An overwhelming immune response is now required

In my previous essay I wrote that the price inflation we're now experiencing is the inevitable result of Donald Trump's actual policies and actions. Which is saying something. Presidents usually get a lot of undeserved credit and especially blame for happenings in the economy about which they have little control. But in this case, Trump really did reverse the downward trend in inflation and send it back up. Inflation was around 3 percent when Trump took office, and trending slowly lower. It's now, as of the latest report, up to 3.7 percent. And it's not that rising prices merely happened on Trump's "watch." In a rare example of presidential agency affecting the economy, Trump actually drove prices higher with his tariffs and his war with Iran.

High prices are probably the biggest reason the voting public seems to have turned against Trump. But to my mind there's an even stronger reason to reject Trump and everything he stands for. As has no American president in history, Trump has been a unique threat to our democratic institutions, and to our conception of reality itself. This is an entirely new and disturbing phenomenon.

Writing in this morning's New York Times, the famed documentarian Ken Burns said this:

During the Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1787, delegates understood that in the many compromises they would strike, they also had to engineer defenses against the rise of a tyrant. In a letter to James Madison, Jefferson worried that a president who lost an election might “pretend false votes” and “hold possession of the reins of government.” Alexander Hamilton was also concerned that an “unprincipled” man would “mount the hobby horse of popularity” and “throw things in confusion.”

Remarkably and dismayingly, Jefferson's fears have been realized, as have Hamilton's. A president who lost an election really did "pretend false votes" and seek to "hold possession of the reins of government." An actual American president really has "thrown things in confusion." What an unforgivably noxious threat to democracy itself.

To this day, Donald Trump insists, against all evidence, that he won the 2020 election. Just a couple of weeks ago he claimed he "won by millions of votes," and that the 2020 election was "rigged." Also last month, Trump said the 2020 election was rigged due to "hundreds of ballot boxes found after people went to bed happy and woke up to news of the election being rigged."

This, even more than high prices, is the true threat to the country. Trump stands in opposition to our highest democratic and constitutional ideals, and to reality itself. A president who inhabits a reality different from the actual one, and who tries to make you believe things that aren't real, is a unique danger to all of us.

Some of our worst imaginings have come to pass. Sadly, at this juncture in American history, we can now look back and say that our founders' fears have actually been realized. Donald Trump, an actual American president, has uniquely stood in opposition not just to basic decency, and not just to reality, but to our highest constitutional ideals. We continue to tolerate this at our peril.

There is yet time to take our country back from the clutches of tyranny. A massive "immune response" in the body politic is now required. We need to soundly fight and defeat this malignant pathology. Let's do it.

Copyright (C) 2026 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

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