Civil War is a terrifying movie, but Trump: The Sequel will be a real-life horror show

If the former president regains the White House in November, America will face a more dystopian future than the one being shown in theaters

From the director, the cast and critics agree: Civil War, the film that depicts America tearing itself apart while a cowardly, authoritarian president hides in the White House, is not about Donald Trump. But it really is.

Likewise, the first criminal trial of a US president, now playing before large audiences in New York, is ostensibly over allegations that Trump fraudulently bought the silence of a former porn star named Stormy after a tacky encounter in Lake Tahoe . But it’s not, really.

Both the film and the trial are about Trump’s second term. They are about sex and lies and Access Hollywood videos, about trust and betrayal, truth and division. They are about democracy in America, where political disputes and vendettas rage, guns proliferate, and debates over civil rights are neither civil nor correct.

Alex Garland’s blockbuster “post-ideological” dystopian nightmare and the Manhattan courthouse rush-hour showdown are ultimately about the same things: the uses and abuses of power, about a nation’s journey to extremes where, as in Moby’s song, he falls apart.

Speaking of disintegration, what a diminished figure Trump now represents in court. Slovenly, slumped-shouldered and silent alongside his lawyers, he acts in a moody, offended and childishly petulant manner. The room is cold, he complains. Potential jurors rudely insult him to his face! It’s all so unfair.

Trump has never performed with dignity, not even in the Oval Office. However, even by their tawdry standards, this daily humiliation before an inflexible judge is hopelessly and publicly humiliating. The loss of prestige and sustained arrogance begin to seem terminal. For Trump, the alleged criminal conspirator, as opposed to Trump, the king of the presidential comeback, the familiar campaign cry of “Four More Years!” It has a disturbing touch. Four years in prison is what he will face if he is found guilty of 34 felony charges.

It is no coincidence, so Trump’s followers believe, that the Civil War began in an election year. It’s also no surprise that a Democratic district attorney pushed for the trial. Or that the latest polls from the “liberal media” suggest that Trump is losing ground to Joe Biden.

Despite all this, the script for Make America Great Again remains unchanged. Trump’s second highly successful march on Washington is just on pause, say the Maga-men. He’s making an epic sequel and will be back in November with all guns blazing – which is the problem, in a nutshell.

If you doubt it, just look at Pennsylvania. Even as the defendant, by turns drowsy and defiant, dozed in court and slandered witnesses on social media, this same supposed 2024 Republican champion effortlessly won last week’s party primary with 83% of the vote.

Donald Trump in Manhattan Criminal Court on April 26. | Getty Images

There is no real-world contradiction here. A grumpy Trump scowling at the bench and a Civil War-like would-be dictator eager for the power and glory of the White House are united in a nasty, cruel character. Two sides of the same folded penny. Trump’s list of crimes for which he has not yet been tried goes far beyond the New York indictment and the charges in three other pending cases. Like Tom Ripley, the narcissistic sociopathic antihero of the popular Netflix TV miniseries, Trump is violently dangerous beyond all knowledge.

The lethal January 6 insurrection that he incited and applauded was a total betrayal of the republic. No arguments. The racist relativism of Charlottesville in 2017 foreshadowed recent, unrepentant talk about “poisoning the blood of our country.” His corrosive words burn the social fabric like acid. No Civil War paramilitary madman could wish for more than Trump’s eager feeding of America’s gun addiction, support of executions at home and assassinations abroad, collaboration with murderous dictators, degradation of the Supreme Court, and hostility to government openness, freedom of expression and impartial reporting.

No Ripley-style con man or fraudster could hope to emulate the master criminal’s pressure on Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden’s son Hunter, his political protection rackets and blatant nepotism, the subordination of his party, Congress and the establishment legal or its the rich man’s contempt for the common citizen who actually pays taxes.

A possible second Trump term portends an obsessive reckoning at home and abject appeasement abroad. Judges, law enforcement, witnesses, accusers, military personnel, diplomats, academics and critical media outlets could be among the first victims of a tragedy of national revenge – a personalized purge of state institutions that could be fatal to democracy.

Trump’s sycophantic subservience to Russia’s Vladimir Putin and vendetta against Kiev’s leadership spell disaster for Ukraine. Nor can there be much confidence, despite all his bluster, that he would stand up to China if it invaded Taiwan.

Also prepare for a likely European rift and trade war, a split in NATO and the unraveling of 75 years of transatlantic collaboration. Prepare for an out-of-control global arms race, an uncontrolled proliferation of nuclear weapons on Earth and in space, and a total abandonment of climate crisis objectives. A Trump success in November, with all the chaos, schism and constitutional outrages that followed, would bring both the end of peaceful, rational debate within America and the demise of US global leadership closer.

So really, is the Civil War so wrong? Isn’t this really about Trump and Trumpism? It’s certainly more comforting to frame the film as entertainment, to interpret its studied avoidance of direct references to current politics as reassurance that, deep down, it’s essentially make-believe. But this denialist view is itself a type of escapism or illusion. It won’t silence the guns.

In a symbolic and atypical scene, the war-weary photojournalist, played by Kirsten Dunst, all in armor and pursed lips, tries on a beautiful dress in a city center store, isolated from the fighting. It is as if she, like America, is trying, fleetingly, to regain her humanity.

It’s unclear whether she can do it. More hopeful times like this, and much less fanfare, are sorely needed right now.

Originally published by The Guardian on 04/27/2024 – 2:00 pm

By Simon Tisdal

Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s Foreign Affairs commentator