Echoes of the past
Visits to Portugal and Spain suggest a rough road for the U.S.
“History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes,” an old maxim goes. Are we about to see some such sad, even tragic, poetry again?
I’m reminded of the question after spending a few weeks in Portugal, Spain and Germany, visits that gave me some perspective on the president we will inaugurate next month. Recall that this is the same man who vowed to be a dictator for at least a day.
Germany’s ugly history with a tyrant at the helm need not be repeated here. But, for some readers, the experiences in Portugal and Spain may be unfamiliar. They also may be more instructive.
Consider Portugal, where the “Ponte 25 de Abril” rises high above the Tagus River between Lisbon and Almada. When the bridge was built in 1966, dictator António de Oliveira Salazar named it for himself. After his regime fell in the Carnation Revolution in 1974 and his successor, Marcello José das Neves Alves Caetano, was driven out of the country, Portugal’s new leaders renamed the span for the date of the upheaval.
Lasting 41 years, the Portuguese dictatorship was the longest-lived one in Europe. It beat the rule of Francisco Franco Bahamonde in neighboring Spain, whose regime lasted 36 years. Spain’s tyranny ended with Franco’s death in 1975.
Their tenures had extraordinarily personal effects on the people of the countries.
Salazar’s control was pervasive. As reported by Daniel Melo of the University of Lisbon, censors battered the press and propaganda abounded. Women were subjugated, largely confined to their homes, except for attending to education and caring functions, as well as providing for Christian sacraments.
The Roman Catholic Church became a tool for the regime’s cultural vision. “First and foremost of these was the retrieval or (re)invention of so-called popular traditions in keeping with the fundamentalist Catholic mother church,” Melo writes. He points to “the ultranationalist cult and the rationale of mass mobilization in conformist cultural activities, appealing to ruralist and traditionalist nostalgia and/or those already enshrined in mass culture, from the emergence of cultural and entertainment industries.”
Are there echoes there in the irreligious Donald J. Trump’s cynical and opportunistic use of religion? Does suppression of women’s rights to control their own bodies have a precursor in the approach by Salazar, whose links to women have been much disputed? Does the assault on the media by a thrice-married philandering felon and sexual abuser mirror that of the Portuguese dictator?
As for Franco, his authoritarian rule included similar traditional religious tyranny, as well as the establishment of concentration camps and the execution of political and ideological enemies.
Do such prison camps bring to mind Trump’s plans for deportation camps? Certainly, he wouldn’t get away with executing political opponents, but his intention to persecute them is so serious that the Biden Administration is considering pre-emptive pardons. The current president may have to do so for himself, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris, former Vice President Mike Pence and Sens. Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer and former Rep. Liz Cheney, all of whom Trump has singled out for criticism.
To be sure, there are differences between our system and the unbridled power that the Iberian dictators had. For one, there is still an oversight function exercised at times by the Senate and Congress. And even if both are Trumpist, pressure brought to bear by good journalism can have an effect.
So far, such pressure has driven out one of the proposed nominees for the clown car Cabinet, potential Attorney General candidate Matt Gaetz. This came about even as the Trumpists blocked publication of a report that would have detailed his depravity. By contrast, it’s possible that Defense Department head nominee Pete Hegseth will yet survive similar pressure, though the headwinds against him are strong.
But the clown-in-chief’s selection of such bozos suggests just how erratic and problematic governance will be in the coming four years. No doubt, he’ll find others – perhaps more dangerously capable ones, such as Gaetz replacement Pam Bondi and possible Hegseth successor Ron DeSantis – to do his destructive bidding. Their efforts may amount to a reversal of the role of government, as eloquently described by historian Heather Cox Richardson, who points to Trump’s promises “to reject Biden’s economic vision and resurrect the system of the years before 2021 in which a few individuals could amass as much wealth as possible.”
“The change in ideology is clear from Trump’s cabinet picks,” Richardson writes. “While the total net worth of the officials in Biden’s Cabinet was about $118 million, Laura Mannweiler of U.S. News and World Report noted, a week ago she estimated the worth of Trump’s roster of appointees to be at least $344.4 billion, more than the gross domestic product of 169 countries.”
Are such folks going to make life better for ordinary Americans? Do they have even the remotest connection to the working-class folks who elected their leader?
As Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan noted, “the exotic cabinet picks that veer from ‘that’s a stretch’ to ‘that’s insane.’ The more exotic nominees—Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at Health and Human Services, Pete Hegseth at Defense, Kash Patel at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mehmet Oz at Medicare and Medicaid Services—don’t have backgrounds that fit the jobs. Taken together they look like people who want to blow things up.”
Just give some thought to what The New Yorker had to say about Kennedy, a man who is raving proof of the theory of thinning bloodlines. “Kennedy has indicated that he intends to reëxamine safety data for approved vaccines, advise municipalities not to add fluoride to their water supply, halt infectious-disease research at the N.I.H. and fire six hundred of its employees, and reverse the F.D.A.’s ‘aggressive suppression’ of, among other things, discredited COVID remedies such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine,” the magazine reported.
“Earlier this year, Kennedy said that he would seek to prosecute medical journals if they didn’t ‘start publishing real science.’ (The Lancet, one of the alleged offenders, recently published a study showing that vaccines have saved more than a hundred and fifty million lives in the past half century, or about six lives a minute.),” The New Yorker continued. “Amid the rising threat of bird flu—this month, a teen-ager in Canada was infected and hospitalized in critical condition—Kennedy has suggested that we should relax restrictions on the sale of raw milk, which, because it is unpasteurized, can potentially spread the virus.
“The pro-Trump editorial board of the New York Post, which met with Kennedy last year, wrote that his views amounted to a ‘head-scratching spaghetti of . . . warped conspiracy theories,’ and concluded that ‘he’s nuts on a lot of fronts.’ Kennedy has insinuated that H.I.V. isn’t the cause of aids, that Wi-Fi induces ‘leaky brain,’ that chemicals in the water are responsible for ‘sexual dysphoria,’ and that Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates led a cartel to prolong the covid pandemic and ‘amplify its mortal effects in order to promote their mischievous inoculations.’”
Even lesser Cabinet picks, such as likely Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick of the Cantor Fitzgerald firm must give one pause. He made his rep and his billions pitching shell companies – akin to those valueless penny stock investments that ripped off people decades ago in Colorado. As The Wall Street Journal noted, such “deals made money for Cantor, but many worked out badly for ordinary investors.”
Of course, for the felon-in-chief, someone such as Lutnick is a bird of a feather. Recall that Trump paid a $2 million fine for misusing charitable funds. And remember how his six business bankruptcies screwed over many ordinary folks. Trump is still on the hook for $88.3 million, plus interest, for his assault of E. Jean Carroll.
Portugal, Spain and, of course, Germany survived their tyrannical leaders, though it took a world war and revolutions to do so. The work of brilliant artists, such as architect Antoni Gaudí i Cornet, endured during their terms, even though the Sagrada Familia was damaged during the Spanish Civil War. Such countries emerged as stronger democracies.
But it took decades for them to recover from the dictators who ran them. As we hear so many rhymes of the past today, what will be the fate of the U.S.? Trump will disappear in time, but how much damage can he and his minions do?