Earlier this morning, after surveying Republicans' unremitting endeavors to destabilize the United States I wrote that "the world's Vladimir Putins are a redundancy, a superfluidity. Our stronger, similar enemy lies within." It's certainly no exaggeration to add that the implications for not only the U.S. but Putinesque authoritarianism itself are global, and potentially world-shattering.
Edward Luce, a British-born U.S. political and foreign policy columnist for the Financial Times, agrees that what essentially is World War III — the war between democracy and authoritarianism — is actually "taking place" right here, within our shores. "America’s friends are watching the direction of US politics with genuine trepidation," he notes. "Far from banishing the forces of Trumpism, Biden’s victory has hastened their full takeover of the Republican party. To European observers, the world’s most consequential democracy vs autocracy battle may in fact be taking place within the United States." In fact.
By contrast, this USA Today editorializing is vexatious in its sunny forecast: "The world might never know why Trump debased himself [in Helsinki], or why he persisted with an odd affinity for dictators and autocrats throughout his tenure. But all of that seemed washed away Wednesday when Biden had his turn with Putin."
No doubt the Trump imagery of America's debasement before autocracy was washed away by President Biden. The substance of Trumpism and encroaching Republican authoritarianism, however, remain buried not among the American majority, but within the state and congressional halls of Republican power. That's where the hottest war between democracy and autocracy lies, with potentially devastating implications for the entire globe. Absent America's democratic beacon and leadership, the world will be adrift — ultimately drifting to where America wound up.
Thus the war must be fought here; if necessary, in the streets.