Trump, Making History

DIFFICULT TO IMAGINE that it might now be, the time will come when Donald Trump is gone. That's when the historians take over. Although numerous book shave already been written about him by his close associates, family members, and journalists, many of them quite illuminating, the historical porfession proper has not yet begun to do its thing. Its too early. Trump is not yet history, per se. History requires hindsight, whic will only begin to kick in at the earliest early in the year twenty twenty nine. Anyone who reads history books, especially biographies of former American presidents, knows that, as they say, good historians don't play around. They do their homework, their research, and tell is as it is, or was, or "Wie es eigentlich gewesen", admonished the great German historian Leopold von Ranke. History, is nothing other than "one damned thing after another", anastute observation falsely attributed to many historians. Good historians call a spade a spade,aswe say. Biographies of American presidents by competent historians tend to be balanced, giving due credit, but also, highly critical of their subject, as most presidents merit. Latgely because of ths various presidents acquir various reputations over time, not alwasy favorable,although every president seems to be accorded a minimal modicum of good credit. All of them, Nixon, for example, have skeletons which ultimately get exposed. Jeffferson, Sally Hemmings, and so forth. Hisotrians do the exposing. Frankly, it is difficult if not nearly impossible to imagine any historian anywhere, at any future time, writing a book about Donald Trump which is favorable towards him, which is anything but harshly critical in its assessment of Trump. In fact, how can any historian, present or future, be expected to write anything other than books broadly condemning Trump's legendary criminality and authoritarian governance? Especially, considering his policies, which seem increasingly disastrous almost daily, what else can we expect? In a word, little. Trump's notorious, nfamous "big election lie" and his ensuing violent insurrection, which we already know he carefully conceived, planned in great detail, and orchestrated almost perfectly, will take center stage in forthcoming historiy books. Trump's two impeachments will be front and center. And then, there's all the rest. All the rest of the tens of thousands of outright lies uttered by Trump in his two terms aspresident, the seemingly innumerable violaton of the constitution and federal law, Trump's attacks on innocent people and respected institutions...all of it. Of the thousand so flawsuits, both for and against Trump, in which the uber litigous litigant is involved both in his private and public affairs, how many will be scrutinized as to their motive and their outcome? That will not contribute much flattering material to Trump's historical legacy. There would seem to be no way for the future historical profession to do other than to universally declare Donald Trump to have been the worst president in American history, by a country mile. Of course, far stranger things have happened. MAGA historians are not beyond the realms of possibility. That some wayward misguided future historian might dare praise Trump as a great president is certainly no more strange than the mere fact that tens of millions of ostensibly reasonably intelligent Americans not only supported him politically, but regarded him as an almost iconic figure worthy of adulation and veneration, even while he was alive.