The tacit alliance between Donald Trump and the mainstream media--both of which enjoy making him the center of attention--is, I think, making it much harder for Americans to understand what is happening to our country, and why. As I have said many times, Trump has become the leading political figure of our time because the leading professional politicians of both parties had lost the trust of the American people. Nearly all Republican politicians now seem to understand this and have tied their fortunes tightly to his to an unprecedented extent. His appeal certainly raises big questions about the state of our whole society. Yet it should not obscure that his agenda satisfies the interests of a number of powerful constituencies that have been trying to influence American government and American life for decades--and those constituencies are delighted by much of what he is doing.
Foremost among those constituencies, perhaps, are three of the largest sectors of our economy: the fossil fuel industry, our leading financial institutions, and the cyber community. The fossil fuel industry seems committed to the idea that carbon-fueled climate change is something that the world will have to live with, and is trying very hard not merely to maintain, but to expand, the production and distribution of its products. Trump supports this effort totally both privately and publicly. The financial community apparently chafes under even the modest regulatory efforts introduced by the Obama administration after the financial crisis, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which the Trump administration is now tossing into the dustbin of history. Its subset, the crypto community, has secured the reversal of attempts to regulate this new and obviously unstable asset, and has even recruited Trump into their fold. The youngest, most aggressive leaders of the tech industry have evidently persuaded the administration not to regulate the development of artificial intelligence.
Three other constituencies have provided more of the ideology and most of the foot soldiers for our new regime. The religious right has thrown in with Trump because of his opposition to abortion and gender ideology and has won its greatest victories in many decades. The Federalist Society has supplied candidates for federal judgeships. A whole network of rightwing foundations has supported and promoted ideologues dedicated to undoing the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Great Society--the source of Project 2025, the blueprint for what the administration is doing. All these institutions were important before Trump came on the political scene, but none as yet enjoyed the influence that they have today.
Trump has also allied himself with AIPAC, now our most important foreign policy lobby, and with the conservative Jewish donors who fund it. During the first Trump administration the late Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas casino owner, apparently bought the movement of the US Embassy in Israel to Jeruslaem with a $20 million contribution to a pro-Trump super Pac. Trump has fallen into line with Benjamin Netanyahu's goals, has demanded the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza strip, and may shortly endorse the annexation of the West Bank. The president seems to have plans to replace or at least balance our traditional European and Asian alliances with understandings with Russia and China based upon mutual recognition of spheres of influence. Twenty years ago those policies would have enraged prominent neoconservatives--then a pillar of the Republican Party--but neoconservatism has given way to neo-isolationism in the Republican Party now.
None of these powerful constituencies care much about Trump's unprecedented expansion of executive authority, his extraordinary grant of power to Elon Musk and his team, or his purge of the federal bureaucracy because he is giving them what they want. And the federal courts may ultimately bless most of what he is doing because so many of them--including the Supreme Court--now have Republican majorities.
And what of Trump's popular support? So far it is more than holding firm. Polls so far show a small plurality of voters approving of what he is doing--a better showing than he ever made during his first term. His immigration policies and his attack on DEI are popular. Everything depends, however, on the economy. He has no plan to stop inflation, his tariffs had far less institutional support and may contribute to it, and financial deregulation is almost certain, in my opinion, to lead to another economic crisis. To judge from Kamala Harris's campaign, however, it does not seem likely that the Democratic Party is going to propose much of a new economic agenda, except to oppose further tax and spending cuts.
Trump's assault on the executive branch strikes many of us as a usurpation of the Constitution and a threat to our democracy. That is how many Americans saw Lincoln and Roosevelt, who presided over other great turning points in US history, as well--but their supporters defended them because they believed in what they were doing. So far approximately half of all Americans approve of what Trump is doing, as well. The same condition that allowed him to become president--a broad loss of faith in our institutions--is allowing him to take extraordinary actions now. This, for better or for worse, is how history works.
4 comments:
If your ship is on fire, there is no choice but to climb into the crow's nest and look for land that might have to be conquered by force first, but which then holds a possible peaceful future for all.
The Vikings, on the other hand, are said to have deliberately set fire to their boats as soon as they landed on a new coast, so that everyone involved knew that there was only one way forward, no way back.
Note the subtle difference.
Professor as a reader for 12 years now, I think this is one of the best columns you've written. Particularly striking reminder of how extraordinary Lincoln's and FDR's actions were relative to the norms and laws of the time. Of course, for Lincoln and FDR the actions were to save the country, while for Trump they are about looting the country. But you're right that for now, maga seems quite happy. I expect that they will not remain happy as the threads of society come apart and the benefits of the institutions from which they have benefited for so long, disappear disastrously.
Apparently the massive government apparatus did not exist, nr was it foreseen by the founding fathers in the constitution. Faceless bureaucrats control half of the economy anonymously for life tenure. Things like a global military foothold or medicaid, pensions for all are much less constitutional than gun rights. From what I understand the Eastern Roman empire lasted a thousand years longer than the Western one as they reduced costs to that of a single military leader, no more bread and circus with external empire draining together all wealth. If a people is to survive long term then individuals must be self sufficient. The empire drained the coffers, provoked wars, in order to find resources to pay for gladiator games and welfare for the poor and salaries for bureaucrats. We see the results of this after a century, a growing list of enemies and a 36 trillion debt. Our national existence is at stake. Someone will always have some claim to a right on the government or have a grand foreign project. If a man on a small farm in earlier centuries were to not be careful with his expenses, projects then he would soon have noticed. Newborn national governments of France, Britain, Spain, later Germany or Russia managed to bankrupt themselves after getting lost in the same trap of expansion and largesse. The more things change the more they stay the same, say that in which language you prefer, it remains a universal truth.
You're right, Professor. Everything does depend on the economy. While Energyflow is correct, about the dire need to address our $36 trillion deficit, it is just as important to stop the inflation affecting the lives of all Americans... even if it is inconsequential to those who are wealthy enough not to be bothered by it... they are NOT the majority!
I'm glad to see you read Responsible Statecraft, the publication of the Quincy Institute. I like what they have to say about the war in Ukraine, these past 3 years. You and the article linked are correct about Sheldon Adelson's contributions to Trump's first presidential campaign. Adelson died in 2021, but you're right about his wife.
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