Something happened today on Twitter: My mentions today were flooded with people assuring me that Trump doesn’t need legal grounds for challenging the election. He can challenge the election without cause, trigger a war, and keep himself in power. Here’s an example:
Or some variation of that. I won’t add more screen shots. You get the idea.
Consider this: Thomas Rid, an expert in Russian disinformation tactics, said that the extent of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election was “designed to be overestimated.”
Dear People: It’s time to talk about the Strongman Con.
People totally forget that the GOP lost the midterms by 8 percentage points. Losing the midterms was not good for the GOP. If they could have avoided that, they would have. They couldn’t avoid it. They lost.
Q: Why would someone like Putin want to be overestimated?
A: Being overestimated is how wanna-be Strongmen appear powerful. It makes them feared and respected.
Trump is first and foremost a conman. He wants his supporters to think he is invincible. He wants you to think that he can’t be stopped.
Trump has been compared to Hitler. The better comparison is Mussolini.
Weber, in his classic essay, Politics as a Vocation, outlined 3 sources of authority for government. In a nutshell they are:
- Traditional (monarchy)
- Personal charisma (today we’d say ‘cult leader’ or demagogue)
- Legal / rational (democracy / rule of law.)
Mussolini, like Trump, drew his authority from #2, what Weber called Personal Charisma. Trump critics have a hard time with the charisma part. Michael Cohen explained it well. (See this post.)
The GOP is mesmerized by the idea of a Strongman.
Mussolini spun elaborate lies and presented himself as invincible. When asked his ideology, Mussolini said, “My ideology is to break the bones of the liberals and socialists, and the sooner the better.” He also said:
Mussolini seemed invincible. He appeared to be widely adored. Then he made his error: He got greedy and wanted some of the spoils from the war he thought Germany would win, so he entered a disastrous partnership with Hitler. He led Italy to ruin.
This was a problem for Mussolini because he promised “winning,” and Italy did not win. When it was clear he was losing, he crumbled. (Well, let’s not get into the details).
We all know Trump is a conman. One of his cons is to present himself as a winner.
We also know that he got where he is by cheating, but his base doesn’t care. They think he’s a winner because of how they define “winning.” If you think nobody has principles, the winner is the one who ends up on top.
Trump’s base thinks he”wins” because he:
- accumulated wealth (it doesn’t matter how)
- fights their “enemies”
- breaks rules
The “breaking rules” part helps with his biggest con: Faking invincibility
Here’s how the invincibility con works:
- Trump does outrageous and shocking things. He politicizes the DOJ. He openly violates laws.
- The rule-breaking stokes his base. They think: “Our team will win!”
- At the same time, the rule-breaking creates panic meltdowns in the opposition. They tremble in fear.
- Trump supporters and GOP leaders see the meltdowns and trembling and they think: “WOW Trump really IS a strongman.”
- This makes them love Trump more.
Remember that one goal of Russian Active Measures is to get people to lose confidence in democracy, because when people lose confidence, they become apathetic, cynical, and then it’s all over.
The leaders (the true leaders) are not out there telling you it’s all over, Trump has this in the bag. Wanna know why? Because they’re leaders. They know Trumps happen. Trumps happen in every age in every country.
