe in fundamental human decency need to steel themselves for the emotional rollercoaster that lies ahead and the pull of mass disinhibition that is growing every day. Collective emotional health is both a prerequisite for and result of a healthy democratic culture. Unfortunately, the Age of Trump has revealed how poor the emotional health of the American people really was while making it all much worse in service to an autocrat and demagoguery.
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