In Ancient Rome, every election was attended by gang warfare and blood on the streets spilled by the competing factions. Candidates were assassinated, and elections triggered civil wars — as in capitalism. Every election was a political revolution. This is still the case, and it shows. The bug is a feature; the glitch is the algorithm; the noise is the music — of democracy. It is a Gesamtkunstwerk — but not necessarily a Götterdämmerung. Especially in the U.S., which is a continuation of the original American Revolution. Vivek Ramaswamy called for reinvigorating the spirit of 1776: he sees that in Trump.
The answer proposed by Trump’s traumatized opponents is to suspend rights and avoid election: to cancel liberalism and democracy; to ban the opera and imprison its diva. This is no exaggeration. They have done and will do everything they possibly can to try preventing Trump’s election and taking office, in a most remarkable series of events in the history of the U.S. Neither Trump and his supporters nor his opponents are wrong in saying that the fate of American democracy is on the line. The only question is what this says and what it means. Are we afraid to learn? We have yet to figure it out.
Trump and Trumpism are not going away, whatever we might wish. The task of politics remains — even and perhaps especially in the crisis of capitalist politics. It points the way to socialist politics, from the very heart of liberal democracy in crisis. Without a political party for socialism, this is the — very best — politics capitalism has to offer. Are we afraid of it?