During the election, when my conservative friends would talk about “crooked Hillary,” and explain their preference for Trump in terms of avoiding the Clintons’ purported crimes and ethical infractions, I wanted to scream. Did they not remember the scale of Republican illegal and unethical behavior during the Bush administration?
“Oh no, Trump is different,” they would say. “He already has so much money, he doesn’t need to be corrupt. He’s just going to make America great again.” [Suppress gag reflex!]
Me: “OK, but what about the Republicans in Congress?”
Trump supporters: “Oh no, Trump will stop them, because he’s a leader!”
At this point, I would wonder: Do they really believe what they are saying? In other words, do they really know what they are unleashing on America, and they just don’t care? Or are they just blind?
To What Crimes Does Trump Aspire?
Given his business and personal dealings, the case that Trump himself is not actively planning to be a crook is pretty flimsy. Admittedly, Trump has just about everything that money can buy, including more than he or any of the people he appears to care about could actually use in several lifetimes. In that sense, we could agree that Trump isn’t motivated by the kind of ho-hum greed that animates normal corrupt politicians. So Trump-style corruption likely involves more epic crimes. Now that his immediate family controls literally trillions of dollars in annual expenditures, the most probable scenario is that he and his minions will launch a set of byzantine schemes that involve third-party deals. It works like this: I do this for you. You do this for my friend. My friend does this for me. It’s all done with a wink and a nod and may not even actually be illegal, just like evading taxes by losing other people’s money. Since the Dems have no investigatory power, and Trump can pay everyone off, and 95% of the public lacks either the intellect or the knowledge or the will to understand such schemes, he simply gets away with murder. (Can we take this moment to join our evangelical friends in thanking God that the Clintons will no longer be able to engage in such crimes as using their political influence to raise money for charity. Or earning speaking fees because they are famous. Or using technology to protect the privacy of their personal communications. Thank you Lord Jesus, these horrors are behind us now.) So, putting aside strategically pimping the federal government to serve the Trump family’s long term financial interests, what does Trump want?
Power for What?
Clearly Trump wants power. But as to the nature of the power he seeks, we probably don’t fully fathom it yet. The main question would be power for what? He doesn’t appear to be driven by a set of ideologies, other than the respected right-wing ideology of making money in shady business deals, which he has already done to a fare-thee-well. It seems clear that he has no real intention or wherewithal to pursue any of his supposed policy objectives. A good example would be ripping up trade deals to help the working man. What a joke! As if the Republicans in Congress would actually go along with any real populist agenda! At this point, Trump seems to view the Presidency as another one of his fun toys. To the extent that playing with something requires the power to do with it just as you please, he seems to want power for personal entertainment (much the way that he enjoys playing with women as if they were fantasy wind-up toys offered simply for his amusement).
Attention Must Be Paid!
Trump’s other obvious and all consuming desire is for attention. He wants to be the center of it. For Trump, the prospect of ongoing, relentless attention is probably the most satisfying aspect of winning the Presidency. This also might explain his sudden (and surprising) calmness. He has captured the national spotlight and can now command it at will. Whenever he is feeling the slightest bit unnoticed, he can have the attention of several hundred million people as easily as a normal person can take a beer out of the fridge. It is likely that this wealth of attention is the thing that he most covets. Trump has locked away the national spotlight in a cage in his Tower. He alone has the key and can turn it upon himself at will.
Trump’s singular need for attention is both an asset and a liability to the body politic. It’s a liability in the sense that, if he has enough attention, he really doesn’t care what happens. His need for attention is a indiscriminate vessel that can be filled with anything. This is why he was so contented with being a reality TV star. To Trump, a meaningful existence is one in which hundreds of millions of eyeballs are riveted upon him. Thus, Republicans may well understand—and perhaps Putin has the same thought—that all they have to do is flatter, fear, or fight Trump epically, and then they can have all the policies that they have longed for throughout recent history. Make me the center of everything, says Trump in substance, and I’ll let you have the whole show.
Put Your Seat Belt On!
What happens if Trump just goes along for the Republican ride?
Some of the basics:
Feeding the War Beast. Republicans feel that the war machine has been terribly starved under Obama. They will work to further destabilize everything internationally and also use the excuse of fighting terror to line the pockets of their war-industry buddies to the tune of somewhere between 500 billion and one trillion dollars, as a starting point. Instead of building roads and bridges and schools, we will buy bombs and other instrumentality of violence. Why would they want to bust up alliances like NATO and get in bed with Putin? Because an unstable, violent world is one ripe for the war profiteers. Of course this will require boots on the ground. The coming death and destruction promises to create more terror, which leads to more money for the war-industry. We have watched this movie before in Bush’s Iraq: spend a trillion real dollars to wipe out fantasy weapons of mass destruction while stoking the flames of terror around the world. What we see is that the military industrial complex is intent on using terror as the new cold war. To borrow a Britishism, Republicans find this to be a smashing result.
Giving to the Rich. Of course Republicans will cut taxes and regulations everywhere they can. This is to further enrich the wealthy and create even more rampant inequalities of assets and income than we currently suffer. It’s not they are strictly against equality. It’s just that they are for rampant, unchecked wealth accumulation. Inequality is simply an externality of winning. Feeding the war beast is really just a case in point of this larger principle (always enrich the powerful). Of course we will continue to be told an unending stream of lies about how the further enrichment of the obscenely wealthy will benefit everyone. A rising tide lifts all boats, never mind about the ones chained to the sea floor.
Of course, the nation’s army of lobbyists (whom Trump repeatedly reminded us he understands so well) will also gorge themselves in this process of using federal power to pick winners in the marketplace. So many industries for Washington to shake down! Insurance, energy, education, healthcare, defense—a wealth of markets to manipulate for private gain. Do the Trump voters comprehend the full level of graft that they have just unleashed?
The Republican overarching projects of increasing global conflict in the service of war profiteers and enriching the wealthy will lead to even greater deficits and increases in the federal debt. To stop some of this increase in debt, they will bludgeon social security, medicare and medicaid. Then when people complain, they will pimp these programs out to wealthy corporations. Why actually take care of those in need when you can pretend to do it while further fattening those at the top? They will push this to the brink, turning the federal government into a creature trapped in a torture chamber, starved of resources, twisted beyond all recognition, but left alive for their future bleeding and entertainment. After all, to play this game over the long haul, you still need to be able to siphon away and manipulate public assets for personal gain. They don’t want to destroy the federal government, just cripple and bleed it.
Locking Themselves into Power. With control over the Supreme Court, they will use domestic spying programs to stifle dissent (using the “fighting terror” justification) and they will continue to eviscerate civil rights (using the “states’ rights” justification) toward the same objective. We will see further gerrymandering and voter suppression in an effort to tilt the electoral system against those who would thwart their agenda. Expect even more police brutality. Deporting and stopping the path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants is part of the same agenda, of course. She who fails in the quest for citizenship never becomes a Democrat and never votes.
They will try to force women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term and eviscerate equal rights for women in order to make sure that the leadership stays white, male and privileged.
They will strip away rights for the LGBTQ community because minorities tend to be progressive, and if you make their lives miserable, they are less able to fight you on all of your other objectives.
Blaming Minorities. While they are achieving their objectives in feeding the war machine and enriching one another, they will blame the continuing problems suffered in America on the alleged failures of black and brown people, taking more pages from the fascist’s handbook of racial propaganda. We will be told that everything would go better if we were not all such lazy, stupid, evil, godless people. Really, wouldn’t everything be better if the Republicans could just get rid of us once and for all, with a final solution?
And you can probably add to this lovely list… Am I exaggerating or painting too pessimistic of a picture? Anyone who believes that the above description is an exaggeration has not been paying attention.
The ONE Thing Trump Doesn’t Want — And How to Use It
How does Trump feel about all of this?
Here’s where there might be an asset, some small glimmer of hope, in Trump’s insatiable need for attention. If Republicans take him for granted and get too comfortable, he may well decide to pick a fight on some these projects. Why? Here is where a little insight into Trump’s psychological drivers can help.
The ideologically rudderless Trump is only ever really concerned about one question: What brings me the biggest audience? It will actually begin to bother Trump if Republicans are too happy with him or assume they can go around him. Trump’s dream will be to have everyone in the nation, indeed, in the whole world, watching his every move. Trump might really enjoy a cataclysm in which he infuriates Republicans and Democrats in equal measure. The Senate and House leaders will go mad trying to understand how to play their cards in order to manipulate Trump.
Republicans have always understood that they they face a real difficulty in the fact that Trump will remain mercurial, uncontrollable and unpredictable. As a result, we may well see them attempt to knock him out and move Pence up. The Republican party’s quest for absolute power may offer Dems another interesting set of options, as Trump’s counter against the Republican establishment may be to triangulate with Dems on certain policy issues selected according to his whim. We can expect him to keep the Republican party at bay by flirting with the Democrats. Even now, he is waffling on preserving parts of Obamacare that he “likes.”
Trump enjoys such games. Of course he does. At the end of the day, what Trump really wants is infinite adoration. Trump wants the 59 million and counting Hillary voters to love him. And he knows that the first step toward adoration is simply to force you to pay attention. Because no one can learn to adore you if they don’t first notice you. So to Trump, shock and anger are simply first steps on the eventual pathway to your worshiping him. You can bet that Trump has some shock and anger reserved for his Republican critics and would be managers. Like any abuser, he enjoys beating you and pleasing himself at your expense, in a cyclical pattern.
Finally, we must expect that Trump will eventually use the imminent threat of nuclear war to maximize worldwide attention on himself. North Korea might work well for that. The nukes are there and just too interesting for Trump to leave alone. When a gun is introduced in a story, you know it is going to be fired, or at least pointed at someone. After all, what better way to achieve a universal orgasm of attention than to sit with your finger on the button of nuclear annihilation pointed at some people whom you need to win over? When this terrible moment arrives, the best defense for the people staring down a bunch of nuclear warheads will be to turn on their phones, computers and televisions, to watch and listen closely to their aspiring overlord. Because there is really only one thing Trump doesn’t want: to kill his audience.
One wonders if the Trump-loving evangelicals are happy now? The longed-for end times draw closer every day.
My friends, as we all know, we are now staring into the abyss. We must conduct a full accounting, with eyes wide open, of the horror that our countrymen and women have unleashed on America and the world. Only then can we begin to grapple with it.
