Opponents of President Donald Trump, from liberals and progressives to right-wing Never Trump conservatives, have often been accused of having "Trump derangement syndrome" — even by people who aren't necessarily Trump supporters or MAGA Republicans themselves. The opponents who criticize Trump's views as dangerous or authoritarian are told that they take his rhetoric much too seriously and are being "alarmists" or "hysterical."
But podcaster Toby Buckle, in an article published by The New Republic on December 18, emphasizes that almost 11 months into Trump's second presidency, the warnings of his most vocal critics are proving to be spot on.
Buckle equates those critics with "Cassandras." In Greek mythology, Cassandra was a prophetic figure who was frustrated because she knew that no one would believe her. And modern-day "Cassandras," Buckle says, were not exaggerating when they sounded the alarm about Trump as far back as 2015.
"Imagine I sent you back in time to July 2015 with the goal of saving liberal democracy in America," Buckle argues. "Donald Trump announced his candidacy a month ago, the polls are showing him with a narrow lead, and the media — while noting his extreme rhetoric — are mostly treating this as a fun diversion. You can't prove you're from the future, and you're limited to broadly legal means. Can you persuade enough people to take it more seriously? After all, you know what's coming — January 6, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, checks and balances failing, massive open corruption, troops on the streets, abductions by masked men, and concentration camps."
The podcaster continues, "But when you warn of these horrors, it sounds outlandish. People won't believe you. If you insist, you'll be dismissed as hysterical. Despite knowing the future, you won't be able to prevent it. This is not that far from the position many ordinary Americans found themselves in at the start of the Trump era."
Those "latter-day Cassandras," according to Buckle, "saw what was coming clearly enough" when they "called Trump's movement fascist from the very start."
"Accordingly, they did everything they could to get others to listen," Buckle notes. "But not enough people did, and many attacked them — even as events proved them right, again and again."
Buckle interviewed "37 Americans who meet the profile of a latter-day Cassandra," and their warnings about Trump, the podcaster says, were far from exaggerations.
"The first thing to say about fascism's Cassandras is they're usually women," Buckle explains. "Not all women are Cassandras — most aren't — but most Cassandras are women. My sense is that Black Americans, of either gender, are likelier than whites to be Cassandras, and trans and nonbinary people are heavily overrepresented within the group…. What were they afraid of? Authoritarianism, political violence, racism, sexism, corruption, as well as threats to bodily autonomy and LGBT rights, were the common themes. Everyone mentioned at least one of those, and the vast majority mentioned multiple."
Read Toby Buckle's full article for The New Republic at this link.
