Suppose that one day Donald Trump posts on TruthSocial that he has assembled a task force of heavily armed USSOCOM operators in order to hunt down and kill a gang of notorious cryptids terrorizing America. The creatures are taken from a random conspiracy nut’s TikTok. Elon Musk promises free Cybertrucks to anyone that drops a dime on a cryptid hiding in their neighborhood. The fact that none of the cryptids are real is irrelevant.
A CNN news host praises Trump for taking a “bold stand against the monsters haunting America.” The New York Times headline reads “Trump authorizes special forces mission against a mysterious new threat.” The entire thing predictably goes wrong quite quickly. Massive amounts of spurious tips flood in. A dog and then a random drifter get plugged by enthusiastic “volunteers” that want to beat the spec ops men to the punch.
Memecoins for each cryptid soon emerge, betting markets speculate on when Delta Force is going to bag a particular cryptid, and so forth. Trump suddenly accuses Nigeria of hiding cryptids and demands they let in US military operators, who are actually there for other reasons. A pointless diplomatic crisis ensues. Many people that bet in some shape or form on the cryptids being captured or killed lose money and go broke.
And then Trump forgets about the matter and moves on to another scam.
You’re probably familiar with this kind of farcial scenario, because you’ve seen something like it happen again and again. This post is not so much about Donald Trump himself as much as it is about the kind of analytical problem we once again face in dealing with him.
The return of the clown
Consider the recent passenger airline crash over Reagan National Airport (DCA). A shortage of air traffic controllers, too many flights in and out of DCA, and too much air traffic period in the area generated a stream of near-accidents. Nothing was done. DCA’s luck eventually ran out, and dead bodies had to be fished out of the Potomac.
When you put stress on something over and over again, it eventually breaks. However, the cracks aren’t always visible. And even if they are, it won’t help you as long as that thing keeps on working and people believe that it will never break.
Trump is now back in power, and the DCA crash illustrates some of the challenges of talking about his presidency. Trump’s first term ended in a plague ravaging the land, massive civil unrest, and what was effectively a counter-coup that crippled his administration. There’s very little evidence the President has magically become more effective at governing the country or consolidating political power.
Trump and his co-president Musk are tugging on every single lever of power at once and not doing any of it particularly well. They are trying to speedrun their way through a program of action that would be extremely ambitious even if stretched over four years. There is no mandate. There are historically low approval ratings and finnicky voters.
Every day, Trump and Musk’s people go to work ripping away at the foundations of complex chains of cause and effect responsible for the functioning of the US government and American power and prosperity writ large. There are teenagers running around in some of the most sensitive and complex computer systems in the US government. Much of this parallels the massively inept occupation government we installed in Iraq.
However, repeating “this is a malicious and stupid administration and it is hard to see things ending well” is boring. As long as the show continues to go on, you look silly pointing out how shaky the foundations really are. At worst, you sound like a lunatic.
He doesn’t really mean it. He won’t really do it. It is a tired cliche to point out how much Trump owes to reality tv and pro wrestling. But there is something very important in how much the entire venture is sustained by raw cynicism. Only a sucker believes he’s actually going to do what he says he will do. And no one wants to be the mark, the sucker.
In pro wrestling, the point isn’t the performance of kayfabe. Rather, it is that the spectacle requires “smart fandom.” Fans all “know” it is fake and speculate endlessly about what is “really” going on behind the curtain. The speculation itself becomes part of the show. Being “smart” means thinking like the ‘writers, producers, and performers themselves.”
The relationship between smart fan and performance is premised upon the former’s seemingly critical deconstruction of the content of the performance. The spectator subsequently thinks, ‘because I am not a mark, I must already be critically aware of the way that the performance works’ (Nevitt, 2010: 324); yet, being smart requires the ability to actively think like the writers, producers and performers themselves, this insider knowledge constituting the capital that allows one to take part in the interpretation and prediction of storylines and matches that underpins pro-wrestling fandom. The implication is that audience members learn to interpret within a narrow framework of ‘rules’, which structure their subsequent reception of any information, while simultaneously focusing said interpretation upon uncovering the intention of a performance (the hidden logic behind that choice being made) rather than critically questioning the substantive content of the performance.
Most importantly, cynical entertainment also relieves the spectator of the obligation to actually do anything to stop the show. Which, unfortunately, makes some of the worst outcomes more probable.
Inside the circus
Let us step away from Trump for a moment to talk about another Republican politician that won what seemed to be a epoch-defining re-election.
George W. Bush seemed to be truly invincible from 2002-2004. He invaded Iraq with bipartisan support. Saddam Hussein’s regime got flattened. And then Bush won re-election, despite his Democratic opponent outperforming expectations.
What happened after that?
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Iraq became a quagmire
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New Orleans became Sea World
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Millions of Americans became paupers
Bush’s approach to Iraq was a metaphor for almost everything else about his administration. The point of the invasion was to look cool by blowing up a tinpot dictator. The occupation government was filled with GOP political interns and flat tax enthusiasts. Anyone that actually knew something about the Middle East, nation-building, or counter-insurgency said it was a mistake. Which is why they weren’t consulted.
Bush’s failures now seem obvious in hindsight. And to a certain degree they were obvious to many people at the time. However, It seemed that the sheer force of will alone could overcome reality. John Ganz, writing on the dawn of Trump II, dredges up the fantasy and irrationality of Bush’s high water mark. Back then, Bush seemed to have “unstoppable momentum” and anyone that objected couldn’t see that President had the “winds of history” at his back.
Had Bush been confronted with serious opposition, some of his presidency’s greatest disasters might have been prevented. But the tolerance of objectively absurd assumptions — such as the notion that a war waged in total ignorance of the local political and military conditions would end in glorious triumph — in and of itself sealed Bush’s fate. Ideology aside, why did so many people place so much confidence in Bush?
The second Trump presidency makes more sense if you discard the idea of “confidence” as we normally understand it. Most people, by now, are familiar with the good old fashioned pump and dump. You get in on the ground floor before everyone else notices, ride the wave to the top, and exit before the comedown.
To make it work, you need to get a bunch of suckers on board by aggressively hyping the stock, often through manipulation and fraud. Pyramid scams and MLM schemes are also relevant templates. Accordingly, Ganz’s characterization of the current atmosphere as a Ponzi scam hits the mark:
…a process of self-perpetuating hype that turns out ultimately to be empty and then blows up. As the great economist Hyman Minsky pointed out, Ponzi behavior is not just the province of peripheral scams, it’s an integral part of the business cycle in financial capitalism: at some point, people stop paying attention to the underlying value of assets, they just try to hype the price on markets and then hope they can borrow against their overvalued assets to pay off their debtors. Eventually, the rubber hits the road, the bullshitting stops, the bubble bursts.
Trump’s second term is a giant bubble fueled by expectations divorced from reality. Or, in other words, vibes. Trump did not provide a believable political platform for the same reason Fyre Fest didn’t have to actually plan for how to pull off a massive concert in an austere and remote island.
James Duesterberg succintly sums up the issue in noting that “vibes are self-authorizing.” What you believe — or whether you believe anything at all — is besides the point. That kind of fuddy-duddy stuff is played out. Why bother thinking about that? Why bother thinking at all to begin with?
Feelings are beliefs, “relieving you of the burden of believing in anything yourself.” And the Trump bubble is a microcosm of a much larger problem. “Sentiment is not the driver but the destination,” Duesterberg explains. “[T]o the moon, to Mars: out of this world, back to the future, to somewhere ‘great’—somewhere that is, precisely, nowhere in particular.” Trump’s presidency slots into an informational environment characterized by fantastical delusions.
Pricing in the circus
Like all bubbles, everyone is trying to get what they can out of it and no one wants to be the sucker left holding the bag. However, the most significant factor sustaining the bubble is paradoxically the fact that, on some level, there is little way to avoid being the aforementioned bagholder.
Stanley Kubrick found Cold War debates about nuclear strategy totally absurd. That’s why he made Dr. Stangelove, which was originally going to be a much more sober movie about nuclear risk. Kubrick simply couldn’t take any of the source material seriously. You can’t really blame him.
A lot of nuclear confrontations can be modeled by the chicken game and other similar game theory formalisms. Both players are modeled as drivers heading straight at each other. If both parties in the game refuse to swerve away, everyone dies. Like so many other related scenarios, credibility in the chicken game comes from looking like you have a death wish. The game gets messier when assume three or more players.
The idea of two nuclear superpowers acting like dumb teenagers in a James Dean movie is cosmically absurd. Actual nuclear warfighting strategies, to those outside the defense analysis community, were far more surreal. Part of the reason why all of this sounded so ridiculous was that there wasn’t any real penalty for being wrong and limited upside to being right.
Suppose that your nuclear force posture concept ends up massively backfiring. You and millions of other people are vaporized. In the aftermath, a former think-tanker in the radioactive ruins of Washington, D.C. curses your name. “That guy’s plan sure did suck! I told you it wasn’t going to work!” No one cares. “Shut the fuck up and load your gun. The mutants are attacking again!”
The United States of America is a superpower, has outsized impact on the world economy, and guarantees many features of the international order we all take for granted. It is the very definition of “too big to fail.” So being right about Trump wrecking it might get you a self-esteem boost or even help you play the market. But you’re still going to have to deal with the consequences like everyone else.
So where does that really leave you? You’re going to weight the very real gains or losses of going along with the show today over the at best hypothetical risk it will blow up in the arbitrary future.
If the bubble does burst, though, what does that look like? How will it happen? The more important issue is what happens afterwards.
The show must go on
Trump’s first term was a very long list of near-misses. My favorite one being nearly triggering a war with North Korea, something that many of Trump’s worst critics likely do not know about:
After watching a retired four-star general, Jack Keane, interviewed on Fox News in late January 2018, saying that US troops deployed to South Korea should not take their families with them, Bergen reports that Trump told his national security team: “I want an evacuation of American civilians from South Korea.”
A senior official warned that such an evacuation would be interpreted as a signal that the US was ready to go to war, and would crash the South Korean stock market, but Trump is reported to have ignored the warning, telling his team: “Go do it!”
As you likely guessed, the Pentagon ignored the order and Trump forgot about it. That type of near-disaster happened, approximately speaking, once a week throughout the first term. All of the “adults” that restrained Trump the last time are now gone. The expectation that Trump will somehow be stopped by someone or something sensible remains, however.
Which is why markets ignored Trump’s repeated promises to impose ruinous tariffs on Mexico and Canada. Once it became clear he was moving forward and there was a real probability of follow-thorugh, they took a dive. And then Trump postponed the tariffs for 30 days, manufacturing a face-saving excuse. We’ll go through the same scenario again next month. Will he back off this time, or double down?
Your guess is as good as mine. I can sound confident on social media and it racks up the likes and shares. But it really is a mug’s game trying to make point predictions about any particular Trump action. Beyond the fact that he really does seem enthusiastic about tariffs to a degree many observers underrate, I don’t have a crystal ball.
I can tell you how things look when the music stops. Not because I have any special insight, expertise, or inside sources. Rather, because you saw it with your own two eyes in 2020-2021. Trump doesn’t react well to being cornered.
He melts down when he can’t find a way out. Being President means that you always run the risk of dealing with something, like a virus, that has no Prime Minister you can call up from Air Force One. Or, more broadly, something that won’t stand down when you threaten it. Trump’s heavy-handedness transformed the George Floyd protests into massive demonstrations against Trump personally.
And when the time comes for him to accept something he finds intolerable — such as honoring the results of an election he lost — he can take truly desperate measures. At that point, he may find that the people he needs to carry them out aren’t reliable instruments of his will.
Curtain call
Many people make the mistake of reacting to the fantasy and delusion of Trump-era America by throwing up their hands, proclaiming “nothing matters,” and concluding that the clown show will never end.
The Bush administration example mentioned earlier is strong reason to avoid that conclusion. Even at its worst, Bush and his people were far more careful and effective than Trump and his subordinates. It’s a low bar, but it still matters.
Even after all of what I just wrote, I can’t really say anything new or interesting about Donald Trump. There are really just two posts you should read about Trump, and both were published in 2016 before he took office.
If these two posts are not enough, then Adam Gurri’s look at the “personalist” dimension of Trump II is well-worth your time.
The danger in Trump II isn’t him becoming Emperor Palpatine.
Trump is a fundamentally weak president. That weakness is a dangerous liability becomes power abhors a vacuum. Illegal defiance of the president’s authority was a constant feature of his first term. In that period and this one as well, other people without Trump’s lawful authority to control the government can and will step in and exceed their remit.
The true danger is that whatever fiasco ends up breaking Trump is big enough that it breaks us as well.