I'm still here

Also - Lord help us

I apologize for the long hiatus. I want to provide a brief update on what I am working on and then say something about the time we’re living through. On the first count, the main reason for the kvetching pause is *not* that the unbridled horror of the second Trump presidency has sent me into a depressive stupor. It’s more prosaic than that. I’ve been working on a book and that has taxed my writing muscles. The book is about how conservatism became Trumpism and it’s the third I’m writing with my buddy and co-author Marc Hetherington. For those of you who are interested, you can take a gander at what the first two books were about here and here. It is our great fortune that we have an additional co-author for this project, Drew Engelhardt, a rising star in the field of Political Science and a wonderful colleague. I’m looking forward to sharing more about that project in the coming months, which I am excited about, at least as excited as one can be in the midst of the unprecedented malevolence and bad faith we’re living through.

About that…

To use the same cliches everyone else is, we’re being bombarded, day after day, hour after hour, by a firehose of bullshit. Trump’s first ideologist Steve Bannon has explained clearly enough that this is part of the “strategy,” to dismay, disorient and misdirect, while Trump goes about setting fire to our social contract. That we all know this is happening is one thing. How we stand up to it, endure it, and organize against it is another matter entirely.

The reality, for now, is that our means of fighting back are constrained. Republicans control the entire Federal government, and the Supreme Court, as well as the governing apparatus in a majority of the states. The courts, at least for now, are blocking some of Trump/Musk’s aggression. But there are obvious limits to that means of redress, and Trump/Musk intend to test every one of them. Some of those backstops will hold. Others will break. On top of the levers of power in their hands, Trump/Musk have been able to wield perhaps the most dangerous weapon of all - a complete lack of conscience. Trump’s address to Congress two nights ago was a good illustration. He told baldfaced lie after baldfaced lie, including the outrageous claim that Social Security is making payments to millions upon millions of dead Americans. People often wonder whether Trump really believes what he says. I think that’s a moot issue. On most matters,Trump is an ignoramus. So, in one sense, he doesn’t necessarily know, most of the time, whether what he says is untrue because he has no idea what he’s talking about.

But the question is moot because all that ever matters to Trump is what he believes will give him an advantage. And that is directly tied to his conviction (the only one he really possesses) that you either dominate others or are dominated by them. As Ezra Klein said on his podcast yesterday, Trump’s lies are loyalty tests. Did Trump really believe that immigrants were stealing and eating people’s pets? Who knows. That wasn’t the point. The point was to impose his will on reality. When Trump attempts to do that, all that’s left is determining who submits to his will, and who doesn’t. The former are in good standing, and can even be put in charge of running vast, complex organizations with zero credentials to do so. And those who don’t are enemies, whose lives can and should be destroyed without a second thought. Since most people aren’t wired this way, it’s hard to fully come to terms with what it means that some individuals *are.* And we now live in a reality in which one such person is President and another is his de facto co-president.

I think it’s vitally important that people come to terms with this reality. I’ve had conversations in recent weeks with folks who are horrified by what Trump and Musk are doing. And at the same time, they wonder whether there isn’t at least something to some of the claims Trump is making. After all, there is plenty of waste in government. All politicians spin, and fudge the truth, to some extent, of course. And there are, indeed, legitimate and critical debates to have about what the United States’ role in the world should be, including whether and how we should be intervening in various conflicts. To name just a few. None of that matters now. Trump’s actions are, first and foremost, an expression of his will to dominate. There’s no good faith debate to have about whether some agencies really do deserve cutting. If there were, Trump and Musk would not be lying constantly about the waste and fraud they claim they’ve uncovered that turn out to be fabrications. And conceding the point in some realms won’t prevent Trump/Musk from taking a blow torch to the myriad other causes and projects most people do believe in like, for example, cancer research.

As I resume more regular output on here, I’ll say more about the outrages of the moment. But for the sake our sanity, and while we muddle through this early and especially disorienting and awful time, I want to encourage folks not to gaslight themselves.

The political philosopher Corey Robin recently wrote this on Facebook, and it’s worth keeping in mind:

The English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who virtually invented our theory of the modern state, famously said, that "reputation of power, is Power; because it draws with it the adherence of those that need protection." Power, he added, "is like to fame, increasing as it proceeds." Seeming powerful, in other words, is a source of power. This is one thing that Trump does understand (though he overestimates the power of display), which is why he's so often trumpeting wins that aren't wins and making such a performance of strength, even when, particularly, there's not much behind stage. Our job is to deprive him of that reputation and that fame, however we can. One way to do that is to constantly, relentlessly, whenever and wherever possible, point out all the ways in which he loses and fails to get, by his own publicly declared metrics, what he claims to want.

You might do this in conversation with family members or friends, among those who are pro-Trump, or who hate him but are resigned to their fate. For your sake and theirs, though, I think it’s critical at this point to hold fast to what we know to be true - that Trump cares about nothing but himself, wishes ill on anyone who refuses to serve him, and has no coherent vision of governing other than to assert dominance, smash that which he doesn’t like and aggrandize himself by whatever means he can. He has power, but he’s a fundamentally weak man. We needn’t afford him that which is not his due, including the benefit of the doubt. He’s unworthy.

To be continued…