One interesting development during the Donald Trump presidency has been the rise of an “anti-anti-Trump” camp.
Past administrations have polarized the public binarily, between supporters and opponents. If you’re a democrat, you typically support Obama, and if you’re a Republican you typically oppose him (even if you disagree on specific policies).
Trump, himself a master at polarization, has certainly intensified the partisan schism. However, the Trump years have also bred a vocal tertiary force, a group of center-right and far-left intellectuals who purport to dislike Trump but spend the bulk of their energy dismissing Liberal-Left critiques as “hysteria.”
Perhaps the most vocal of this crew, in the last couple months, has been the Brookings Institute’s Shadi Hamid. In an article he published last week, Hamid argued that Americans had no business calling the Trump administration “fascist” when Xi Jinping commits genocide in XInjiang.
Hamid followed up by tweeting that Americans should not let their disagreement with Trump and his supporters fester into hatred.
The “fascist” analogy is far from perfect for America (where, as Jamelle Bouie notes, the Jim Crow South employed an equally-vicious strain of authoritarianism into the 1960s). And for the sake of one’s mental health, one should do their utmost to morally oppose evil, rather than “hate” it.
And yet, both now and in the future, liberals who treat Trump as a “normal president,” with whom they merely disagree, forego the opportunity to use this presidency as a teaching lesson, to ensure that future generations don’t enable an even more destructive leader.
As president, Trump has violated countless democratic norms. He has maintained investments in an international hotel chain while in office, enabling politicians and foreign leaders to easily bribe for favorable treatment. He distributed COVID-19 funding in a way that favored the states that voted for him. He has called the media the “enemy of the people” and incited violence against political opponents.
Most ominously of all, by flagrantly violating the rule of law on a daily basis, he has accustomed our country’s citizens to presidential rule-breaking. If Trump leaves office with ‘nary a peep from the Left, the public will tolerate even worse misconduct in the future.
Hopefully, the electorate votes out Donald Trump in a landslide today. If and when he finally leaves office, it is imperative that the opposition not simply “forgive and forget.” That we do our best to hold him, members of his administration and the party that supported him accountable. And that we teach future generations about Trump just as we have been taught about Hitler or slavery.
If Trump, god forbid, wins or (even worse) refuses to leave, we must stay out on the streets 24/7, protesting every executive order and court ruling that make a mockery out of democracy.
If we, instead, follow the advice of the Shadi Hamids of the world–capping the election–with a conciliatory gesture, we signal to Republicans that their rule-breaking is acceptable. As with petulant toddlers, we can only expect worse to come from such laxness.
Entrepot 
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