Trump’s greatest con is that he is invincible. (I’ve talked about this in the past on Twitter)
The Tulsa fiasco demonstrates what happens when a ‘strongman’ appears weak.
Trump has been compared to Hitler. The better comparison might be Mussolini.
Weber, in his classic essay, Politics as a Vocation, outlined three sources of authority for government:
The three, in a nutshell, are:
- Traditional (monarchy)
- Personal charisma (today we’d say ‘cult leader’ or demagogue)
- Legal / rational (democracy / rule of law.)
Mussolini spun elaborate lies and presented himself as invincible. His method of leadership was best described by Ivan Ilyin. (Source for Ilyin’s philosophy from Snyder’s Road to Unfreedom.
For a leader like Mussolini, the purpose of government is to maintain order and hierarchy.
Democracy/rule of law, in contrast, seeks fairness and equality. That’s why a president like Obama will try to get health care for everyone.
Fascists leaders don’t try to help people rise up. They don’t want others challenging their place at the top of the hierarchy. Instead of trying to make people’s lives better, fascists “identify” and promise to defeat enemies.
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.” When it was clear he was losing, Mussolini came to a bad end at the hands of irate Italians. The need to appear invincible is part of why the Tulsa debacle was so crushing for Trump.
Trump looked like a loser. Also, the rally supposed to “reenergize” him:
Among Trump’s other problems is the GOP demographics are shrinking, which means they can only win elections if they suppress the vote. This may work (for now) in states like KY:
The long term solution (meaning for the 2022 election) starts with a Democratic Senate in 2021: The Constitution allows Congress to regulate elections. Regulations can curb this stuff.
So yeah, it’s hard. We need to overcome enough of the voter suppression in 2020 so that we have the power to make voter suppression harder in future elections. Once we secure elections, the GOP will hit a major crisis. They won’t be able to win.
Okay, so. 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: First, 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!” Trump woke up his bored audience in Tulsa when he said, “dumb son of a bitch.”
They want a rule breaker because they want to own the libs and win. The rule-breaking creates panic meltdown in the opposition. With hair on fire, they ask questions like:
(From my FAQs) Trump supporters see the panic and think, “Wow! Trump is all-powerful!”
GOP leaders see the panic and think “I’d better stay in line! I need to be on the winning side!”
Trump critics also have a strong reaction. They say: ‘They’re down in the polls but they seem confident, so they must know they’ve got this in the bag.”
It’s easy to panic when dealing with cheaters, but our panic helps Trump by feeding into the “he’s all powerful” narrative. (I’ve often felt frustrated by fear-mongering on the left, which increases the panic.) So rule-breaking accomplishes three things for Trump:
- It stokes his base, and
- it panics the opposition, which
- creates a myth of invincibility.
People totally forget that the GOP lost the midterms by 8 points and have sunk further since then.
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.”
Being overestimated is how wanna-be strongmen appear powerful. How does Trump respond to losing? First, he’ll try to spin himself as a victim. This is why the Trump campaign is insisting that Trump supporters stayed away because they were afraid of the protesters. Who knew we libs were so scary!
Trump isn’t invincible. He doesn’t know how to govern and never bothered to learn. Most people, particularly young people, reject everything he stands for.
“Even the best propaganda cannot conceal constant political failures,” said Nazi-propagandist Schulze-Wechsungen.
Yup, the Lincoln Project knows how to hit the vulnerable spots: “It was smaller than we expected . . . can’t keep your polls up. . .” Click and enjoy:
Steven Levitsky says the Republican Party must overcome its demographic problem by learning to appeal to minorities. But the GOP can’t suddenly embrace fairness and reject hierarchy because their core base embraces hierarchy. You can’t be pro-BLM and pro-KKK at the same time.
I think in the next decade we’re in for another party realignment—but that’s a topic for another day.
It’s clear that he views the presidency as a reality show. I think I read somewhere that as a young man he wanted to work in Hollywood.
It is like Trump moved into the White House thinking he would play Mr. President on TV.
