I don’t watch horror flics. Seeing young college kids killed off in various demented ways holds little allure for me. Yet, sometimes art, if you can call these movies art, does reflect life and might afford us some form of illumination on our national persona.

In this movie genre, a famous villain named Freddy Krueger was introduced by producer Wes Craven in a 1984 release titled Nightmare on Elm Street. This slasher movie evolved into a successful franchise that spawned, and may still, numerous future works of art. But herein lied a dilemma for Craven. Audiences, for the most part, wanted to see the lead protagonists escape a gruesome end and, at the same time, see the emodiment of evil meet some final retribution for his horrific actions. Just how to do that? Why not kill off the bad guy, or appear to at least, but resurrect him somehow in future flics. Far fetched? Perhaps! Still, Freddie kept getting killed, or so it seemed, only to miraculously be resurrected in future films. Who cares about plausibility as long as the money keeps rolling in. Freddy became our nightmare that never ended.

We expect this garbage from Hollywood, or wherever these atrocities are made. For some reason, we expect better from our public institutions and leading political figures. We want to elevate our leaders to a higher level, above the ordinary plane where real people trod. We don’t expect them to resurface after repeated violations of the public trust. When I was young, scandal would easily spell the end for a national candidate. Republican Nelson Rockefeller ended his Presidential aspirations when he divorced his wife and took up with a woman known as ‘Happy.’ Senator Musk from Maine fell by the wayside in the early 70s when he was thought to shed a tear in response to vicious dirty trick attacks by the Nixon camp. A decade earlier, President Kennedy escaped consequences for his womanizing ONLY because the press ignored all the evidence before them. Not even his fabled charm would have saved him if the truth had been revealed. In the most shocking example of all, the nation was remarkably ignorant of the fact that FDR was paralyzed as he led the nation out of a global depression and through a world conflagration. It was agreed that the public was better served by keeping his infirmity a secret. We went to great lengths to preserve our national institutions and leaders,while still discarding them for the most minor of moral infractions.

Up through the 1970s, Americans had confidence in our public institutions. By a wide margin, most told pollsters that they trusted and respected the Courts, Congress, and other vital pillars of Democracy. Today, those figures occasionally approach single digits. Perhaps the last gasp where character and respect mattered in our political life came during Nixon’s fall from grace. When evidence of his shenanigans regarding the Watergate affair could no longer be ignored, Republicans joined Democrats in signaling that it was time for him to go. In that moment, principles still counted over partisan advantage and pure power. Those days, like our longing for the illusory Camelot during Kennedy’s brief tenure, now seem like a lost dream.

Today, there seems to be no bottom to our cynicism and despair. Consider the following. What made America the envy of the world was that it was seen as a ‘land governed by laws.’ When an election was lost, you congratulated the winner and stepped aside. That hallowed tradition started when John Adams found he had lost to Thomas Jefferson, his bitter political enemy. He accepted the results, got in his carriage, and headed back to Boston. Okay, there were a few blips on the way, but the peaceful transition of power remained a relatively sacrosanct foundation of our public life. Most reasonable observers believe that Kennedy only won the razor close election in 1960 because boss-man Richard Daley stuffed the ballot boxes in Cook County, Illinois. But Nixon, of all people, did not contest the outcome since he felt that would damage our Democracy.

One inkling that things had changed came in 2000. Florida held the key to the election. There were all kind of problems with the vote counting including terribly designed ballots and disputes over ‘hanging chads.’ Compounding the doubts were the fact that the Republican candidates’ brother was Governor of the State. Though the recounting and legal battles went on for many weeks, the consensus was that if all the votes were counted fairly , Democrat Al Gore would have been elected. In the end, delays in completing the count and premature court decisions handed the election to Bush. The U.S. Supreme Court ended the sad matter along partisan (excuse me, ideological) lines. Democratic candidate Al Gore, like Nixon some four decades earlier, accepted a flawed process to prevent irreparable harm to the country. The reputation of our highest Court, however, would never recover.

Fast forward to 2020. We have a Republican candidate running for reelection who was so marred with scandal that it would take several volumes to cover the basics. He was routinely accused of incompetence, sleaze, and various mental aberrations even by those who worked in his inner circle, which appeared more as a revolving door than any foundation for a stable and sound government. Let’s focus merely on what happened after he lost by seven million votes in the overall count and by a large margin in the electoral college. Did the Donald, like Adams in 1800, congratulate the winner and graciously hand over power. Hardly!

He immediately declared the election stolen.

He pushed officials in toss up states to find additional votes for him.

He hatched a plot to send fake electors to Washington on January 6.

He tried to get V.P. Pence not to cerify the electoral results.

He tried to get his Congressional allies to throw the election into the House of Representatives.

He mounted the January 6th armed attack on the Capitol to stop the certification of the results from going forward.

He had his media minions continue to attack the integrity of voting machines resulting in a $700 million plus Court judgement against Fox News.

He had other minions conduct expensive after-the-fact audits in several toss-up states which found no wrong-doing, even when conducted by his supporters.

All this adds up to treasonous actions, a total disregard of our laws and traditions, and a breach of any semblence of good or decent behavior. All but one of the dozens of court actions brought by Trump against the election results went against him, whether those making the rulings were liberal or conservative jurists. He still never stopped in his unsupportable claims of victory which only served to undermine our confidence in the election process.

One would think that the public would conclude that his refusal to accept reality to be either the insane delusions of an unbalanced, pathological narcissist or the acts of a political Freddy Krueger bent on destroying our Democracy in the pursuit of ultimate power. How could this not be the case? Yet, Trump even today garners a 70% approval rating among Republican voters. After he was indicted in a New York case for actions associated with paying hush money to a Porn Star, his ratings among the faithful shot up. He retook the lead over his closest rival Ron DeSantis of Florida in the race for the 2024 top prize. Indeed, we have come far from those days when a divorce would preclude a candidate from our highest office. Apparently, we have millions out there who rooted for Freddy Krueger character in his slasher movies.

But Trump is finshed, right? He lost by 7 million last time, won’t he lose by more the next time around? Maybe. But remember that a shift in about 50 thousand votes in several strategic states could have thrown the electoral college his way. And think about this. In his first administration, those trying to control him could only get him to back off his most extreme and bizarre ideas by claiming they were illegal or (in more bizarre moments) merely ignored him hoping he would forget them. That would never work the next time around. Now, he and his closest supporters and sycophants know how to manipulate the process more effectively and will be under no compunction to obey any rules. He has recently said that he would subject all federal officials to a ‘test,’ and would fire all that failed. That is tantamount to saying he would absorb all power to himself.

Do I really believe that Trump can become the dictator he dreams of being. No, I don’t. But then I think of Russia during first part of the 20th century and Germany during the global depression. The ‘left’ in Russia tried a revolt in 1905, which failed and sent Lenin into exile. The Nazis tried their November, 1923 ‘Beer Hall Putsch’ in Munich, Bavaria. This uprising (a forshadow of Jan. 6?) failed and sent Hitler to prison and into a banishment from politics for a while. Most reasonable people thought that Lenin and Hitler would never take power. They were too extreme with Communism being an ill-fit in a backward, agricultural nation like Russia and Germany being too cosmopolitan to fall for a buffoon like the Fuhrer. The overconfidence of the elites and those with common sense proved premature. These first insurrections proved to be dress rehearsals for the real things later on.

The 70% of Republican voters yet supporting Trump represent a minority of all Americans. That should be reassuring. no? But think of this. Right after the October Revolution in 1917, Lenin permitted scheduled elections to take place. The Bolsheviks lost badly, the results were dismissed and the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ replaced any reliance upon public sentiment in running the nation. The Nazi’s, in Germany, never received more than 37% of the vote in any free election. Again, the will of the people mattered not. Upon the flimsiest of fabrications, the Reischtag was dissolved and all powers temporarily assumed by Hitler which, to no ones surprise, became a permanent condition. In America, many states are governed by Republicans even though a majority of the voters lean the other way. Gerrymandering and voter suppression are powerful tools to offset the one-person and one-vote principle. Since 1990, only one national election has given Republicans a majority vote though they have won several of these contests through the Electoral College.

The very term Bolshevik means ‘the majority.’ But during Russia’s revolutionary period (roughly 1900 to 1922), they never were a majority. The more mainstream wing of the Communist Party, known as the Mensheviks, dominated the ‘left.’ But a minority of hard liners prevailed during an early international meeting and took this moniker in a brilliant marketing move. The label stuck. We look at the Republican Party today and see a hard core that is reluctant to compromise on extreme principles. They care not one whit about governing but are committed to seizing and securing power. Extremists inevitably brush aside inconvenient niceties such as checks and balances and the rule of law. Such niceties built into our Constitution are mere impediments and inconveniences to them.

As a final reminder, Lenin was exiled after his first grab for power. Hitler was sent to jail when he went after the brass ring prematurely. Trump has yet to see any consequences for his willful and ongoing efforts to subvert our democracy. How empowered must he feel?

We comfort ourselves by saying we are too eductaed, sensible, and sophisticated as a nation to permit any extreme element to assume total power.

Can we be so sure?