Surely he must be certifiable by now – certifiably insane, that is? I don’t think I need to rehearse all his symptoms here; many other commentators, including professional psychiatrists, have already done that. (See, for example,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dangerous_Case_of_Donald_Trump.) Diagnoses vary, but most agree that his mental processes have now deteriorated far beyond mere ignorance and stupidity, which we’ve known about for years, and have already become sufficiently unhinged to imperil not only the USA, but also the world. Just look at any of his recent speeches or social media posts.

Could a national leader with this degree of craziness have avoided impeachment, or its equivalent, in any other democratic country? The much lauded American Constitution appears to have fallen short on this. Maybe it needs another ‘Amendment’ or two. Both the 22^nd and the 25^th Amendments require Congressional majorities or super-majorities for the removal of a President, which the majority Republicans are highly unlikely to grant (https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/getting-rid-of-trump-legal-political-options-a9625d). And the GOP will probably still have their ordinary majorities even after the Mid-Terms. They won’t want to imperil their seats. (Although they might reconsider – as a few already seem to be doing – if Trump becomes much more unpopular, and so he and his MAGA successors lose electoral credit.) For there is his considerable fan-base among the general American population to consider; undeterred as it seems to be by his madness, and even attracted by it.

For he obviously connects with a large proportion of the American people – 40%? – and with a smaller but significant group of admirers abroad. (We even have a few in Sweden.) Personally, I can empathise with them. Anyone who can’t is simply lacking imagination. For people who feel ‘left behind’ by modern social and political developments, poorer, seemingly threatened by people (immigrants) different from themselves, poorly educated, many of their hopes dashed, missing the warmth that their old national identities had used to give them, and mercilessly mocked by ‘élites’; it’s natural – isn’t it? – that they should turn to and identify with movements like Trump’s (and over in the UK Farage’s), which promise them refuge from all this. It’s what all previous populist movements, from Mussolini’s and Hitler’s onwards, have based much of their appeal on; and at a certain level – when we put our critical faculties aside, perhaps – it must appeal to us too. (Part of me would love to be back in the 1950s.)

And it needs to be acknowledged that it – ‘populism’ – does represent a form of ‘democracy’; albeit maybe not one that stands up to proper intellectual scrutiny. Very few of MAGA’s and Reform’s leaders seem really representative of the demos they claim to represent: a rich and crooked property developer on the one hand and a private school-educated stockbroker on the other; but with strong followings among what Trump has referred to, approvingly, as the ‘poorly educated’ part of his following (https://qz.com/623640/i-love-the-poorly-educated-read-donald-trumps-full-nevada-victory-speech). The suspicion is that the better-educated leaders of both movements don’t necessarily share these same views and feelings, but are simply exploiting them to pursue more rational – if nefarious – private ambitions of their own.

Craziness is one thing; Fascism is another. (Unless they’re related.) The neo-Fascist element in much of today’s ‘populism’ used to be dismissed as marginal, or else a typical left-wing slander; but it is now part of the ordinary discussion of these matters, with comparisons with Germany in the 1930s constantly being cited. A major protest movement in the USA – smeared as ‘terrorist’ by the current authorities – is called ‘Antifa’, which of course stands for ‘Anti-Fascist’ – see https://www.britannica.com/topic/Antifa.

In my crude sub-Marxist view, the larger relevance of present-day authoritarian populism, and of King Donald himself, is that they represent the ‘highest stage’ – so far – of capitalism; when the system begins to collapse from within, casts off its (political) liberal heritage, and becomes the tyranny that Adam Smith never, in his innocence, envisioned. I’ve droned on about this before, but without making a detailed case for it. So it remains just a hypothesis. Isn’t Donald Trump, however, with his particular background in one of the most corrupt sectors of capitalism, and in currently the most advanced capitalist country in the word, the perfect personification of this ‘highest stage’? And – I would say – very little more.

Incidentally: this year also marks the 250^th anniversary of Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.