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This paper addresses Trump's failed self-coup, its authoritarian backwash, and threats to democracy. It analyzes his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which contributed to his 2020 election loss and deepened the political polarization that led to the January 6 Capitol insurrection. The essay also discusses how the forty-year acceleration of economic inequality and sociopolitical de-democratization generated a legitimacy crisis of the hegemonic, neoliberal regime that opened way for Trumpist ethnoracial nationalism. The Trump presidency and pandemic increased the intensity of the political-economic contradictions and transparency of the attenuated relationship of democracy and capitalism. In the consequent "interregnum," fundamental threats to democratic electoral institutions persist, yet a clear, realistic vision of an alternative democratic regime and the political bloc to bring it into being have yet to be forged. The fate of American democracy rides on overcoming the remarkable denial and normalization of the Trump coup attempt and on forging new safeguards for electoral institutions. Preventing a recurrence, however, requires a progressive transformation of Trumpism's de-democratized seedbed – neoliberal capitalism.

This is the published version. Copyright 2000 University of Chicago Press. ; Revived Weimar‐era "radical conservatism" and fresh "New Right" and "paleoconservative" theories offer a radical cultural critique of global capitalism and liberal democracy. Expressing a broader retribalization and perceived failure of modernization, their defense of communal particularity attacks the multicultural nation‐state, liberal rights, and universal citizenship. This essay links reactionary tribalism to a recurrent 20th‐century theoretical tendency, the "total critique of modernity"—a fusion of oversimplified Nietzschean and Weberian ideas. Historically, total critique has promoted convergence between right and left, such as the current overlapping facets of "radical conservatism" and "strong‐program postmodernism." Total critique counters the "historicist" method of "internal critique" and the "communication model" characteristic of reflexive social theory. The discussion uncovers the mediating role of social theory in the problematic relationship of science and partially disenchanted public spheres in plural, democratic cultures.