Every so often I tell someone that, in light of the catastrophic events surrounding the White House, I am very tentatively optimistic that Trump might resign a year or so down the road. This might happen, at least, if a great deal of forces come together to work towards that end. This person always replies, “Yeah, but Pence will be worse. At least Trump is ineffective”



I have heard this so often that it’s become the new “I can’t vote for the lesser of two evils.” Which is to say, it is the reply of people who are comfortable letting the world burn if they can’t get precisely what they want.

Because the world is already burning. If you think Trump isn’t getting stuff done, you’re not paying attention. At all.

If you look at the small things—and not just at Trump’s outlandish claims like building a wildly impractical transparent wall—every day this administration is making nightmares happen.

If you fear Mike Pence because he might take away women’s rights, well, Trump’s global gag rule is destroying healthcare for women around the world.

If you fear Pence because he seems anti-science, as of June 30 the science division of the White House is no longer staffed.

"If Trump seems ineffective, that’s just because he spends his days tweeting stupid, misogynistic statements."

If you fear Pence because he believes that climate change is somehow a partisan issue, well, we’ve already pulled out of the Paris Accord.

If you fear Pence because he has a zero percent rating from the Human Rights Campaign on supporting LGBTQ issues, the Trump administration has already rescinded Obama’s executive order mandating federal contractors comply with anti-discrimination laws.

If you fear Pence because you think he’ll make us all wear those Handmaid’s Tale outfits, women in the White House are already having to adjust their attire.

Everything terrible you can imagine happening under Pence is already happening.

If Trump seems ineffective, that’s just because he spends his days tweeting stupid, misogynistic statements. That is, when he’s not retweeting sentiments from outright racists.

Certainly it is not ideal to have a President who is merely polite, as Pence seems to be. Politeness should hardly be a quality worth remarking upon at all in a public official, except when the alternative is having a President who is almost gleefully offensive.

Because the alternative is very bad.

America isn’t a nation like England. We don’t have a moral figurehead that stands for the values of the country regardless of the government in power—the way Queen Elizabeth did when she vowed in June to defend the rights of the LGBTQ community in England and declined to meet with Trump.

We have the President. When we teach our children how to behave—when we tell them that one day they could grow up to be President—we tell them to look at the President as a role model. Each day that passes where Donald Trump retweets a racist comment or says something retrograde to a foreign leader’s wife is a day when more Americans grow up feeling those are permissible behaviors.

"Trump is a man whose attitudes have begun to undermine the institutions that make for a free country."

Being Able To Say Offensive Stuff Again might as well have been Trump’s campaign slogan. He promised a certain kind of privileged person that they could go through life saying whatever they wanted—however offensive—with no repercussions or apologies. Trump’s not going to be a killjoy who tells you that, no, you can’t just yell “I wanna grab your tits” at a woman, or that you can’t say “I don’t like black people,” or any of the other things that these PC snowflakes who refuse to understand that you’re just kidding around might say.

And doesn’t that seem fun, to be able to be offensive whenever you want? Doesn’t that seem like an enticing promise? Or an enticing promise so long as you’re white and male (or at least a conventionally attractive female) and straight and cisgender and able-bodied and want to be able to make fun of everyone who isn’t, without someone criticizing you? Without anyone pointing out that perhaps, just perhaps, you are punching down in the manner of a very bad person? That perhaps you are behaving, say, deplorably? Yes. It does. Finally. A President who will make no demands on Americans to be polite, moral, upstanding people whatsoever.

This ignores the fact that the people this most appeals to are the very Americans who need a leader to push them to be polite, moral, upstanding people. If the President is supposed to act as the Father of the American people, well, Trump is the kind of “fun dad” who would let his ten-year-old drink beer. Which is to say, a shitty father.

Every day, the Overton window that dictates what is acceptable to say gets pushed a little more to the right. If we continue down this path, it’s going to get worse. It’s going to become acceptable once again for men to dictate how women are supposed to appear (as when Trump declared that he wanted women at the White House to “dress like women”). We’re going to see more people in power discriminate openly against those of other religions, like the Michigan official who called for the killing of “every last Muslim” last week and who, in typical Trump-ian fashion, refused to apologize for doing so. We’ll see white men consider it a violation of free speech if they can’t make hundreds of thousands of dollars by saying hateful things about those who are not white men.

"Using a position of power to diminish the quality of life of private individuals who have opposed you is what dictators do."

Hell, not so long ago, the President’s son confused two black congresswomen while trying to compare one of them to a stripper.

That’s the same President whose son seems to have colluded with Russia.

That’s a reminder that these aren’t merely people who have social capital. Trump and his cohorts have bona fide power. Trump is a man whose attitudes have begun to undermine the institutions that make for a free country.

When the President is on Twitter yelling at private citizens—from Mika Brzezinski to Chelsea Clinton—he is seemingly unaware that it is the President’s duty to try to insure the wellbeing of all Americans. That includes those who dislike him. It definitely would not be appropriate for him to turn his hoards of enthusiastic followers on a private individual by shouting at them in public. That’s terrifying. Yet Trump tweets at these people because he, the most powerful man in the world, wants to make life worse for a private woman who hosts a morning talk show in his country.

Using a position of power to diminish the quality of life of private individuals who have opposed you is what dictators do. That’s not just distasteful behavior, that’s terrifying. Individual citizens shouldn’t live in fear of speaking out against the government in power.

But instead of noticing that this is just flat out the behavior of a dictator, people have begun making excuses about how he has to fight back against those “bullying” him.

What Trump seems to spend most of his time “fighting” against is the free press. The press about whom Thomas Jefferson wrote to George Washington in 1792, “No Government ought to be without censors, and, where the press is free, no one ever will. If [the government is] virtuous, it need not fear the fair operation of attack and defense… I think it is as honorable to the government neither to know nor notice its sycophants or censors, as it would be undignified and criminal to pamper the former and persecute the latter.”

When Trump yells about how everything that is not favorable news is “Fake News” and tweets out videos of himself beating up a man wearing a CNN logo, alongside the hashtags #FraudNewsCNN and #FNN, he is attempting to damage the network’s reputation. So, that would fall under the category of a person in government attempting to persecute the latter.

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Though of course, that pales in comparison to Trump standing with Putin, a man who Trump previously said he condemned for “killing journalists” and laughing about journalists hurting him. Just in case you missed it, at a Press Conference, Putin pointed to journalists and asked Trump “are these the ones hurting you?” and Trump replied, “these are the ones.”

He’s saying that about the free press to a man he thinks kills journalists.

That is menacing in a way that seems almost surreal.

This is not how someone who wants to be the leader of the “free world” behaves. It’s how dictators in countries who have extremely limited press behave.

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The dishonest media will NEVER keep us from accomplishing our objectives on behalf of our GREAT AMERICAN PEOPLE! #AmericaFirst🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/jSciqzAs6G — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2017

To ignore this stuff, you have to be really, really stupid. No wonder Trump said, “I love the poorly educated.”

Which may be why organizations and people associated with the GOP, like NRA leader Wayne La Pierre, are claiming that “Academic, political, media elites are ‘America’s greatest domestic threats.'" You know who “academic elites” are? Students getting a PhD in French poetry. Intellectuals are not threatening to anyone who does not want to enact a terrifying, authoritarian regime in a country. Historically, they are very threatening to those people. In most of those regimes, intellectuals are the first to go. One of Lenin’s first acts was to deport 200 prominent intellectuals on “Philosopher’s Ships.” The Khmer Rouge killed individuals who even looked smart insofar as they wore glasses, as well as those who could speak a foreign language. “The Night of the Long Batons” kicked off the dictator General Juan Carlos Onganía’s regime in Argentina in 1966. The batons were used to beat academics as they were thrown out of facilities, and had their libraries and laboratories destroyed.

When people in power start saying they don’t like well-read people, you should be terrified.

"I don’t believe Mike Pence will behave like a dictator. That doesn’t mean I like him."

The only regimes that are interested in keeping their populace uneducated are very bad regimes. They are regimes that want a gullible populace. They want them gullible so they can rule them and exploit them absolutely.

And it’s working. Today, the majority of Republicans believe that college is bad for America. In 2015, 54 percent of Republicans thought higher education was good for the country. Today, 58 percent believe they are bad. It’s been two years. That much of a shift shouldn’t have happened in two years. Those Trump fans who love quoting the founding Fathers seem to have missed George Washington’s statement that America ought to, “Promote then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.”

This current shift may have something to do with Trump’s personal Pravda, Fox News, deriding “elite universities” for being “bastions of political correctness.”

“Political correctness” is becoming a term invoked to shut down anyone who expresses disagreement with Trump’s strong-man attitudes. On CBS last Sunday, Stephen Miller declared that “our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of our President to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.”

Right.

“Will not be questioned.”

You want to keep Trump around to find out what the “further actions” are? Because every day under Trump is a day when Kellyanne Conway seems more likely to shout “Ignorance is Strength.”

Worries about Trump becoming an autocrat aren’t far fetched when he’s already behaving like one and palling around with them. And he hasn’t even been President a year.

So that’s what we have to look forward to under Trump.

I don’t believe Mike Pence will behave like a dictator.

That doesn’t mean I like him.

I think he has a host of views that range from horrifying—like his record on LBGTQ rights and reproductive rights—to hilariously weird, like claiming that the Disney film Mulan was a liberal conspiracy to get more women in the military .

However, he’s also a man who seems able to respond to his opponents like a conventional American politician.

When people began making fun of Pence on Twitter for touching NASA hardware clearly labeled “do not touch” he jokingly tweeted back “Marco Rubio dared me to do it.”

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That is a nice little joke.

You know who could never make that nice little joke? Donald Trump, who has claimed, “We don’t make mistakes.” That kind of insane pronouncement means that, when Donald Trump presumably accidentally typed “covfefe” into Twitter, his supporters had to go around claiming he was talking in code.

Getting back to a point where a President can admit his own fallibility—where he can laugh about messing up—is at least a step in the normal direction.

Everything seems to indicate that Mike Pence has a tolerance for dissent that is vastly greater than Trump’s. When Mike Pence went to Hamilton the audience booed him. The cast read a message to him that stated, “We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us.”

Donald Trump responded by tweeting about what a bad show Hamilton was four times, and referred to the audience’s behavior as “harassment," claiming that “The cast and producers of Hamilton, which I hear is highly overrated, should immediately apologize to Mike Pence for their terrible behavior.”

Meanwhile, Mike Pence, who was attending the show with his children, responded by saying that, when the booing started, “I nudged my kids and reminded them that’s what freedom sounds like.”

On FOX he also said, “Hamilton is just an incredible production, incredibly talented people. And it was a real joy to be there.”

In today’s climate, that kind of conventional response feels shocking. That is because it’s not the response of someone who seems to want to throw their political opponents into the gulag.

Would I prefer to have a President who supports legislation I believe in?

Yes.

Desperately.

But that ship has sailed. It sailed on November 8. What we should be concerned with now is keeping America as we know it recognizable, so that one day we can have an election where there will be a President who supports liberal policies.

"I don’t think Pence is going to try to shut down the free press. I don’t think he will publicly deride American citizens on Twitter."

It breaks my heart that a desirable outcome now seems to be “having a president who does not overtly behave like a dictator.”

Do I think Pence will try to overturn Roe. v. Wade? Yup! Do I think he will probably try to overturn gay marriage? Yes, I do.

I also think that Trump would give away Roe v. Wade or LGBT rights in exchange for a wink from a Russian Pop Star and yell at the press for mentioning it.

I think Mike Pence will support legislation I despise. I will protest all of it. And I do not think he will ever try to dismiss my right to protest. I don’t think he’s going to try to shut down the free press. I don’t think he will publicly deride American citizens on Twitter. I think he respects the institutions that make America—if not great—at least recognizably America.

I also think it’s insane that we’re in a position where this is a quality we have to hope for from the leader of the country.

I do not like Mike Pence’s values. I think they are wicked. They are not mine. But, to borrow from Alexander Hamilton, I think he has values. And it has become clear that the only thing Donald Trump values is Donald Trump.

This is already leading to an America that, day by day, is growing unrecognizable.

Having Mike Pence as President will feel like we lost an election. Having Donald Trump as President feels, every day, like we’re losing America.

Jennifer Wright Jennifer Wright is BAZAAR.com's Political Editor at Large.

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