Don't Say "Chaotic" or "Transactional"
We're not living in Trump 1.0.
I’m struck by the degree to which the mainstream media is still living in the Trump 1.0 world of 2017-2020, using words like “chaotic” or “transactional” to describe the new administration’s behavior.
“Chaotic” may have been an appropriate moniker for actions in the first term, when for example the Muslim ban had to be retracted due to poor drafting. But Trump 2.0 has been anything but chaotic. He is executing a deliberate strategy for implementing policies he promised on issues like immigration and tariffs. While he may be bluffing tactically, imposing tariffs on Canada and Mexico and then delaying them, this is part of a bargaining strategy.
Similarly, the personnel actions undertake by Musk, DOGE, and OMB Director Russ Vaught are based on the Project 2025 playbook that has been in the making for four years. Some of the individual actions like the federal funding pause were poorly executed, but we are seeing a deliberate rollout of an effort to destroy the “deep state.” This is not chaos, though it may be perceived as such by those on the receiving end.
Similarly with the word “transactional.” This is used to imply that many of Trump’s actions are not tied to a coherent world view or set of values. This is true in some sense, but here too there is an underlying coherence: Trump’s actions are deeply selfish, either in terms of his personal power and interests, or else represent a kind of classic 19th century form of realism, in which great powers simply seek to maximize their power regardless of values or ideology. I wrote about this in my last post.
In the runup to last November’s election, many normie Republicans were arguing that Trump’s first term wasn’t that bad, and voted for him on that basis. In his second term, he is demonstrating that he is a radical of a sort that we have not witnessed before in American politics, as if we had somehow elected Vladimir Lenin. So stop using words like “chaotic” and “transactional” to describe a very purposeful individual.
I would like to add to Dr. Fukuyama's point by highlighting the discursive strategy at work, a strategy that amounts to an attempt to replace democratic with authoritarian norms.
The "bold" actions of the Trump Administrations to usurp power (violating the Impoundment Control Act being just one of many examples already) requires an explanation. Their approach is brutish, designed to intimidate and humiliate perceived "enemies of the people" and to of course score political points with the sizable minority who share their disdain for both "the deep state" and dangerous foreign interests, especially immigrants. But the projection of this strength belies weakness. On one hand, they assault our values of due process and law and, by extension, any remaining standards of decency toward others “not like us.” Just as importantly, though, is the open manner in which this assault is occurring. Its very openness is what communicates authority.
And therein lies a paradox which reveals the awkward historical moment Trump and Trumpism finds itself in. What we are witnessing now is, at least in part, an attempt to re-enact America’s revolutionary moment but now refracted through an illiberal lens of power for power’s sake which implicitly acknowledges the loss of a unifying cultural narrative. It is not that government was ever not dominated by special interests. And Trump's brand of illiberal democracy is not the first to cast itself as the savior of a bygone era when traditional American values operated with little question.
But by acting above the law, Trump and his followers implicitly lay exclusive claim to America's cultural patrimony as the only "real Americans.” As they would have it, theirs is a legacy of exceptionalism centered on America’s unique status as world creator but also world destroyer: “we” and we alone may create laws and therefore break them. The effectiveness of this rhetorical strategy hinges on the unconditional and shameless manner it is executed. In the political theater they are now staging, Trump's strategists know exactly what they are doing. But the enactment of this myth is paradoxical in that it claims rational power in its openness—as if to say, what we are doing is self-evidently good for the country—while at the same time demanding obedience at the expense of whole classes of people considered as “other.” By contrasting itself with other classes of people, Trumpism thereby objectifies itself, and “power” becomes irrational.
This is not say that all actors inside the Trump Administration act with one mind. But the various recent executive actions are nevertheless framed inside a larger story of change which we are now enjoined to believe.
Whenever actions are successfully framed as stories of fixing, restoring justice, liberation, salvation, or similar—that is, a story with a bad beginning, heroic response, and happy ending—the entire experience becomes self-validating. This is because any change can be made to carry a signal or message about a change. The response, the middle part, is good because the problem ended (obviously), while the story as a whole is true because the change—the problem ending—happened (again, obviously). (The whole punctuation of experience is important, which is why the time horizons we participate in, our attentions spans, are important.) As an action, the classification is classified as good, and this in turn frames the entire classification sequence as true. It is good and therefore true and true and therefore good.
The trick hinges on treating the problem in contrast to its treatment: not normal becomes then self-evidently a problem to fix in the self-evident (normal) way. Expressed in terms of formal logic, the predicate function becomes its own argument. Such an error in logical typing is strictly forbidden as it leads to nonsense. But in the real world of actions, these sorts of errors happen all the time, becoming their own truths. In fact, ideology and corollary political rhetoric are most effective when they are enacted. And the phenomenon is not limited to enactments of hero myths. Related problems of logical typing are evident in all kinds of human (and even some non-human mammalian) affairs such as play, threats, and histrionics. In a future post I would like to talk more about this and especially how these sorts of “truths” interact with other senses of truth, from the very personal to grand truths or eternal verities.
Which brings me to accountability. With some understanding of these problems (I recommend reading Gregory Bateson’s work on this, among others), we can be more vigilant, less taken in by the “just so” stories, and therefore less pliable. And we can also call out disingenuous or false discourse. (We can then, for example, see how the Trump Administration’s actions attempt the contradictory tasks of changing norms while claiming timeless norms and how, by extension, normalization paradoxically requires non-response from us). This applies to all ideologies, lest we forget that the Left is just as prone to the errors as the Right or anyone else “in between.” This is also why I feel it is important that we be open with ourselves and others about our operating assumptions. And not just as individuals, but in all the collectivities we participate in (and we all do). We are not just individuals; we are part of greater wholes, whether we see them or not. This starts with being clear about our purposes, for they define the boundary conditions that define who “we” are to begin with and what kind of world we want to live in.
I believe the appropriate term is /tin-pot dictator in the making/