特朗普赤裸裸的专制宣言
Trump Wants You to Think You Can’t Get Rid of Him
MICHELLE GOLDBERG
2020年9月25日
Living under a president who daily defiles his office and glories in transgressing the norms holding democracy together is numbing and enervating. It’s not emotionally or physiologically possible to maintain appropriate levels of shock and fury indefinitely; eventually exhaustion and cynical despair kick in.
活在这样一个每天玷污自己所在的职位、以不遵守维系民主的准则为荣的总统治下，让人感到麻木且无力。无论在情感上还是生理上，人都不可能无限保持恰当程度的震惊和愤怒；最后，疲惫和犬儒式绝望就会袭来。
But every once in a while Donald Trump outpaces the baseline of corruption, disloyalty and sadism we’ve been forced to get used to. Outrage builds and the weary political world stirs. Sometimes even a few Republican officeholders feel the need to distance themselves from things the president says or does.
但唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)仍时不时就会超出我们已经被迫习惯的腐败、不义和虐待狂的底线。愤怒在积聚，疲倦的政治世界在翻涌。有时，甚至一些共和党官员也觉得有必要与总统的言行保持距离。
Child separation caused this kind of clarifying horror. There was a moment of it when Trump tweeted that four congresswomen of color should go back to the “totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.” And now, thanks to Trump’s latest attack on democracy, we’re seeing it again.
将孩子与父母分离制造了这种明显的恐惧。有一次特朗普还发推称，四位有色人种女性国会议员应该回到“完全瘫痪、充斥着犯罪的地方，她们就从那里来的”。而现在，由于特朗普对民主制度的最新攻击，我们又看见了这种恐惧。
At a Wednesday evening news conference, Trump was asked whether he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power after the November election. “We’re going to have to see what happens,” said the president. He then complained about “the ballots,” apparently meaning mail-in ballots, which he’s been trying to discredit: “Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.”
在周三晚间的新闻发布会上，特朗普被问到是否会在11月大选结束后承诺和平的权力移交。“要看情况了，”总统说。然后，他抱怨了“选票”，显然指的是他一直在试图抹黑的邮寄选票：“取消这种选票，就会有一个非常和平的局面——坦白讲根本不会出现移交。会是一次延续。”
His words — the demand to discard ballots, the dismissal of a possible transfer — were a naked declaration of autocratic intent. Looking at the BBC’s website, where a blaring headline said, “Trump Won’t Commit to Peaceful Transfer of Power,” you could see America being covered like a failing state.
他的话——要求放弃选票，否认可能的移交——是带着赤裸裸专制意图的宣言。看看BBC网站上，一个大标题写着，“特朗普不肯承诺和平权力移交”，你会发现美国就像一个失败的国家一样被报道着。
Trump’s words were all the scarier for coming on the same day as Barton Gellman’s blockbuster Atlantic article about how Trump could subvert the election. The chairman of Pennsylvania’s Republican Party told Gellman, on the record, that he’d spoken to the campaign about bypassing a messy vote count and having the Republican-controlled legislature appoint its own slate of electors. A legal adviser to the Trump campaign said, “There will be a count on election night, that count will shift over time, and the results when the final count is given will be challenged as being inaccurate, fraudulent — pick your word.”
考虑到同一天巴顿·格尔曼(Barton Gellman)在《大西洋》(The Atlantic)发表的有关特朗普可能如何颠覆大选的重磅文章，特朗普的发言就更加令人恐惧。宾夕法尼亚州的共和党主席明着告诉格尔曼，他已经对竞选团队说，要绕过混乱的计票过程，让共和党控制的立法机构指定自己的选举人名单。特朗普团队的一位法律顾问说，“在大选夜会有一次计票，而计票会随着时间而变化，其最终结果会被质疑不准确、欺诈——怎么说都行。”
As terrifying as all this is, it’s important to remember that Trump and his campaign are trying to undermine the election because right now they appear to be losing it.
尽管这一切都很可怕，但重要的是要记住，特朗普和他的竞选团队想破坏大选，是因为现在他们似乎要输了。
Trump is down in most swing state polls, tied in Georgia and barely ahead in Texas. His most sycophantic enabler, Lindsey Graham, is neck-and-neck in South Carolina. The president is counting on his new Supreme Court nominee to save his presidency, and she may, if the vote count gets to the Supreme Court. But a rushed confirmation is unlikely to help Trump electorally, because in polls a majority of Americans say the winner of the election should make the appointment.
在大多数摇摆州的民调中，特朗普的支持率都在下降，在乔治亚州持平，在得克萨斯州勉强领先。他最谄媚的支持者林赛·格雷厄姆(Lindsey Graham)所在的南卡罗来纳州两党势均力敌。总统正在指望他的最高法院新提名人来挽救他的总统任期，如果选票计数能到达最高法院，她可能会这么做。但仓促的任命不太可能对特朗普的选举有帮助，因为在民意调查中，大多数美国人都认为该任命应由大选的获胜者来完成。
Trump may be behaving like a strongman, but he is weaker than he’d like us all to believe. Autocrats who actually have the power to fix elections don’t announce their plans to do it; they just pretend to have gotten 99 percent of the vote. It’s crucial that Trump’s opponents emphasize this, because unlike rage, excessive fear can be demobilizing. There’s a reason TV villains like to say, “Resistance is futile.”
特朗普可能表现得像个铁腕强人，但比起他想让我们相信的样子，他其实更软弱。真正有权操纵选举的独裁者才不会宣布他们的计划；他们只是假装获得了99%的选票。特朗普的反对者必须意识到这一点，因为与愤怒不同，过度恐惧可能使人退怯。电视上的大反派都喜欢说“抵抗是徒劳的”是有原因的。
“We cannot allow Trump’s constant threats to undermine voters’ confidence that their ballots will be counted or discredit the outcome in advance,” Michael Podhorzer of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. recently wrote in a memo to allies. Podhorzer said that the organization’s polling suggests that “this close to the election, we do Trump’s work for him when we respond to his threats rather than remind voters that they will decide who the next president will be if they vote.”
“我们不能允许特朗普一直威胁选民，提前让他们怀疑自己的选票不会被计入，或对选举结果的有效性产生质疑，”劳联-产联(AFL-CIO)的迈克尔·波德霍泽(Michael Podhorzer)最近在一份给盟友的备忘录中写道。波德霍泽说该组织的调查显示，“在大选即将来临之际，如果我们对他的威胁作出反应，而不是去提醒选民，他们的投票将决定谁会成为下一任总统，那就是在给特朗普帮忙。”
This doesn’t mean people shouldn’t be alarmed. I’m alarmed every minute of every day. Trump is an aspiring fascist who would burn democracy to the ground to salve his diseased ego. His willingness to break the rules that bind others gives him power out of proportion to his dismal approval ratings. He blithely incites violence by his supporters, some of whom have already tried to intimidate voters in Virginia.
这不意味着人们不该警惕。我每天每刻都在警惕着。特朗普是一个以毁灭民主来拯救他的病态自我为抱负的法西斯主义者。他愿意打破束缚他人的规则，这让他拥有了与其惨淡支持率不符的权力。他无所顾忌地煽动支持者的暴力行径，其中一些人已经试图恐吓弗吉尼亚州的选民。
Yet part of the reason he won in 2016 is that so few of his opponents thought it possible. That is no longer a problem. Since then, when voters have had the chance to render a verdict on Trump and his allies, they’ve often rejected them overwhelmingly. Under Trump, Democrats have made inroads into Texas, Arizona, even Oklahoma. They won a Senate seat in Alabama. (Granted, the Republican was accused of being a child molester.) Much attention is paid to Trump’s fanatical supporters, but far more people hate him than love him.
然而，他赢得2016年大选的部分原因是，几乎没有对手认为这是可能的。现在这个问题不存在了。从那时起，只要选民们有机会对特朗普及其盟友作出裁决，他们常以压倒性的多数否决他们。在特朗普执政期间，民主党已经在得克萨斯州、亚利桑那州、甚至还有俄克拉荷马州取得进展。他们在阿拉巴马州拿下了一个参议员席位。（诚然，这是因为共和党对手被控猥亵儿童。）特朗普的狂热支持者备受关注，但恨他的人远多于爱他的人。
In the run-up to the 2018 election, many people had the same fears they have now. Analyzing its survey results, Pew found that “voters approached the 2018 midterm elections with some trepidation about the voting process and many had concerns that U.S. election systems may be hacked.” After 2016 it was hard to believe polls showing Democrats with a lead of more than eight points. But the polls were right.
在2018年中期选举前夕，许多人与现在一样担忧。分析其调查结果后，皮尤(Pew)发现，“选民在临近2018年中期选举时对投票过程有些不安，许多人担忧美国选举系统可能遭到黑客攻击。”2016年大选之后的民调显示，民主党领先超过8个百分点，这令人难以置信。但民调结果是正确的。
Certainly, things are different now than they were even two years ago. A pandemic is disrupting normal campaigning and changing the way a lot of people vote. Trump has much more at stake. Investigations in New York mean that if he’s not re-elected, he could be arrested.
当然，即使与两年前相比，现在的情况也有所不同。疫情扰乱了常规竞选活动，也改变了很多人的投票方式。特朗普面临更多风险利害。在纽约进行的调查意味着如果他没有再次当选，就可能被逮捕。
It’s also true that by floating the idea of refusing to concede, Trump begins to normalize the notion. The nationwide uproar over family separation has worn off, even though family separations continue. A House resolution condemned Trump’s initial racist attack on Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley. Now he says similar things at his rallies and it barely makes news.
而通过宣扬拒绝认输的想法，他开始使这个概念正常化。尽管家庭分离仍在继续，但全国范围内关于家庭分离的反对喧嚣已经逐渐平息。众议院的一项决议谴责了特朗普最初对伊尔汗·奥马尔(Ilhan Omar)、拉希达·特莱布(Rashida Tlaib)、亚历山德里娅·奥卡西奥-科尔特斯(Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez)和艾安娜·普莱斯利(Ayanna Pressley)的种族主义攻击。如今他在自己的集会上也说类似的话，却几乎不会成为新闻。
One of the most oft-used metaphors for the Trump years has been that of the slowly boiling frog. (The frog, in this case, being democracy.) By threatening what is essentially a coup, Trump may have turned the heat up too quickly, forcing some elected Republicans to implicitly rebuke him by restating their fealty to a constitutional transfer of power.
特朗普时代最常见的比喻之一就是温水煮青蛙。（青蛙在这里指的是民主制度。）通过实质等同于政变的威胁，他可能让水温升得过快，导致一些当选的共和党人重申他们忠于宪法规定的权力移交，含蓄地指责了他。
But if history is any guide, those Republicans will adjust to the temperature. The next time Trump says something equally outrageous, expect them to make excuses for him, or play some insulting game of whataboutism by likening Biden’s determination to count ballots past Nov. 3 to Trump’s refusal to recognize the possibility of defeat.
但如果历史有任何指导意义，这些共和党人还是会适应水温。特朗普下次再说出这样令人发指的言论，他们还是会为他找借口，或者玩起“对家也这样”的羞辱游戏，把拜登在计入11月3日之后的选票上的坚持形容为拒绝承认失败的可能性。
Still, Trump can be defeated, along with the rotten and squalid party that is enabling him. Doing so will require being cleareyed about the danger Trump poses, but also hopeful about the fact that we could soon be rid of him.
但特朗普和纵容他的腐朽而肮脏的政党仍是可以被击败的。要做到这点，需要对特朗普所造成的危险有清醒的认识，同时也要对我们能很快摆脱他的事实抱有希望。
Trump would like to turn America into a dictatorship, but he hasn’t yet. For over four years he has waged a sort of psychological warfare on the populace, colonizing our consciousness so thoroughly that it can be hard to imagine him gone. That’s part of the reason he says he won’t leave if he’s beaten in November, or even after 2024. It’s to make us forget that it’s not up to him.
特朗普想把美国变成独裁国家，但他还没做到。四年多以来，他对民众发动了一场心理战，彻底殖民了我们的意识，以至于我们很难想象他的下台。这就是他说自己就算在11月——甚至是2024年后——被击败也不会离开的部分原因。这是为了让我们忘记，这件事不是他能决定的。
Shortly after Trump was elected, the Russian-born journalist Masha Gessen published an important essay called “Autocracy: Rules for Survival.” Gessen laid out six such rules, each incredibly prescient. The one I most often hear repeated is the first, “Believe the autocrat,” which said, “Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization.”
就在特朗普当选后不久，出生于俄罗斯的记者玛莎·格森(Masha Gessen)发表了一篇重要评论，名为《专制之下的生存规则》(Autocracy: Rules for Survival)。格森列出了六条规则，每一条都有不可思议的先见之明。我反复听到人说的，就是第一条，“相信独裁者”——“每当你发现自己在想，或听到别人说，他在夸大其辞时，这就是我们寻求合理化解释的内在倾向。”
Right now, though, I find myself thinking about the last of Gessen’s rules: “Remember the future.” There is a world after Trump. A plurality of Americans, if not an outright majority, want that world to start in January. And whatever he says, if enough of us stand up to him, it can.
不过，现在我发现自己正在思考格森的最后一条规则：“勿忘未来”。特朗普之后，世界仍会存在。多数美国人——如果不是绝大多数——都希望世界能从明年1月开始。无论他说什么，只要我们有足够的人站起来反对，就是可以实现的。
