Towards the end of From Here to Eternity, Fred Zinnemann’s 1952 film of James Jones’ novel, it’s early Sunday morning in Hawaii and the attack on Pearl Harbor has begun. When the far-off booms come close enough to shake the mess-halls, the soldiers realize what they hearing aren’t maneuvers. Rushing outside, they’re in time to see one of their comrades strafed by machine gun fire from a low-flying plane. And a few feet away, the keeper of the munitions store is refusing to open the door without a signed order from a superior officer. Explosions are booming around them, men are being shot dead, and this stickler for detail has determined that that’s no reason to do things any differently than they have always been done.
This is exactly how the American press has covered the 2024 presidential campaign. Or, to be exact, how it has pretended that what is now happening is a campaign. It’s not. It’s nothing less than a referendum on the future of American democracy—that is, on whether America will continue to be the flawed democracy it likely always will be as long as it’s a democracy, or whether it will be a White Christian-nationalist theocracy. And no matter how many times you hear something like that in a TV talking-heads go-round, or in campaign speeches or ads doesn’t make it any less true. There’s no debate that we have one candidate who believes in democracy and has a history of public service to show it, or one who has consistently tried to subvert or exhorted his thugs to overthrow it. The end of democracy is exactly what is laid out in Project 2025 which we have every reason to believe Trump would implement, despite the way he and Vance have proclaimed their distance from it. Trump has consistently threatened to use the presidency to punish his enemies, particularly the press. Trump’s claim to Sean Hannity, “I only want to be dictator for a day,” has prompted no reporter I’ve read to ask if anyone seriously believes that having tasted the power of being a dictator, Trump would willingly give it up after just one day. On October 9, the New York Times’ Ken Bensinger, reporting on the Trump team’s failure (refusal?) to participate in the legally required presidential transition process, wrote, “Mr. Trump’s approach … appears to be guided, at least in part, by the candidate’s deep suspicion and mistrust of the government he is running to lead.” This is demonstrably not true. To have any veracity—or accuracy—the sentence would have to read “Mr. Trump’s approach … appears to be guided, at least in part, by the candidate’s deep suspicion and mistrust of the government he is running to overthrow.”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Crackers in Bed to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.