The Atlantic Daily: What’s Next for Trumpism?
Donald Trump’s antidemocratic campaign to overturn the 2020 election results earned the former president barely an institutional wrist-slap. Then: Why were we so cruel to Britney Spears?
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Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial provided little closure. “If you looked to the U.S. Senate for a full measure of accountability, you did not receive it,” my colleague David Frum wrote over the weekend.
But Trump himself still lost, Frum argues: Polls show support for the former president’s actions dwindling—“not the numbers on which to base a Grover Cleveland–style comeback tour.”
Even if Trump’s political career is currently lagging, what does the future hold for his base—and the ideology he rode to office on?
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Here’s what history tells us about what’s next for Trumpism. “From Berlusconism in Italy to Perónism in Argentina and Fujimorismo in Peru, personality-driven movements rarely fade once their leaders have left office.”
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A skirmish in Oregon shows the deep imprint of Trump’s ideology on the GOP. “To the frustration of those Republicans who want to steer a new course, state-party committees have become the strongest redoubts of Trumpism,” Russell Berman reported last week.
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America’s next authoritarian will be much more competent. As Zeynep Tufekci warned back in November: "It won’t be easy to make the next Trumpist a one-term president."
One question, answered: A reader named Eve from New Jersey writes in about her younger daughter, “Sarah,” who attends a mix of virtual and in-person classes:
[She] fights me every morning she has to go into school. And I don’t blame her. From what I overhear when she’s Zooming, her teacher, Ms. G, really doesn’t like her …
When I finally broke down and emailed Ms. G to ask why she thought Sarah was struggling, she claimed that Sarah was better able to focus on in-person days than virtual ones, so I shouldn’t worry … I can barely get Sarah to go to school on the days she’s supposedly “better.” What can I do?
Abby Freireich and Brian Platzer respond in our latest “Homeroom” column:
First, you should know that Sarah is not alone. Most kids are having an exceptionally difficult year …
We understand that you are upset about Sarah’s experience in Ms. G’s class. But … it’s important to bear in mind that Ms. G, like all of us, has found her world upended by the pandemic.
Keep reading. Every Tuesday, Abby and Brian take questions from readers about their kids’ education. Have one? Email them at [email protected].
Tonight’s Atlantic-approved isolation activity:
Why were we so cruel to Britney Spears? A new documentary from The New York Times and FX “illuminates, with stark clarity, how uniquely cruel Spears’s treatment was,” our staff writer Sophie Gilbert notes. It's available on Hulu.
What to read if you need a break from the news:
“In my personal opinion, the greatest coming-of-age story on Earth does not take place in a Dickens novel or a Disney movie, but rather in a white fish at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.”
