Way, way back in June 2015, Taylor Swift’s ‘Bad Blood was at the top of the ARIA charts, Tony Abbott was complaining about wind farms, and a rotting peach left in a tanning bed named Donald Trump descended an escalator in a shopping mall to announce he was running for President of the United States.
With less than a month to go until the election, it’s easy to forget just how hilariously unlikely the prospect of President Trump seemed at the time. Everyone from the New York Times to self-proclaimed data journalism powerhouse FiveThirtyEight to little old me, writing over , confidently predicted Trump had about as much chance of reaching the White House as he does of ever touching his own toes again. Sixteen months, a couple dozen Republican candidates, the mainstream news media and most norms of polite society later, the thought of a Trump Presidency is a lot less funny than it used to be.
"The damage already done by Trump and his give-no-shits, take-no-prisoners mindset is going to reverberate"
As Trump uses the Presidential debates to do his best impression of the Hindenburg on live television, it looks like any realistic chance of his winning the election in November is out the window. But even if that’s the case (and if we’ve learned anything over the past year-and-a-bit, it’s that predictions in politics ain’t what they used to be), the damage already done by Trump and his give-no-shits, take-no-prisoners mindset is going to reverberate for a very long time. The Trump campaign has acclimatised us to so much despicable thought and behaviour, so much that was previously unthinkable, that the democratic experiment and the institutions that prop it up are genuinely beginning to shake.
Think of all the undoable things Trump rendered doable in today’s debate alone. Threatening to jail your political opponent if you win. Waving off the times you’ve boasted about sexually assaulting women as “locker-room talk”. Casually advocating violence toward people who disagree with you, human rights violations, and war crimes.
"Think of all the undoable things Trump rendered doable in today’s debate alone"
That’s just the headline-making stuff; the more mundane atrocities of Trump’s ascension are just as hideous. It’s a truism that lying and politics have always gone hand in hand, but the scale and sheer audacity of Trump’s dishonesty is something else. He lies like breathing, but we’re so over-exposed to it we forget how ridiculously mendacious he really is. The rancid racism, misogyny and all-purpose bigotry that forms the cornerstone of his campaign has seen real life become indistinguishable from the most debased corners of internet comments sections. Vast, cartoonishly deranged conspiracy theories now come shooting out of the mouths of people we pay to know better.
If Clinton wins in November, the dark passions Trump has stirred up won’t just go away. If angry Trump supporters were to respond to his losing the election by arming themselves and going on rampages in the street, it wouldn’t be surprising. If Trump himself called Hillary Clinton a “bitch” or physically assaulted her during the third debate, that would no longer be surprising. If an enraged Trump partisan were to commit the first Presidential assassination attempt since Ronald Reagan, we could draw a clear, straight line between Trump’s words and that moment.
"There is no ‘going back to normal’ after this"
No matter who the next US President is, none of this can be undone. There is no ‘going back to normal’ after this. This is normal now. Emboldened by his example, others will run for office knowing their platforms of hatred and viciousness will be rewarded. Some of them will win, and enact their prejudices into law. Acting on precedent, their supporters will think nothing of intimidating and attacking people on the other side. Violence at campaign rallies and protests will increasingly become the norm, as will its encouragement by people seeking public office. The veneer of universal respect for basic democratic necessities like non-discrimination, non-violence and the rule of law has been stripped away, and what’s underneath is ugly and raw and eager to get some blood on its hands.
It’s happening in America, with Trump and others. It’s happening in Britain, where new Prime Minister Theresa May is demanding businesses establish registers of foreign workers. And it’s happening in Australia, where Pauline Hanson and the conservative wing of the Coalition government are working in concert to turn a religious minority into proscribed citizens.
It seems kind of corny to say, but June 2015 really was a simpler time. No matter how putrid and depressing politics seemed back then, what we’ve come to now is worse than the most pessimistic person could have imagined. The injustices and degradations to come have already been sewn. All we can do is wait for them.
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Alex McKinnon is a journalist based in Sydney. Most recently he served as political and opinion editor of pop-culture website Junkee and editor of the Star Observer, Australia's longest-running LGBTI newspaper.
