If Donald Trump tries to subvert democracy, will New Jersey-the one that Lincoln Steffens described as “the traitor state” for its embrace of corporate trusts-be implicated for the way the state’s media and political elites indulged him? Was our current national misery all presaged by Trump’s spectacular collapse in Atlantic City, which is so evident years later in the hulking ruin that is the vacant Trump Plaza at the heart of the iconic boardwalk? Just how did New Jersey go from being the “Crossroads of the American Revolution” to being implicated in our republic’s disease-ridden authoritarian dead-end? With just several days to go before the general election, the nation is amidst another wave of a once-in-a-century deadly pandemic, with a president who has refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power, even if his opponent gets more votes. EDITOR’S NOTE: InsiderNJ is featuring this 2020 piece today on the occasion of the implosion in Atlantic City of Trump Plaza.
