A few years ago, I wrote an article detailing the harm the Barack Obama and first Donald Trump administrations did to American political culture and political system (https://gordonhahn.com/2017/08/18/the-obama-trump-one-two-punch-to-americas-political-culture/). Now we have a one-two-three-four punch. The fourth blow may become a knock out punch to America’s democratic-republican political culture and signal an imminent U.S. transition from a republican regime to a soft authoritarian one. The Obama-Biden’s Russiagate-driven ‘revolution from above’ was aborted by Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election. However, Trump is carrying forth the torch by eroding the American constitutional and legal culture, threatening the survival of civil, political, and human rights. He is also transforming America into an arch-imperial power trampling over the constraints that somewhat held brute global ambitions in check. This can only further undermine the republic.
President Obama famously characterized Republicans as the Democrats’ “enemies” and backward hicks “clinging to their Bibles and their guns,” referred to “typical white people” in his autobiography, and allowed his Justice Department to refuse prosecuting black ultra-nationalists after they were caught openly on videotape intimidating voters as they went to the polls. For all the talk of Trumpist fascism, it was President Obama who recreated the Nixonian ‘imperialist presidency’ in the modern era, by circumventing congress and usurping legislative power by issuing unconstitutional decrees. As leading liberal, pro-Democratic Party legal scholar Jonathan Turley characterized Obama’s “imperial presidency”: “Four decades ago, Nixon was halted in his determined effort to create an imperial presidency with unilateral powers and privileges. But in 2013, Obama wields those very same powers openly and without serious opposition” (Jonathan Turley, “A Question of Power: The Imperial Presidency, 21 May 2014, https://jonathanturley.org/2014/05/21/a-question-of-power-the-imperial-presidency/). ……… . . . . . . . . . .
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About the Author –
Gordon M. Hahn, Ph.D., is an Expert Analyst at Corr Analytics, www.canalyt.com. Websites: Russian and Eurasian Politics, gordonhahn.com and gordonhahn.academia.edu
Dr. Hahn is the author of the new book: Russian Tselostnost’: Wholeness in Russian Thought, Culture, History, and Politics (Europe Books, 2022). He has authored five previous, well-received books: The Russian Dilemma: Security, Vigilance, and Relations with the West from Ivan III to Putin (McFarland, 2021); Ukraine Over the Edge: Russia, the West, and the “New Cold War” (McFarland, 2018); The Caucasus Emirate Mujahedin: Global Jihadism in Russia’s North Caucasus and Beyond (McFarland, 2014), Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007), and Russia’s Revolution From Above: Reform, Transition and Revolution in the Fall of the Soviet Communist Regime, 1985-2000 (Transaction, 2002). He also has published numerous think tank reports, academic articles, analyses, and commentaries in both English and Russian language media.
Dr. Hahn taught at Boston, American, Stanford, San Jose State, and San Francisco State Universities and as a Fulbright Scholar at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia and was a senior associate and visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Kennan Institute in Washington DC, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group.