Word Clusters

Though my political sympathies lie within the spectrum of the cluster ‘left, liberal, progressive’ (not a coterminous set of terms) I find myself agreeing with an important point made by R. Daniel Keleman and Daniel Ziblatt in Foreign Affairs (15 June 2026). In discussing how Viktor Orbán managed to do what he did in his long tenure of power in Hungary, they write, ‘The first lesson from Hungary is a simple one: center-right parties are a crucial hinge of democracy. When the establishment center-right tolerates the authoritarians on its flank, it facilitates their rise. When the center-right instead takes a hard line against them, it can thwart their emergence.’

Whatever one’s lack of sympathy with politics to the right of centre, at least one thing to be said for its moderate span – the ‘centre-right’ span – is that it is democratic. Its cleavage to ideas of liberties might dally enough with libertarianism – that quite different thing which says that big money is to be given so free a pass that it can trample on people’s heads to make itself bigger – to explain why people on the opposing spectrum (like me) resist it. But in respecting civil liberties, the rule of law, and democratic processes, in ways that hold them to accepting peaceful transitions of power after elections by respecting their outcome, they fall within the zone of what for brevity I’ll call ‘legitimacy’ in political morality terms. That is no small thing. In fact the stain on political extremism of all kinds (where far Right and far Left come to the same thing in their malign effects on people’s lives) is precisely their refusal to recognise what makes for legitimacy in this sense.

The Daniels conclude that the ballot box can unseat an authoritarian, provided that the ballot box is still in play, if ‘the center-right takes a stand and joins forces with a broad, cross-partisan democratic opposition’ – that is, makes common cause with the left to do so. Cross-partisan coalitions require setting aside the usual points of difference over headline public policy questions for the one-off purpose of removing an authoritarian regime and instituting agreed remedies for dealing with the constitutional shortcomings that permitted its subversion of democracy, which in the contemporary iteration of Far-Rightism is done by hollowing-out its institutions from within. The idea is that when debate resumes about who has the best policies for running the country, it does so on the agreed basis that its purpose is to persuade the people and recruit their support for one of the agendas proposed – and that when the people have made their choice, the losing side will accept the loss, learn the lessons, and gird themselves for trying again. That is how grown-up democracies generally behave. Until, that is, the likes of Orbán and Trump come along.

Canny types can poke about in a democratic order’s ribs to find weak spots in order to exploit them. No system is perfect, every system needs to evolve and self-correct, so there are osteoporosed ribs always to be found. The far Right in the US has been searching the system’s ribs at very least since Newt Gingrich in the 1990s got the GOP to begin its edging ever-further rightwards (admittedly, it did not have that far to go by then) via Bush 2, the Tea Party, and Trumps 1 and 2. Obama – a Black lefty, horrors! – stiffened the sinews and summoned up the blood of this process, pushing it into the arms of the MAGA types for whom everything since the 1960s in social evolution is anathema. The contradiction that lies at the heart of this – neoliberal economics was a driver of the Right’s ambitions to capture the Constitution and neoliberal economics is what has made the MAGA base feel the economic pinch, thus stoking its fires of resentment – appears not to register with the base: they have been made into an army fighting against their own interests by empowering those who will cut investment in people in order to cut taxes for the tiny coterie of the megarich.

The Gingrich era was not an innovation, it was a successful ramping-up of the simmering desire of the Right in the US to reverse everything that happened following the New Deal of the 1930s, in which government got bigger, intervened in the economy more, and laid the turf for welfare and civil rights initiatives. The US Right wants, and under Trump is fast succeeding, to return the US to its so-called ‘Golden Age’ (renamed ‘Gilded Age’ by Mark Twain) following the Civil War and the joint effects of rapid westward expansion (consult the Frontier Thesis for some insights) and industrialisation – a process requiring mass immigration, encouraged until abruptly stopped in the early 1920s. The Golden Age US economy ballooned; it was the age of such iconic millionaires as Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, Carnegie and Vanderbilt. (A big difference between now and then: in line with Carnegie’s ‘Gospel of Wealth’ some of these figures were major charitable donors, Carnegie himself giving 90% of his wealth away to social and cultural causes, Rockefeller half his wealth. Compare Musk: he gives money – though it is small change in terms of his net worth – to far Right politicians).

In the welter of considerations one could adduce in analysing US history since 1865, and especially in its post-New Deal avatar, an interesting fact obtrudes: that the hardest nut to crack for the Right has been higher education. Witness Trump’s assault on US universities; the reason is that as engines of social mobility, scientific and technological research and development, and critical assessment of political and social phenomena, higher education tends to pool attitudes in the ‘left, liberal, progressive’ cluster. The Trump attack has already succeeded in diminishing US higher education. A signal example is the billions of dollars of cuts in research funding following the placing of the federal grants system into the hands of partisan Trump appointees tasked with bringing the universities to heel. The stated target (here I paraphrase a paragraph in a Guardian article by Jessica Glenza of 20 July 2026): is to end “woke” policies, ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs, prohibit anything that promotes “anti-American values”, discourage international collaboration between scientists, require demonstration of presidential “priorities”, and license the government to consider, “an applicant’s affiliations with organizations engaged in activities that violate federal law, undermine public safety or national security, or advocate for the overthrow of the United States government”. These last twenty-eight words could more economically be summarised as ‘anything that gets in the way of Trump’s agenda’, for after all Trump is all about reprising de Gaulle’s L’etat, c’est moi.

It is a chilling tangential thought that Adolf Hitler was a great admirer of the US – because of its treatment of indigenous Americans and people of colour.

Recent YouGov polling gives the following numbers for Trump: ‘Fame 100%, Popularity 19%, Disliked By 73%, Neutral 8%’ (https://yougov.com/en-gb/topics/public_figure/Donald_Trump). Apropos of word clusters: YouGov’s polling ‘now shows the adjectives most Americans associate with Trump are arrogant, opportunistic, reckless, dishonest, and corrupt. Words that don’t apply to Trump: compassionate, inspirational, honest, and likeable’ (https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/54352-majorities-americans-think-donald-trump-arrogant-opportunistic-reckless).

If you were a psychopathic self-aggrandising narcissistic bully thus viewed, would you let the people vote on whether to let you carry on? If the midterms pull the plug on Trump, they will demonstrate (a) the residual strength of the US system and (b) the fact that Trump is in reality a Wizard of Oz, naked behind a cardboard screen. If Trump scraps the elections under the pretence of a National Emergency (a.k.a Trump/GOP emergency), then…what cluster of words will be adequate to describe the future of the US and the future of the world?