Make Europe Great Again

America as we knew it will one day return, but Europeans cannot afford to wait. They need to assume responsibility for their security and energy, and strengthen their American friends

The Arc de Triomphe in paris

A majority of Americans have voted against their best interests. Donald J Trump’s second administration promises to be a testosterone cabinet of cocksure billionaires and antisocial conservatives, ready to cut social programmes, deport millions and turn Americans upon Americans.

There are second and third lines of defence against the expected ravages of the liberal democratic state, in the form of principled judges, prosecutors, state and local officials, Republican and Democrat. Many are already fighting back. Aurora, Colorado, the city where Trump promised to begin his mass deportations, returned no Republican candidates to the House of Representatives in this election. Aurora’s mayor, Mike Johnston, said after the election result, “We are not going to open up our city boundaries to any state or federal agents that come in and take people out of their homes and try to deport them without cause.”

But principled officials will be up against a red Senate, a partisan Supreme Court, a rabid White House and potentially the physical violence of mobs so disoriented by propaganda against “the enemy within” that they will attack Americans. Trump has played this card before, on January 6, 2021. This time around, he has threatened his appointee—turned-critic Mark Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with forcible re-enlistment and a court-martial. Milley has installed bulletproof windows and bombproof curtains in his home.