By Jonah Goldberg
Friday, November 03, 2023
In HBO’s The Wire, an ambitious drug dealer
named Marlo is determined to “wear the crown”—i.e. become the undisputed top
dog of Baltimore drug dealers. To get there, he needs to rely on some of his
rivals—for access to better product, and to learn how to successfully launder
money and bribe politicians. But once he figures this stuff out, he realizes he
doesn’t need them anymore. So he kills “Prop Joe,” dismantles the “co-op”—a
cartel of various Baltimore drug dealers—and consolidates power.
There are better analogies—from history, politics,
etc.—for what we’re seeing in Trumpworld. The story of various historical
figures rising to power by relying on existing stakeholders only to eliminate
or marginalize those stakeholders once they attain power is very old. Joseph
Stalin edged out Leon Trotsky, for instance, by forming a triumvirate within
the Politburo with Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev. After forcing Trotsky out,
Stalin then went to work on marginalizing his former partners. He played similar
games with various generals, relying on their independent power and status
while he needed it, then eliminating them precisely because they had
independent power and status. By the time of Stalin’s Great Terror, the most
dangerous thing one could do was to have any status or power that wasn’t
entirely dependent on proximity, and loyalty, to Stalin himself. Of course, the
second most dangerous thing one could do is have any power at all, because
Stalin was so paranoid, he saw anyone with power and influence—even if it
flowed from him—as a potential danger.
A very similar story can be told of Mao Zedong, Xi
Jinping, Saddam Hussein, and countless other criminals and despots. Play the
game on the way up, rewrite the rules of the game once you get there.
Now, I want to be very clear: I don’t think Trump is
Marlo, Mao, Saddam, or Stalin. He’s not a mass murderer, nor is he that smart.
I just think it’s easier to illustrate the dynamic in
those contexts. I have no doubt there are countless titans of industry and more
conventional politicians who could provide illuminating examples of this
approach to the quest for power.
Donald Trump the businessman is one such example. On his
way up, he made deals with other businessmen he needed. Once he got what he
wanted, he screwed them. (He even brags about it in Art of the Deal.)
For instance, Trump made a big
name for himself rehabbing the Wollman Ice Rink in Central Park.
He persuaded Art
Nusbaum, owner of HRH Construction, to do all of the work for free in exchange
for lavish publicity for doing such civic-minded work. But while Trump
routinely held press conferences touting the progress “he” was making restoring
the rink, Trump never mentioned Nusbaum or HRH once. It was all Trump’s doing,
according to Trump. He always claims a monopoly on credit and he always assigns
blame elsewhere.
When Donald Trump was campaigning for president in 2015
and 2016, he made promises to every stakeholder on the right that he would be
their loyal servant and champion. That was the point of signing a pledge to
appoint Supreme Court justices selected by the Federalist Society. That was the
thinking behind picking Mike Pence as a running mate—signaling to the
evangelical and pro-life communities—that he would carry the ball for them.
Whenever anyone asked about guns, Israel, abortion, whatever, he would respond
“nobody will be better” on whatever their concern was.
Trump, a glorified condo salesman, had spent his life
saying “yes” to any question that would close the sale. And once the dotted
line was signed and the check handed over, he couldn’t care less about his
obligations.
In a closed-door
meeting with legislators in July 2016, the presumptive nominee was
asked if he would protect “Article I” powers—i.e. the powers of Congress under
the Constitution. “I want to protect Article I,” he reportedly replied.
“Article II, Article XII—go down the list.”
The fact that there is no Article XII in the Constitution
should have been a sign not only that Trump had no idea what he was talking
about, but that he had no interest in, or knowledge of, Article I
prerogatives.
But, as would happen thousands of times over the course
of his presidency, most Republicans heard what they wanted to hear. “I think he
was confusing Articles and Amendments. Remember, this guy doesn’t speak from a
teleprompter. He speaks from the heart,” Rep. Blake Farenthold explained, as if an
explanation was synonymous with an excuse.
And let the record show, what was obvious in theory in
2016 became manifest throughout his presidency. He couldn’t care less about
congressional prerogatives, as demonstrated by his attempt to declare a
national emergency to go around Congress and build a border wall.
The mastermind behind that idea was Russell Vought, a
conservative activist who served as Trump’s director for the Office of
Management and Budget at the end of his administration. He now heads a MAGA
think tank, the Center for Renewing America, and is a leader of Project 2025, a
Heritage Foundation-backed effort to dismantle the administrative state and
bring all executive branch employees under
the direct authority of the president.
Now, I am no fan of the administrative state, and I have
sympathies for some of the arguments made by this crowd (when made in good
faith). I do think many federal agencies are on autopilot and need to be
subject to more political—i.e. democratic—accountability. So, I don’t want to
associate myself with a lot of left-wing critics of unitary
executive theory.
But the argument doesn’t end there. Those agencies are
creations of Congress, not the executive branch, and I’d rather that political
accountability come largely from Congress reasserting those Article I powers
Trump claimed to care about. Congress established and pays for these agencies,
and so the job of making sure they don’t act like a fourth branch of government
should be done by the branch—the first branch—of government that created them
and pays the bureaucrats salaries.
More to the point: If there’s a single argument against a
maximalist unitary executive theory it can be summed up with the words, “Donald
Trump.” You know what article of the Constitution Trump loves? Article II, of
course. And here was his
interpretation: “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do
whatever I want as president.”
Which brings me to an article in
the New York Times this week about how Vought &. Co,
no longer have any use for Federalist Society lawyers. You see, Vought told
the Times, “The Federalist Society doesn’t know what time it
is.”
Knowing the time.
The Know-Nothings were a
nativist political movement in the 1850s that was convinced of a vast papist
conspiracy to undermine (white protestant) democracy in America. They were
called “Know-Nothings” because of the standing rule to say “I know nothing”
whenever members were asked what their agenda was. As paranoid populist
movements go, it had a lot going for it. Know-Nothings weren’t antisemites.
They were split on slavery. They supported progressive labor reforms and
expanded rights for women. They just really didn’t like Catholic immigrants and
the pope in Rome.
I only bring them up because the Know-Nothings and the
Time-Knowers have some interesting similarities. They share an apocalyptic
belief that sinister forces—often fueled by immigration—are destroying America.
They also share a belief that their enemies are ruining America on purpose and
therefore they must be stopped by any means necessary, or at least with the
same means they use.
This is all a natural outgrowth of Michael Anton’s “Flight
93” nonsense. The passengers of Flight 93 knew what time it was and did
what was required of them. As David Reaboi, a champion of Chrono Awareness, explains:
“Knowing ‘what time it is’ is realizing that these institutions are crumbling,
with or without you, and the surest way to get to something better is to allow
them to crumble—and for as many people as possible to recognize that these
things are, indeed, crumbling.”
This isn’t conservatism, it’s radicalism. Radicalism is
the view that the existing society is corrupt and that it would be better to
burn it down—or let it burn—because whatever comes next would have to be
better, so long as we’re in charge. Indeed, among the many, many problems
with radicalism is that it invariably gives license to people who just want
power.
When I hear people ask, “Do you know what time it is?”
I’m reminded of that scene in Captain America: The Winter Soldier where
Gary Shandling whispers, “Hail Hydra!” It’s a shibboleth for people auditioning
to use, and abuse, power. Heck, as Robert Redford—who
plays a Hydra agent—explains, “To build a better world, sometimes means tearing
down the old one.”
When you read the Time-Knowers’ stuff, one of the things
that comes through is the palpable envy they have for their enemies on the
left. The left clawed its way into power, abusing the openness of the liberal
order and then slammed down the curtain behind them. I agree with a lot of this
stuff, to one extent or another. Many of the institutions that are supposed to
be the most liberal—universities, newspapers, the ACLU—have become remarkably
illiberal. Where I part ways is at the “therefore what? stage. Because it
invariably boils down to, “We should do that too!” Saul Alinsky went from
a demonic
figure on the right to being a role model.
As someone who believes that the liberal order of the
Constitution is one of the greatest boons to humanity in all of human history,
I have little patience for people who say, “They broke the rules, so we have to
break them, too!” The problem with Federalist Society lawyers, according to the
Time-Knowers, is that they insisted on following the law and the Constitution.
Mike Pence’s great sin was in refusing to know what time it was on January 6.
The legitimate accomplishments of the Trump administration, for the
Time-Knowers, are now seen as evidence of how much more Trump could have
accomplished had he not been stabbed in the back by Time-Ignorant cucks who
wanted to have government work within the bounds of the law and
Constitution.
They’d rather have lawyers who say yes to whatever Trump
demands. If the courts smack it down, they can either ignore the courts or
claim that those judges are part of the institutional rot that needs to be
swept away.
That’s why I have even less patience for people who think
Donald Trump is the anointed vessel for rectifying our corrupt institutions.
That’s the thing, I can have thoughtful, interesting, and productive
conversations with some of these people until they say, “And that’s why Donald
Trump needs to be in power.”
Donald Trump doesn’t care about any of this stuff. He’s
like a Far Side dog who hears “blah, blah, blah, blah, POWER,
blah, blah, blah.”
Trump has spent his life getting ahead by telling people
what they want to hear—when he needed them. But when his needs changed, he
didn’t think twice about betraying those people. Everyone in his universe who
actually believes in, or is loyal to, anything—the Constitution, the law,
conservatism, democracy, or even their own political or legal
self-interest—becomes a Prop Joe or Zinoviev the moment they prove inconvenient
to Trump’s personal desires or needs.
It’s really amazing. Many of the same people who said we
have to elect Trump because he will appoint conservative judges, fight for the
unborn, and protect the Constitution are now utterly unfazed by Trump’s disdain
for judges that were more loyal to the law and Constitution, his willingness
to abandon the anti-abortion cause, and his demand to terminate
the Constitution to be reinstalled in power. Trump has cut out the
middle men. The Republican apparatchiks who thought it was necessary to support
Trump for the good of the party now define the good of the party as what is
good for Trump. He doesn’t need evangelical leaders, because he has evangelical
voters. He doesn’t need pro-life leaders, because he has pro-life voters. He
doesn’t need the Federalist Society crowd, or the military men he surrounded
himself with, because the people who were once reassured by the presence of
grown-ups in the Trump White House to keep his ego and ignorance in check
now want to see it uncaged.
Even more amazing: Many of the leaders of these movements
and causes have given up trying to protect their movements and causes because
the voters and donors who keep them employed don’t want them to get in Trump’s
way. They tell themselves they can just keep carrying the
scorpion to the far shore where power will be there for the taking.
Besides, the scorpion would never sting them.
No comments:
Post a Comment