Donald Trump is a man of authoritarian instincts: he’s terrified of everyone and can only relax when he’s able to threaten them. But he isn’t a man of authoritarian strategy. Perhaps he’s too impulsive to have anything resembling strategy at all.
The impulsiveness and skill at generating drama has one great advantage: it keeps everyone off balance because they jump to whatever attention-seeking grenade he throws into the public sphere: don’t use tylenol, indict James Comey, invade Portland. Nothing is too shocking, as long as it prevents people responding to the last outrage.
Nothing is too shocking, as long as it prevents people responding to the last outrage.
His genius for outrageous novelty disables the media, a social cadre equally obsessed with the new: being the first, breaking news, finding a new angle, whose very competitiveness prevents it reacting with deliberation. They rush after each new episode and, in their jargon, bury the lede.
They overlook the main story, which is that the United States is being run by a charming corrupt and dangerous lunatic, a man who fits the criteria of who knows quite how many personality disorders, who hugs his power as a shield to protect himself from his fear of his own inadequacy and who has the demonic instinct for manipulation despite apparently having little formal intellect: no matter his need to survive sharpened this aspect of his wits, and has taken him to his presidency.
Yet, the survival instinct is curiously narrow: it’s about him, and his continuous need not to be ignored. His specific deformation is not grandiosity of megalomania, although it can sometimes look like that because of his love of gold; he’s no Napoleon or Hitler: no ideology gives him strength or a purpose. Even the idea of a purpose, beyond perhaps accumulating wealth for (some) of his family, doesn’t cross his mind. So he doesn’t plan.
Even the idea of a purpose, beyond perhaps wealth and security for his family, doesn’t cross his mind. So he doesn’t plan.
He returned to power with many advantages. A genuine, undisputed election victory. A booming economy. A Republican Party that supports him over the Constitution. A Supreme Court going a long way in the same direction, and an Establishment morally exhausted, like France in 1940. The Democratic leadership, the universities, law firms and corporate media owners each desperately searching for a reason not to fight a man who wants to destroy them.
Had he proceeded to slowly accumulate power, govern calmly, put his people into the large number of politically available slots the American system provides for political appointees, kept the economy going, even allowing it to overheat again, he would be well placed to pick up several seats in the Senate, and gain a proper majority in the House, from which perch he could amass complete power and dismantle most opposition.
Such machiavellianism overlooks his biggest weakness, which is his love of spectacle. It causes him to appoint complete idiots as Attorney General or Defence (now War) Secretary. Have goons attempt to invade Chicago, and then Portland. Humiliate himself in front of Vladimir Putin. He’ll never resist the urge to be at the centre of the show. This is his fatal flaw, which everyone who wants to see democracy restored to America needs to work out how to exploit.