There is no doubt that Trump employs obvious entertainment and flamboyance "style" factors but do you really believe there is no considered substance to what is happening? That mistake seems to have been made over and over and over again when it comes to Trump.
I think the issue is that so many observers are locked into a status quo mindset that they are unwilling to seriously consider serious questions such as: "Is NATO really a net benefit, or a net burden?" Isn't that a form of bias or dogma that needs to be shed quickly if one is to understand what is going on?
Likening things to "kayfabe", while in itself clever and entertaining, seems to fall into the trap of focusing on style over substance. Like it or not there is a TON of detailed policy substance to grapple with. Reflexive eye-rolling and / or dismissal are simply examples of underestimating or misinterpreting Trump. I don't think he minds that at all.
This is such a fascinating comment, and clearly and compellingly written too. I’m tempted to turn it into a “guest post” for my Newsletter that goes under your name, if you’re interested. It might be titled It’s About Time We Take Trump Seriously or something along those lines. You could fuse both your comments into one and we could collaborate on a brief introduction. Just a thought. You’ll see I have published several guest posts, even though the origins of the others were somewhat different. I don’t have a huge platform but it’s growing. In my mind I’m aiming mainly at younger professionals and students interested in foreign affairs, but everyone is welcome. Thanks for engaging and taking intelligent issue with my own (perhaps unduly) cynical take.
Sorry for the delayed response. Thanks for the generous offer but my fear is that things are moving too fast for my musings to be anything other than fluttering pieces of litter left next to the tracks of a speeding bullet train.
And that speed is part of the point: it's conclusive evidence that what's going on has been positioned and preplanned for years, right down to the last detail. I'm seeing military planning and precision in everything Trump is doing. He's hit the ground running as if he hadn't really left office between 2020 and 2024. Maybe he hadn't?
I'm finding articles like this to be essential reading in these tumultuous times. While we chattering classes keep chattering, there is a veritable blitzkrieg unfolding and we are responding like deer frozen in place by headlights. Why and how that is happening, I think, is THE crucial vein to be mined. And quickly.
Great metaphor about the train. I see one danger of such a train as the danger of speeding off a cliff, especially in the absence of democratic guard rails. Thanks for the link you pasted. I've read the piece and subscribed to the newsletter. Whatever else it is (techno-utopian for starters), it's extremely well-written. I'm a bit out of my element when it comes to cutting edge technology (hell, the entire world may be passing me by, I guess that's what happens with the passage of time), but I'm also deeply skeptical of "technical" solutions to human problems. For as long as we remain human and not machines or algorithms (for now), we remain subject to political (human) laws. One such law relates to the danger of the concentration of power, which democracy is designed to diffuse and distribute (making it structurally inefficient in some ways). Not my coinage, but power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I realize the alt-right folks believe (or claim) that the deep state is where the power has been allowed to gather in too concentrated a form; and there's probably something to it. But the de facto solution--the penetration and take-over of the state by a small unaccountable group doing the bidding of the world's richest person (as well as, presumably, its most powerful, though this is less clear)--is a far bigger problem. If this solution/problem is allowed to progress beyond a critical threshold, we may have no easy way to halt or reverse it. That may already be the case for all I know. Thanks for weighing in. You have an open invitation to write a guest post, as you're a clear thinker and crisp writer (qualities I prize, however much I myself fall short), and even it amounts to empty "chattering," I trust nobody will be hurt by it. With appreciation, A
As for the technocracy risk, I totally agree that it's hard to counter something that only a technocratic elite can understand. Huge danger in that. And, sadly, that's nothing new. It just keeps accelerating and the gulf between the governors and the governed keeps widening.
To use a silly metaphor, it's like a massive and growing version of the phenomenon of a guy, even a "handy" guy, bringing a modern automobile in for servicing. The "handy" guy is totally at the mercy of the technicians who are diagnosing and servicing his car ... and then presenting him with the bill.
Increasingly it looks like Trump, Musk et all have put all of their chips on the premise that the "insurrection" unfolded well before January 6th, but instead started as far back as "RussiaGate", "FisaGate" etc.
If there is any predicate or basis to this at all, they and many others (Bondi, Patel, Gabbard et al) are going to argue that these are all "crime scenes", many amounting to acts of "insurrection" and "treason", and therefore Trump has all the authority he needs, etc.
In a very bizarre and ironic way, the Biden Admin's actions surrounding January 6th may have set what (they would argue) is a precedent for what's happening. It is therefore essential that the various actions that targeted Trump (e.g. the Mueller investigation, the FISA surveillance of Trump and company, the two impeachments , etc etc) be shown to have been done "by the book".
It is essential for rational, impartial observers such as ourselves to force ourselves to play "devil's advocate" in all of this, as foreign and distasteful as that may be, and counter those narratives QUICKLY.
Only through such a process will the true "patriots" be identified in this current environment. There have already been a number of speedy court challenges etc but that side of the "information war" has to be handled more adroitly. At this point the media has been mostly frozen like proverbial deer facing headlights ... probably because the media themselves are being targeted through this current USAID "audit" process.
You'd think that basic self-interest would see these media outlets fighting back like crazy but for whatever reason many are folding like cheap lawn chairs. To me, THAT is the single most eye-popping element right now.
How can any of the TRUE and grounded "chattering" get through in such an environment, particularly when the media is NOT bringing it's "A" game?
The most important thing that Trump said over and over and over again was that the media is "the enemy of the people".
Thanks for this thoughtful response and for the respectful framing of what appears to be your disagreement with my premise. That is a fair point, and I confess I have found myself thinking back to a possible precedent for this political moment in my own lifetime. The closest I can come is Ronald Reagan's re-election, which occasioned grave concern among some (liberals mainly) that his frontal approach to confronting the Soviet Union risked nuclear conflagration. (I shared that concern, as a somewhat younger, less experienced person at the time.) That concern turned out to be wrong. Are those of us who are concerned about what might be happening today similarly wrong, precisely for the reason you point out--that we are missing the substance behind the "entertaining" front? Perhaps. I guess I hope so. I'd like to be wrong, and it wouldn't be the first time.
But for what it's worth, this feels different. For one, the degree to which the kayfabe entertainment value of the president explains his (until recently) unexpected domestic political success is nearly total. (I don't think anyone can argue he is a policy wonk or a serious ideologue. Unlike Reagan, he is motivated by the unadulterated ideology of opportunism rather than grand national interests. Feel free to disagree again.) More importantly for me as a former diplomat (not necessarily on center stage), I see the style and the substance as hugely problematic for our foreign policy interests, because it will alienate friends, shoo away fence-sitters, and probably empower our rivals. (Believe me, I know all about other countries taking advantage of us, a pain in the ass. And making smaller countries say "uncle" or do our overt bidding may bring us quick wins and make us feel good in the short term, but the longer term costs are difficult to measure and less positive. As for Reagan, he was an avowedly empty vessel, but he had serious team of cold war ideologues behind him. Here, I almost wish I had a clearer idea of the interests that stand behind the president. Feels like a big giant confused mess, colored by enormous particular interests.
Even so, thanks for reading and always feel free to disagree, as you have done.
The comparison to Reagan is so incredibly apt. As is the observation that it wasn't Reagan alone who was supplying the ideological fuel to that movement.
The Trump phenomenon is very similar, I think, but Trump's approach relies far more on the ideological underpinnings of "libertarian" and "Austrian economics" type ideologies and approaches. He has combined them with his "carnival barker" populism, his "what have you done for me lately?" nationalism and approach to foreign policy, and his not-often-discussed bias towards technocracy.
He has also discarded the most "globalist" aspects of those ideologies, which are generally dogmatically anti-tariff for example, but I feel they are key to understanding Trump, Musk et al and the current radical remaking of the Federal government.
And I don't think people who operate on age-old Keynesian mixed economy premises realize that the movements behind libertarianism and Austrian economics carry with them a huge amount of intellectual heft and substance. Hayek, Von Mises, Sowell et al were very formidable intellects, academics and writers, whether one agrees with them or not. A lot of very thick, well-worn and dog-eared books on that particular ideological shelf. And tons of diversity within that broader movement, from outright anarchism to the more traditional and historic "limited government" Americanism type of classical liberalism. Those who have read deeply into this material don't blink an eye when eg the discussion moves towards, say, the abolition of income taxes. While everyone else is losing their minds, they simply nod and think "of course".
It's not accident that Trump's favourite book is Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Anyone who has not delved into that ideological world will not be able to make head or tail of what's going on, I think. These factors must be investigated and reckoned with by serious commentators -- that is far more important, to my mind, than endlessly debating or alluding to whether Trump is acting like an asshole.
On that point, everyone agrees that Trump is an asshole -- even his supporters. But the massive mistake is to think that's all he is. Most of us are part asshole. We just don't lead publicly with that quality. It has turned out to be a big part of Trump's attraction to lunch bucket type voters who have historically heavily favored Democrat candidates. Trump's asshole persona is, ironically, hugely humanizing to anyone who is in touch with his or her inner asshole -- and that's a lot of people.
There will eventually be a library's worth of books written about how Trump came to be so massively underestimated and how he made most mainstream observers look foolish in the process -- especially the most educated of the bunch -- while achieving every one of his goals. That inscrutable aspect is how he's even been described by the most vociferous of his critics in the business world, interestingly enough -- the strategic genius equivalent of a master chess player in the clothing of a crass, cussing cab driver with a Queens accent, a spray-tan and a ridiculous comb-over haircut. Other billionaires who despised Trump for those qualities often and fairly uniformly would say things like "with Trump you never see it coming and then it's over".
Trump gets a pass on the "asshole" thing because most people now believe most of their leaders have been assholes or far worse, like sadistic psychos or whatever -- even the best Presidents, like the extremely charismatic, articulate, presentable, brainy and overtly wonky leaders (eg Obama) just didn't wear their dark side on their sleeves -- that's the thinking. The fact that these leaders were often so polished, presentable and compelling that no one noticed -- or cheer-led -- when their country was plunging into endless wars may finally have been noticed by people who normally don't think very deeply about such things because they're normally too busy making their precarious livings to feed their fractured families.
Mind you, in fairness the parallel phenomenon tied to that is the implosion of formerly trusted media. That's a whole other rabbit-hole but intimately tied to what's going on. You have written some good stuff on how hard it is to govern when people can no longer even agree on what's real and factual. I couldn't agree more.
Thanks Tony. It's funny it doesn't feel like a sober analysis. Feels quite extravagant to make sense of a president's foreign policy through the lens of pro wrestling, but I am otherwise at a loss. Not sure the rational actor model works well here, or that national interests (as traditionally understood) are at work. TV ratings, or decibel levels of crowd reaction, or depth and breadth of the deliberate distraction intended, maybe. It feels like the American people have gotten what they voted for and, as H.L. Mencken put it, we've gotten it good and hard. How far might this go? Appreciate you weighing in.
There is no doubt that Trump employs obvious entertainment and flamboyance "style" factors but do you really believe there is no considered substance to what is happening? That mistake seems to have been made over and over and over again when it comes to Trump.
I think the issue is that so many observers are locked into a status quo mindset that they are unwilling to seriously consider serious questions such as: "Is NATO really a net benefit, or a net burden?" Isn't that a form of bias or dogma that needs to be shed quickly if one is to understand what is going on?
Likening things to "kayfabe", while in itself clever and entertaining, seems to fall into the trap of focusing on style over substance. Like it or not there is a TON of detailed policy substance to grapple with. Reflexive eye-rolling and / or dismissal are simply examples of underestimating or misinterpreting Trump. I don't think he minds that at all.
This is such a fascinating comment, and clearly and compellingly written too. I’m tempted to turn it into a “guest post” for my Newsletter that goes under your name, if you’re interested. It might be titled It’s About Time We Take Trump Seriously or something along those lines. You could fuse both your comments into one and we could collaborate on a brief introduction. Just a thought. You’ll see I have published several guest posts, even though the origins of the others were somewhat different. I don’t have a huge platform but it’s growing. In my mind I’m aiming mainly at younger professionals and students interested in foreign affairs, but everyone is welcome. Thanks for engaging and taking intelligent issue with my own (perhaps unduly) cynical take.
Sorry for the delayed response. Thanks for the generous offer but my fear is that things are moving too fast for my musings to be anything other than fluttering pieces of litter left next to the tracks of a speeding bullet train.
And that speed is part of the point: it's conclusive evidence that what's going on has been positioned and preplanned for years, right down to the last detail. I'm seeing military planning and precision in everything Trump is doing. He's hit the ground running as if he hadn't really left office between 2020 and 2024. Maybe he hadn't?
I'm finding articles like this to be essential reading in these tumultuous times. While we chattering classes keep chattering, there is a veritable blitzkrieg unfolding and we are responding like deer frozen in place by headlights. Why and how that is happening, I think, is THE crucial vein to be mined. And quickly.
https://open.substack.com/pub/eko/p/override?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=4ytku3
Great metaphor about the train. I see one danger of such a train as the danger of speeding off a cliff, especially in the absence of democratic guard rails. Thanks for the link you pasted. I've read the piece and subscribed to the newsletter. Whatever else it is (techno-utopian for starters), it's extremely well-written. I'm a bit out of my element when it comes to cutting edge technology (hell, the entire world may be passing me by, I guess that's what happens with the passage of time), but I'm also deeply skeptical of "technical" solutions to human problems. For as long as we remain human and not machines or algorithms (for now), we remain subject to political (human) laws. One such law relates to the danger of the concentration of power, which democracy is designed to diffuse and distribute (making it structurally inefficient in some ways). Not my coinage, but power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I realize the alt-right folks believe (or claim) that the deep state is where the power has been allowed to gather in too concentrated a form; and there's probably something to it. But the de facto solution--the penetration and take-over of the state by a small unaccountable group doing the bidding of the world's richest person (as well as, presumably, its most powerful, though this is less clear)--is a far bigger problem. If this solution/problem is allowed to progress beyond a critical threshold, we may have no easy way to halt or reverse it. That may already be the case for all I know. Thanks for weighing in. You have an open invitation to write a guest post, as you're a clear thinker and crisp writer (qualities I prize, however much I myself fall short), and even it amounts to empty "chattering," I trust nobody will be hurt by it. With appreciation, A
As for the technocracy risk, I totally agree that it's hard to counter something that only a technocratic elite can understand. Huge danger in that. And, sadly, that's nothing new. It just keeps accelerating and the gulf between the governors and the governed keeps widening.
To use a silly metaphor, it's like a massive and growing version of the phenomenon of a guy, even a "handy" guy, bringing a modern automobile in for servicing. The "handy" guy is totally at the mercy of the technicians who are diagnosing and servicing his car ... and then presenting him with the bill.
Increasingly it looks like Trump, Musk et all have put all of their chips on the premise that the "insurrection" unfolded well before January 6th, but instead started as far back as "RussiaGate", "FisaGate" etc.
If there is any predicate or basis to this at all, they and many others (Bondi, Patel, Gabbard et al) are going to argue that these are all "crime scenes", many amounting to acts of "insurrection" and "treason", and therefore Trump has all the authority he needs, etc.
In a very bizarre and ironic way, the Biden Admin's actions surrounding January 6th may have set what (they would argue) is a precedent for what's happening. It is therefore essential that the various actions that targeted Trump (e.g. the Mueller investigation, the FISA surveillance of Trump and company, the two impeachments , etc etc) be shown to have been done "by the book".
It is essential for rational, impartial observers such as ourselves to force ourselves to play "devil's advocate" in all of this, as foreign and distasteful as that may be, and counter those narratives QUICKLY.
Only through such a process will the true "patriots" be identified in this current environment. There have already been a number of speedy court challenges etc but that side of the "information war" has to be handled more adroitly. At this point the media has been mostly frozen like proverbial deer facing headlights ... probably because the media themselves are being targeted through this current USAID "audit" process.
You'd think that basic self-interest would see these media outlets fighting back like crazy but for whatever reason many are folding like cheap lawn chairs. To me, THAT is the single most eye-popping element right now.
How can any of the TRUE and grounded "chattering" get through in such an environment, particularly when the media is NOT bringing it's "A" game?
The most important thing that Trump said over and over and over again was that the media is "the enemy of the people".
Thanks for this thoughtful response and for the respectful framing of what appears to be your disagreement with my premise. That is a fair point, and I confess I have found myself thinking back to a possible precedent for this political moment in my own lifetime. The closest I can come is Ronald Reagan's re-election, which occasioned grave concern among some (liberals mainly) that his frontal approach to confronting the Soviet Union risked nuclear conflagration. (I shared that concern, as a somewhat younger, less experienced person at the time.) That concern turned out to be wrong. Are those of us who are concerned about what might be happening today similarly wrong, precisely for the reason you point out--that we are missing the substance behind the "entertaining" front? Perhaps. I guess I hope so. I'd like to be wrong, and it wouldn't be the first time.
But for what it's worth, this feels different. For one, the degree to which the kayfabe entertainment value of the president explains his (until recently) unexpected domestic political success is nearly total. (I don't think anyone can argue he is a policy wonk or a serious ideologue. Unlike Reagan, he is motivated by the unadulterated ideology of opportunism rather than grand national interests. Feel free to disagree again.) More importantly for me as a former diplomat (not necessarily on center stage), I see the style and the substance as hugely problematic for our foreign policy interests, because it will alienate friends, shoo away fence-sitters, and probably empower our rivals. (Believe me, I know all about other countries taking advantage of us, a pain in the ass. And making smaller countries say "uncle" or do our overt bidding may bring us quick wins and make us feel good in the short term, but the longer term costs are difficult to measure and less positive. As for Reagan, he was an avowedly empty vessel, but he had serious team of cold war ideologues behind him. Here, I almost wish I had a clearer idea of the interests that stand behind the president. Feels like a big giant confused mess, colored by enormous particular interests.
Even so, thanks for reading and always feel free to disagree, as you have done.
The comparison to Reagan is so incredibly apt. As is the observation that it wasn't Reagan alone who was supplying the ideological fuel to that movement.
The Trump phenomenon is very similar, I think, but Trump's approach relies far more on the ideological underpinnings of "libertarian" and "Austrian economics" type ideologies and approaches. He has combined them with his "carnival barker" populism, his "what have you done for me lately?" nationalism and approach to foreign policy, and his not-often-discussed bias towards technocracy.
He has also discarded the most "globalist" aspects of those ideologies, which are generally dogmatically anti-tariff for example, but I feel they are key to understanding Trump, Musk et al and the current radical remaking of the Federal government.
And I don't think people who operate on age-old Keynesian mixed economy premises realize that the movements behind libertarianism and Austrian economics carry with them a huge amount of intellectual heft and substance. Hayek, Von Mises, Sowell et al were very formidable intellects, academics and writers, whether one agrees with them or not. A lot of very thick, well-worn and dog-eared books on that particular ideological shelf. And tons of diversity within that broader movement, from outright anarchism to the more traditional and historic "limited government" Americanism type of classical liberalism. Those who have read deeply into this material don't blink an eye when eg the discussion moves towards, say, the abolition of income taxes. While everyone else is losing their minds, they simply nod and think "of course".
It's not accident that Trump's favourite book is Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Anyone who has not delved into that ideological world will not be able to make head or tail of what's going on, I think. These factors must be investigated and reckoned with by serious commentators -- that is far more important, to my mind, than endlessly debating or alluding to whether Trump is acting like an asshole.
On that point, everyone agrees that Trump is an asshole -- even his supporters. But the massive mistake is to think that's all he is. Most of us are part asshole. We just don't lead publicly with that quality. It has turned out to be a big part of Trump's attraction to lunch bucket type voters who have historically heavily favored Democrat candidates. Trump's asshole persona is, ironically, hugely humanizing to anyone who is in touch with his or her inner asshole -- and that's a lot of people.
There will eventually be a library's worth of books written about how Trump came to be so massively underestimated and how he made most mainstream observers look foolish in the process -- especially the most educated of the bunch -- while achieving every one of his goals. That inscrutable aspect is how he's even been described by the most vociferous of his critics in the business world, interestingly enough -- the strategic genius equivalent of a master chess player in the clothing of a crass, cussing cab driver with a Queens accent, a spray-tan and a ridiculous comb-over haircut. Other billionaires who despised Trump for those qualities often and fairly uniformly would say things like "with Trump you never see it coming and then it's over".
Trump gets a pass on the "asshole" thing because most people now believe most of their leaders have been assholes or far worse, like sadistic psychos or whatever -- even the best Presidents, like the extremely charismatic, articulate, presentable, brainy and overtly wonky leaders (eg Obama) just didn't wear their dark side on their sleeves -- that's the thinking. The fact that these leaders were often so polished, presentable and compelling that no one noticed -- or cheer-led -- when their country was plunging into endless wars may finally have been noticed by people who normally don't think very deeply about such things because they're normally too busy making their precarious livings to feed their fractured families.
Mind you, in fairness the parallel phenomenon tied to that is the implosion of formerly trusted media. That's a whole other rabbit-hole but intimately tied to what's going on. You have written some good stuff on how hard it is to govern when people can no longer even agree on what's real and factual. I couldn't agree more.
Keep up the good work. Thanks.
Excellent analysis
Sober, grounded, optimistic and extremely well structured.
Thank you for bringing sense into this hour of apparent madness
Thanks Tony. It's funny it doesn't feel like a sober analysis. Feels quite extravagant to make sense of a president's foreign policy through the lens of pro wrestling, but I am otherwise at a loss. Not sure the rational actor model works well here, or that national interests (as traditionally understood) are at work. TV ratings, or decibel levels of crowd reaction, or depth and breadth of the deliberate distraction intended, maybe. It feels like the American people have gotten what they voted for and, as H.L. Mencken put it, we've gotten it good and hard. How far might this go? Appreciate you weighing in.