“Maybe the media that I’m following is not showing these.”
It’s going to be a long several years until the nation collapses. Or Trump does and VP Elegy takes over. Or the world somehow survives.
A couple of posts to flag.
Rude Pundit (Lee Papa) notes that hardcore MAGA types are beyond reaching. “Most,” anyway. Democrats trying to placate them, policy-wise, will win no points with them.
Most Trump supporters would be happy to die in a ditch as long as they feel free to use the n-word again and liberals are mad. The sooner Democrats get their head around that, the better they will be able to oppose Republicans.
Democrats need to do they best they can policy-wise to pursue their own agenda without compromising in the mistaken belief it will help their electoral prospects in Trump country. They cannot oppose Trump by trying to play nice with him and prove they are the adults in the room. It only makes the weak appear weaker. Nobody wants to vote for that. And even if they do, they won’t turn out to vote for that.
Will Stancil has sharper words on pushing back visibly.
If you work with elite journalists or top Democrats, you have a moral obligation to shout at them to stop hiding what's going on and start reacting appropriately. They're failing the country right now with consequences that will reverberate through generations
For all their experience, the Democrats’ gerontocracy is bringing 20th-century knives to a 21st-century gun fight. Too many learned politics in the 1980s. Even if they could learn new tricks, they’re not the ones to bring it now. The Trump-oligarch alliance is not your grandfather’s country-club Republican Party. That’s gone.
Younger Dermocratic leaders were born into this media and political melieu. Senior Democrats should be learning from the young-uns, but not trying to lead with half-learned skills they picked up last week. Remember your cringe when Joe Biden tried his hand at TikTok?
I’m not saying they are all reacting inappropriately. Some Dem senators brought real heat to questioning Trump nominees. But who sees that besides geeks like us, Dear Reader? Not the general public and not Trumpists with their eyes wide shut. That’s what Stancil’s responding to.
It’s what Jordan Klepper’s demonstrating here, especially in the last half of the clip:
It’s Everything Everywhere All at Once time. Democrats who can’t chew the leather anymore need to step back and let their junior members with the right skills stand in front.
Digby covered this guy on Wednesday, but Russell Vought, Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, merits (I use that term loosely) more time in disinfecting sunshine.
Sen. Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, has a lot of federal employees living in his state. People with families, Americans trying to do a good job and make ends meet. Kaine questioned Vought, an architect of Project 2025, about his authorship of a budget proposal titled “A Commitment to End Woke and Weaponized Government” that Vought produced for the Center for Renewing America where Vought was its president.
Vought, an avowed Christian nationalist, proposed deep cuts to the SNAP program (food stamps) and Medicaid. Quoting from the Bible, Kaine had questions for Vought about that and about what programs he considers “woke” during his Senate confirmation hearing.
“Is providing nutrition assistance to low-income kids ‘woke and weaponized’? Kaine asked Vought, who refused to answer, replying that he “wasn’t here to talk about the budget that center put out.”
Kaine pressed further, but Vought claimed he was only there on behalf of the president. The Virginia senator then pointed out that in the same document, Vought proposed deep cuts to Medicaid for low-income families, tenant-based rental assistance, and low-income housing energy assistance.
“This was all in your document about ending woke and weaponized government. OK, let’s see, we want to traumatize federal employees and then we want to take all of these programs that help everyday people who are struggling and cut them because they’re ‘woke and weaponized.’ Those are your words, not mine,” Kaine concluded. “From the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks.”
You may remember Vought from undercover video shot by two reporters from the nonprofit Centre for Climate Reporting.
The New Republic noted when the video posted in August:
Vought revealed his group plans to create “shadow” agencies to implement its draconian vision to solidify the “Judeo-Christian worldview value system.”
“We’ve been too focused on religious liberty, which we all support, but we’ve lacked the ability to argue we are a Christian nation,” said Vought.
“I want to make sure that we can say we are a Christian nation,” he said. “And my viewpoint is mostly that I would probably be Christian nation-ism. That’s pretty close to Christian nationalism because I also believe in nationalism.”
Vought means to “rehabilitate Christian nationalism.” Perhaps that’s just in his off-the-clock spare time, but he seems quite committed to it.
As Digby noted, “Trump is too stupid and narcissistic to even vaguely understand or care what this man is up to.” He’s too obsessed with wreaking vengeance on anyone and everyone he thinks done him wrong. “I don’t care,” Trump told Sean Hannity when the Fox News celebrity tried to turn their conversation to the economy. Vought can have at the rest of us for all Trump cares.
Donald Trump represents everything that for my entire lifetime this country flattered itself it was not. His reelection puts the lie to that national fantasy. The long arc of the moral universe took a nose dive on Nov. 5 like the stock market on Black Monday.
Trump’s “United States of Backlash,” Paul Waldman calls it:
What is the society Trump now seeks to create? It’s one in which virtually all the social progress of the last half-century is reversed. Not only will efforts to address racism in both public and private institutions be eliminated, even talking about racism will be either forbidden (as in schools) or banished through intimidation. Even the most milquetoast efforts to improve diversity will no longer be allowed. Millions of undocumented immigrants and their families — including both legal immigrants and U.S. citizens — will be deported, while legal immigration is drastically reduced, the result of which will be a re-whitened nation in line with a blood-and-soil conception of American identity.
Women will be removed from combat roles in the military and leadership in other organizations, where “masculine energy” will finally be valued again. Abortions will become unobtainable, at least for those who aren’t wealthy. Transgender people will be forced back in the closet, their very existence deemed unspeakable. Straight white men will no longer have to fear anyone saying to them “Hey, what you just said is kind of uncool, don’t be an asshole.” At long last, “wokism” will be destroyed. And with that, the liberals will no longer be on top; they will be hounded and frightened into silence, just as they ought to be.
Readers knew that. But it’s worse. The America Trump means to create for himself, and only for himself, snuffs out the American spirit the huckster claims to embody.
The Trump era that began in 2016 has made America a meaner, angrier, more quarrelsome place. Trump has convinced millions that their worst self is their truest self, that there is no greater happiness than seeing those you hate suffer, and that there is not only no shame but even a kind of nobility in being like Trump: rude, cruel, petty, greedy and small.
Where is the backlash against that, against the public savaging of the ideals behind our flawed founding and the last century of world leadership? Or has Trump convinced a critical mass of Americans that all those lofty words introducing the Declaration were Trumpish “truthful hyperbole“? Bullshit?
The Irish Labour Party’s Aodhán Ó Ríordáin gets it. Trump and Trumpism is as much an attack on American principles as it is on EU principles. He’s not having it even if his fellow legislators are prepared to go along to get along with America’s newly inaugurated monarch.
“Yesterday we witnessed the inauguration of a man whose ideology embodies everything the EU was founded to reject” “Standing up to Trump will come at a cost, but it is much less than letting this poison win” “Europe must resist because our history demands it” – My Speech on Trump’s inauguration
Will Stancil gives Democrats their marching orders. Bring the fight to the führer. Set a new narrative. Define the shit out of Trump. And not by trying to craft “the” message that will do it. Two can play flood the zone:
So, Democrats: your job is to argue that Trump is unfit, corrupt, decrepit, incompetent, and authoritarian. You want voters to form a mental image of him as unsafe, unreliable, untrustworthy, immoral, and inept. He can is selling out to the highest bidder; he is motivated entirely by greed, hate, and stupidity. His family is corrupt, and everyone who touches him is corrupt. He elevates violent men because they praise him, and dictators because they also praise him. He’s liable to get us all killed or destroy the federal government. When he’s president you can’t sleep easy at night, because there is no one competent leading the country who can respond to any crisis. It’s indecent and insane he’s president.
(This narrative has the added benefit of being entirely correct.)
Then, you just flood the zone with every horrible thing he’s done. React appropriately and angrily. It does not matter if every Democrat is reacting to the same thing, as long as the reaction is appropriately negative.
Indeed, it’s useful to have people mad about many different things at once, which maximizes the chance that some of it will land. Think about how information works in the modern media ecosystem: some stuff blows up, goes viral, and is seen by everyone, but you can’t predict in advance what it will be. Better to have lots of people saying lots of things to maximize your odds, than everyone saying a single thing, and hoping it’s right.
It certainly doesn’t matter if people capture every horrible detail. Some abuses will attract more attention than others. That’s fine. The goal is to ensure that everywhere people look, they see more evidence of the key narrative of Trump’s incredible unfitness and corruption. That’s how narratives work! The pieces promote the whole.
The right wing did that with Al Gore, with Hillary Clinton, and with Joe Biden. Make payback hell.
March. Meet offensive with counteroffensive. Trump has declared war.
For Trump’s second presidency, let’s do things differently. Let a thousand scandals bloom. Exploit the fact you have hundreds of elected officials and thousands of prominent voices and chase after every bit of wrongdoing. As long as Americans are hearing bad things about Trump, and not good things, you’re still promoting the core narrative of his unfitness. And that’s the essential fact that voters need to carry into the ballot booth.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy was a comedian and actor before Vladimir Putin’s Russian forces invaded his country. Zelenskyy adapted. He learned. It may even have been against his nature, as leading in this environment seems against that of most Democratic “leaders.” But he did it.
Conan : To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.
In his first unexpected term, JV Last explains, Trump discovered to his disappointment that, while his party superficially supported him, there were pockets of energy-sucking resistance that needed purging before he could fully work his will. Plus, there were “two other spheres in which structures prevented a president from acting as emperor”: the federal government and the broader culture of decency and honesty upon which he’d long preyed. Now with the Republican Party fully subjugated, “he’s going to war against America.”
Last outlines a strategy I’ve watched North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature pursue for over a decade. Take actions that starve blue cities of revenue to induce budget crises. Force cities to raise taxes, cut services, or both, generating popular discontent. By the time the crises bite, voters have forgotten whose actions precpitated them. Then Republicans run candidates (and perhaps finally win) against Democrats’ “failed policies.”
It’s a twofer. Trump can hurt businesses and make life more expensive for consumers in New York and Illinois—and then attack blue state mayors and governors for these problems and maybe even help Republican candidates win in those states. Meanwhile, Fox will run B-roll from the raids on a loop, satisfying Trump voters in Texas and Arizona—whose economies will continue to benefit from immigrant workers.
Trump understands that blue states are the last bastions of meaningful popular opposition to his rule, so he will use the federal government to subdue them. That’s what deportations—and tariffs—are for. These are executive powers which can be used in highly-targeted ways to hurt on local economies.
I deliberately did not watch the inauguration, opting instead to attend a local MLK-day march that I found upon arrival had been cancelled because of single-digit wind chills.
Luckily, a couple of people reported all the juciest bits.
Daniela Elser, entertainment writer for news.com.au found the event summarized in the bra advertisement worn by fiance to Jeff Bezos, Lauren Sanchez. She “appeared at Donald Trump’s inauguration wearing a white blazer with her nether things on full display.”
Sanchez didn’t wear an outfit that reflected the gravity and the importance of the swearing of a president, some deferential, demure bit of conservative cos-playing and faux seriousness. No, she arrived looking like she was ready for a Real Housewives weave-yanking-a-thon.
And that’s exactly what Trump’s second term is: A reality show.
Sanchez has just exposed Trump’s second term for the phony Louis Vuitton with two ‘i’s, cheap Bali knock-off of a presidency it really is.
The Hollywood Reporter observed that once again Trump “showcased his multiple personalities, turning the United States of America into something closer to United States of Tara.” Daniel Fienberg predicted that reporting would focus on Trump’s more scripted Rotunda speech when his off-the-cuff Emancipation Hall speech was more … emancipated:
To me, though, it felt more like a Comic-Con presentation, albeit in a room dwarfed by Hall H. Trump began with the promise “The Golden Age of America begins right now,” a meaningless classification comparable to whatever phase of the MCU Kevin Feige has chosen to classify at any given time. Trump proceeded to make his way through various announcements that were leaked in the press hours and days and weeks ago, earning those standing ovations for each confirmation instead of each announcement.
“Is he going to announce a sequel to The Wall?” He announced a sequel to The Wall!
“Is he going to talk about a reboot of drilling?” He actually used the phrase “Drill, baby drill.”
“Is he going to trot out his best-known catchphrases?” There was one point at which he referred to “winning like never before” twice in under three minutes. Wakanda forever, President Trump.
The only way this could have felt more like a Comic-Con presentation is if he had shown the crowd a clip package of God saving him from an assassin’s bullet, asked fans if they wanted to see the clip package again and then played it three more times.
Certainly the dude outside shouting, “The king has returned!” would be in the front row dressed as a soldier of Gondor.
Donald Trump is a showman and a con man. He is not a strategist. Nor are most of his closest advisers. But he is at his core insecure, so breaking out his sharpie to sign a raft of Day 1 orders was a display of strength that appealed to him. Soon after the convicted felon swore an oath to the U.S. Constitution no one expected him to uphold, Trump launched an attack against the rule of law on Monday. His goal? To consolidate power in his hands and crush opponents in the “old republic” before they can mount any resistance.
At best, the supine press will call Trump’s actions shock-and-awe, after the Bush II-era invasion of Iraq. But blitzkrieg is likely his strategists’ inspiration even if yesterday’s actions were no surprise.
Wikipedia defines shock-and-awe, or “rapid dominance” (something Trump practices in person), as “the use of overwhelming power and spectacular displays of force to paralyze the enemy’s perception of the battlefield and destroy their will to fight.” The distinction may not be academic, but since Trump’s actions on Monday did not involve armor, artillery and warplanes, blitzkrieg is not quite the right metaphor. But everyone gets the point. Bottom line: Trump declared war on anyone not kneeling before him.
The White House issued an official list of Trump’s recissions of Biden executive orders, plus a multi-page list of his own Christmas morning gifts to himself, to his oligarch allies, and finally to his political ones. The Associated Press reports that with the executive orders Trump signed, he “began his immigration crackdown, withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate accords and sought to keep TikTok open in the U.S.” He also “pardoned hundreds of people for their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.”
If you thought “stand back and stand by” was a winking signal to Trump’s would-be Sturmabteilung in 2020, with those pardons on Monday he all but began peddling armbands and Sam Browne belts online. Locking and loading will come later.
I won’t try to summarize the lot. The press has all that. But if one headline encapsulates the royalists’ impulse for rolling onto their backs and peeing into the air when the king barks, it is this from Politico’s landing page. The firm’s founding editor and global editor-in-chief declares Trump, not necessarily for good, “a force of history“:
I’m not exaggerating about royalists.
Richard Hofstadter famously decribed the “paranoid style in American politics.” But do not underestimate the royalist strain. Plenty of our flag-waving countrymen secretly yearn to be subjects. They never believed in popular sovereignty. They never bought into the founders’ “created equal” nonsense. They remain committed to a system of government by hereditary royalty and landed gentry. They just won’t admit it to themselves.
At noon Monday, the news rippled through a snaking mass of people in downtown D.C. One man, tall and bundled against the frigid air, raised his arms and pumped his fists. He jumped and released a joyous scream.
“It happened! Fooour looong years. The king has returned!”
Do not be distracted by the shiny baubles and sharp barbs among Trump’s first actions meant to catch your attention. As much as to effectuate his agenda, they are there to signal his intentions to friend and foe alike that the king has returned. Whether supporters like the man above like what they get depends on what Trump does next, on how much he can actually accomplish between trips to the golf course and his cult rallies. And on how much Americans who want to remain Americans can do to preserve the world’s oldest democracy from the predations of Trump and his team of neo-feudalists.
Given the present compostition of the Democratic Party leadership in Congress, I’m less than optimistic.
Democrats’ Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer lost no time in proving he can’t chew the leather anymore:
It is time to look to the future.The challenges that face America are many and great.The Senate must respond with resolve, bipartisanship, and fidelity to the working and middle class of this country.
Here with the wind chill, it’s like 2 deg outside. And still I think I’ll attend our local MLK peace march and rally (if it’s still on) rather than throw shit at my TV. I need a stiff shot of not-crazy. I just need to remember to leave the TV on tuned to Animal Planet. He’ll lie about his inauguration’s ratings anyway, but what the hell. Make the “blackout” meme trend. It’s like chicken soup….
I know several couples of means who’ve already fled the country. But for the rest of us, Brian Klaas (okay, from England) offers suggestions for surviving the next four years now that tweets about “shooting shoplifters without a trial and executing America’s top general” barely register, and the Saudis can now bribe Trump without needing “to pretend to stay at a Trump hotel.”
Rampell on Trump coin: If you're the Saudi government, you no longer need to pretend to stay at a Trump hotel in order to give money to Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/l1o6lP0iH2
Klaas, with a Ph.D. earned in studying authoritarian regimes, knows whereof he speaks. He offers a few suggestions:
Never Doomscroll: Smarter Engagement, Real “Self Care”
Stay informed, but not constantly. Post online—or don’t—but not constantly. Remember that your personal resilience is a proxy for your effectiveness as a citizen. And when you find yourself consumed by the foaming, angry spectacle of politics, step away and go for a walk. Isolated outrage isn’t just individually destructive, it’s also counterproductive in the fight for the common good.
A four-mile walk is how I decompress after doing this for hours every morning. But with unusually cold January temperures lately, I’m not doing it. And I feel it.
Picking Our Battles
Democratic politicians should—to borrow the phrase from Jason Linkins of The New Republic—try to “shove the presidency down Trump’s throat.”
I covered that here. Klaas continues that while clicktivism and posting are not much use, mass protests are most effective only if used sparingly. Yet, because the American opposition was too worn out to take to the streets on January 7th, 2021, it was a lost opportunity to reinforce temporary vertebrates like Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnell. Without a “mass movement in the streets demanding action,” theirs rapidly evaporated.
Klass offers two tests for whether mass protests are worth doing. January 6th passed both:
Are we protesting against something that the overwhelming majority of Americans also objects to?
Are we protesting against something that, if left unchallenged, would result in the permanent erosion of democracy itself?
As we’ve seen with the Liz Cheneys and the Lincoln Project:
And don’t be afraid to make strange bedfellows in politics. The most effective opposition movements to authoritarian populism organize as big tents, not jettisoning their own policy values, but inviting those who disagree with them on policy to make common cause on decency and democracy.
Building power is more effective than outrage:
Smarter Organizing, Supercitizen Communities
Finally, my advice is to think about the political landscape as an aggregation of incentives and disincentives. Only then can you realize where leverage exists, and how to exploit it.
Don’t spend money with Trump enablers. Start now to target “House Republicans in competitive districts for 2026.” But don’t forget that not all politics is federal. Support local and state races. (In case you’ve forgotten, we’re still fighting tooth-and-nail to secure a NC state Supreme Court seat a Democrat won here in November.)
Supercitizens—those who volunteer to improve their communities and lift others up—continue to add restorative stitches into our fraying social fabric. The most poetic imaginable response to the return of callousness and cruelty in the White House would be a resurgence of volunteering, community support, and fresh initiatives to help strangers who are our neighbors.
That’s why I donate to these guys:
View on Threads
I’m sure Los Angeles has tons of helper groups that need help to help neighbors.
Gettysburg National Military Park (Photo: U.S. National Park Service)
Political adversaries cannot disappoint me. I expect nothing of them except more of what I oppose. Friends and allies, on the other hand, can disappoint me because I expect better of than I often get.
Perhaps the slagging of Democrats by the press is not so much conservative bias (or billionaire service) as disappointment among members of a profession known to lean left. The press and the public have come to expect outrage and an eyeball-catching circus from MAGA Republicans. When like Linus Van Pelt, Democrats fail to live up to their potential, complaints rain down like Charlton Heston’s burning hail. Except without the same uniformity.
Such as complaints raised at a post-election forum in Saginaw, Michigan. Vincent Oriedo, a biotechnology scientist, questioned what Democrats had learned from their loss to Donald Trump (The Guardian):
As the town hall with Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, and the local representative in the state legislature, Amos O’Neal, came to an end, Oriedo said he was disappointed with their answers, which amounted to bland statements about politicians “listening” to the voters.
“They did not answer the question,” he said.
“It tells me that they haven’t learned the lessons and they have their inner state of denial. I’ve been paying careful attention to the influencers within the Democratic party. Their discussions have centred around, ‘If only we messaged better, if only we had a better candidate, if only we did all these superficial things.’ There is really a lack of understanding that they are losing their base, losing constituencies they are taking for granted.”
Ph.D. biotech-scientist Black Latinos? Or anyone who feels taken for granted?
Other complaints: Too much focus on white, middle-class women. Too much focus on abortion rights in a state where voters passed an amendment protecting it. Too much reliance on polling over policy. Too little talk about the cost of groceries and kitchen-table issues. Too much “talk about the economy and kitchen-table issues” (without promising anything). This last critique allegedly shows Democrats “don’t have any principles.” This clearly explains why Michiganders handed their electoral votes to a 34-time felon.
Or this criticism:
“We have set ourselves up for generational loss because we keep promoting from within leaders that that do not criticise the moneyed interests. They refuse to take a hard look at what Americans actually believe and meet those needs.”
Today at noon, a twice-impeached, career con artist and adjudicated sex offender convicted of 34 felonies and investigated for 31 charges of espionage plus conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election retakes the Oval Office after winning it again last November. Just what is it Americans actually believe?
Just as with the flurry of pundits’ post-election analyses, complaints made against Democrats by people frustrated over Kamala Harris’s loss are, as I’ve noted, all over the place. Too little focus on this and too little on that. Paying too much attention to this group and not enough to another. That doesn’t mean the criticisms are wrong. People feel what they feel. But they don’t provide a roadmap either.
I’ve surely done my share of complaining. Senior Democrats talk a good game about fighting for the little guys, but the public rarely catches them doing it. Senior Democrats on Capitol Hill are too senior. Too much policy, not enough marketing.
Former U.S. Attorney and pundit, Joyce Vance, says the U.S. needs more civics education.
We need to seize the day on the big fight coming up about the budget and economy.
Doing year round community organizing on both issues and politics.
Better messaging is great, but we need a major plan ASAP urgently to deal with a broken media landscape. (What I’ve called Democrats’ “when a tree falls in the forest” problem.)
We need to build on the coalitions we have, but figure out different language to talk about some issues.
There are lots of suggestions, but no answers. I certainly don’t have any. Answers on offer by people MAGA Republicans cannot disappoint but Democrats can are over the place and point in different directions.
Woke up this morning from a very vivid dream. Dark, pre-dawn on a misty battlefield. Troops were completing their preparations and aligning just below a ridge waiting for the order to advance. Along the ridge above us were a line of cannon. Figured it was time to get the hell out. Walked up past the cannon in the mist to my car. Pulled onto the highway as the light was coming up and there were troops there, too, lining my side of the road. Cavalry. Only then did I realize they were all dressed in blue. Union troops.
Among those receiving the pardons were Gen. Mark A. Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the longtime government scientist; and all the members of the bipartisan House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, including former Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming.
“I believe in the rule of law, and I am optimistic that the strength of our legal institutions will ultimately prevail over politics,” Mr. Biden said in a statement. “But these are exceptional circumstances, and I cannot in good conscience do nothing. Baseless and politically motivated investigations wreak havoc on the lives, safety and financial security of targeted individuals and their families.
In a Seinfeld episode entitled “The Opposite” from 1994 (before my Gen Z friends were born, sorry), Jerry convinces George Costanza, perennial sad sack, that “if every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.” George tries doing the opposite of what his instincts tell him and his fortunes rapidly turn around.
The United States after instituting The New Deal built the greatest middle class the world has ever seen. Then after social and political reforms of the 1960s opened more opportunity to Americans still lagging behind, business interests organized a quiet counterrevolution to do the opposite.
The rich got their taxes cut under Ronald Reagan and fat cats got even fatter. Upward mobility stopped. Wages stagnated. President Bill Clinton loosened banking regulations opening the door for mortgage-backed securities and the subprime mortgage crisis. President George W. Bush, the supposed apotheosis of the grandees’ grand designs, cut their taxes even more and the economy crashed, impoverishing average Americans even more. The Obama administration let the fattest-cats-yet get away with their gains, and — voilà — Donald Trump, himself a privileged fat-cat-celebrity, promised the suckers he’d turn things around. He’d make America “great again,” invoking the historical period and economy his rich buddies had worked decades to unmake.
Trump’s opposite turns out to be more of the same, Eugene Robinson explains:
Trump connected with many voters who feel their current trajectory is downward, who no longer have the confidence that their children’s lives will be more affluent than their own. These voters put their faith in Trump to put them and their communities once again on a rising path.
But Trump promises to do the opposite: to double down on policies that have made the rich richer and the poor poorer.
This is already a second Gilded Age. Trump imagines adding even more gaudy gold leaf to it. He wants to return to the days of Wlliam McKinley: high tariffs, monopolies, and American expansionism. Good times for fat cats. Lean times for everyone else. After McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt came along and did the opposite.
Roosevelt promised a “square deal” for everyday Americans. Trump portrays himself as a champion of the working class, but his policies and practices say otherwise. I’ll believe him when he stops trying to fleece his supporters by selling them $40 American flag flip-flops, $55 MAGA hats and ugly red $200 sneakers.
He’s back for what will be four long years. If you love everything about him, enjoy the ride. If you don’t, spend this time planning and working to bring the Second Gilded Age to its end.
“Look at the size of this. It’s massive,” said Trump.
How the hell did we survive four years of this deeply insecure man-child once? How did Americans get crazy enough to give this unstable knot of personality defects four more years in the White House instead of in jail?
Anne Applebaum’s account of her visit to Denmark has me waggling my head like a Lonney Tunes character. She writes that “a Danish prime minister cannot sell Greenland any more than an American president can sell Florida.” And yet Donald Trump apparently called Copenhagen on Wednesday and demanded Mette Frederiksen do a real estate deal with him. It’s Kafkaesque.
Trump the Transactional seems to have generated a political crisis in Scandinavia even before his inauguration.
“In private discussions, the adjective that was most frequently used to describe the Trump phone call was rough. The verb most frequently used was threaten. The reaction most frequently expressed was confusion,” Applebaum writes. It’s not as if anything Trump might want the U.S. to do in Greenland is not already doable.
A former Danish diplomat related a story from 1957. The American ambassador sent the Danish prime minister a note that the U.S. was considering storing nukes at their Greenland base. Would the Danes like to be notified? Since it was not a specific ask, H.C. Hansen’s reply was:
“I do not think your remarks give rise to any comment from my side.” In other words, If you don’t tell us that you are keeping nuclear weapons in Greenland, then we won’t have to object.
The Danes are faithful trade partners and allies who lost a larger proportion of their population fighting alongside the U.S. in Afghanistan than we did. One diplomat asked Applebaum what the Danes did wrong:
Obviously, they did nothing wrong—but that’s part of the crisis too. Trump himself cannot articulate, either at press conferences or, apparently, over the telephone, why exactly he needs to own Greenland, or how Denmark can give American companies and soldiers more access to Greenland than they already have. Plenty of others will try to rationalize his statements anyway. The Economist has declared the existence of a “Trump doctrine,” and a million articles have solemnly debated Greenland’s strategic importance. But in Copenhagen (and not only in Copenhagen) people suspect a far more irrational explanation: Trump just wants the U.S. to look larger on a map.
Windmills, sharks, Hannibal Lecter, and now Greenland, Applebaum laments. The Russians are crowing over the similarity between Trump’s territorial ambitions in Greenland and Vladimir Putin’s imperial designs on Eastern Europe. Republicans on Capitol Hill and elsewhere just smile, nod, and say, “Yes, sir. How high?”
One year shy of 250 years old, the United States is the world’s most enduring democracy, yet still in its adolescence. Many of the world’s greatest creatives do their best work as adolescents, or as recent ones. The Beatles began in their teens. Steve Jobs launched Apple at 21. The U.S. has led the world in technological advancement and politically for a century. But plenty of adolescents never survive their teens.
