Does America need a little bit of nationalism?

Despite being broadly unpopular with many on the right, America should be thankful to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. By introducing the right amount of socialism, he shielded America from communism.

It’s easy to dismiss his policies from today’s perspective, but try to put yourself in the place of a lower-middle-class family in the United States during the Great Depression. How long would you endure the hardships before looking for solutions offered by extremists?

Just look at the interwar period in Europe, where many countries were shaken by battles — often not merely political — between communists and fascists. Both Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini presented themselves as the only force capable of stopping communism. To many ordinary people there, it seemed they had no choice but to pick one extreme side or the other. Staying publicly moderate was actually the difficult path at the time. Despite bending the US political system, FDR refrained from more extreme policies and delivered social programs that helped people recover before they became desperate enough to turn to radicals.

Is Donald Trump a modern FDR — just on the opposite side of the political spectrum? I was personally surprised by the rapid spread of woke ideology and self-destructive energy policies in the US under Biden. Yes, it was clear he was a consensus candidate in 2020 and had to promise something to the progressive left to secure their support. Still, I expected him to be more centrist and pragmatic once elected. This was not the Biden everyone had known for decades as the senator from Delaware. Maybe his advanced age and cognitive decline played a role in his yielding to progressives.

Thus, Trump’s election could be viewed as the pendulum swinging the other way. So, should liberals be thankful for Trump? Will he inject just the right amount of nationalism into US politics to save America from outright fascism and dictatorship? That depends on whether he can resist the temptation of trying to grab absolute power. No one knows the outcome of the upcoming four years, not even Trump himself.

Personally, I always believed Trump was no Caesar. His clumsiness on January 6, 2021, proved to me that he’s no Sulla either. But I was wrong about Biden too.