What’s ahead for America? Nobody knows because, under Trump, America’s public affairs have become his private matters, which makes predictability difficult. In its political history, the United States has never had so much actual power concentrated in one person before.
Observers try to gauge America’s future by gleaning from the well-known examples, such as Mussolini or Hitler, or the present strongmen of Russia, China, Hungary, Turkey and others. In these Old World nations, which left their kings and lords not too long ago, it’s easier to gaze into their future: Democracy is still their dream yet to come as soon as their strongman-autocrats fade. But such is not a likely choice for America’s future.
In America, for 250 years, we’ve enjoyed our anything-goes liberal democracy to its old age and senility. For the only time in modern history, a “democratic” cycle — beginning in bloody revolution and ending in social dementia — was calmly announced dead by a simple majority on Election Day. Ever since then, the liberal left has grown weaker and Trump has grown stronger, and is still growing, even exponentially. Two recent events illuminate how strong Trump’s political power really is:
On Aug. 1, Trump summarily fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics director for low job-creation statistics. It was shocking because, along with money (where Trump appointed only professionals to all economy-related posts), government statistics was considered sacrosanct. But, Trump just shot and killed the statistics messenger on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight in full public view.
Several days earlier, Emil Bove (called “the worst judiciary nominee in American history” by his critics) was confirmed as an appeals-level federal judge. A diehard Trump loyalist at age 44, he is groomed for the Supreme Court and his judicial reign will be assured for the next 40 years.
In both events, no political tsunami followed. We see Trump’s real power in what happened afterward — nothing. (Democracy is defined not by what happens but by what happens after what happens). He is so strong now that he plans to be independent of even his own populist base, and his strength is just beginning: In its epic journey, Trump’s power is changing from being “public power,” accountable in a democratic system, to being “private power,” accountable only to himself.
Trump’s privatized political power replicates the example set by capitalism which privatized economic power. During the last century of capitalist development, following the Civil War, the wealth in America’s (public) economic power was privatized by capitalist oligarchs, which is now publicly recognized as the official economic ideology of American society: Today, the American masses faithfully obey the principle that money, in few private hands, rules.
In our social-media era where generational brainwashing is easy, Trump’s privatized political power will be accepted much sooner. Uncontrolled by either Congress or SCOTUS or media, Americanism will become synonymous with Trumpism. Indeed, Trump has masterfully privatized everything in America. Even in public matters, such as tariff and Ukraine, he makes his decisions entirely on his private mood and calculus. His public decisions are now windows to his private mood shifts, and America is adjusting to this new style of expectations — as it did with capitalist oligarchs.
Trump’s privatized power is also radically different from that of the past populists like Mussolini, Hitler or our own Huey Long, who had a definite agenda — a specific populist utopia — as their goal. But Trump has no such goals or plans. His power grows every day as the resistance to his power weakens every day, but nobody (even Trump himself) knows what he is going to do with his power. He is a revolutionary, not a manager.
Conventional wisdom has it that one tries to gain power to do something with it. But, Trump’s growing and privatizing power is for the sake of power itself. History’s well-known power-mongers — such as Alexander, Napoleon, or Hitler — all had a definite goal of conquering the world. But, while his power is greater than all of theirs combined and multiplied, Trump has no definite plans to use it toward a grand goal. In this sense, with a world-conquering power, he is more like a moneyman with quarterly profit calculus than a strongman with a global vision.
By nature an isolationist and pacifist, and indifferent to international issues, Trump hates disruptions, such as war, because they interfere with his personal plans. His pliant military is good for takeover of cities and show-piece parades, but not as a war machine. The nitty-gritty of war management (or any management, which implies repetition and boredom) would drive him insane. Nor does he have real territorial desire for Canada, the Panama Canal or Greenland — aside from the media attention and a lot of anxiety for the current occupants that his hot-air generates.
For a man with immense power, his personal desires are remarkably, well, personal: Other than creating turmoil for his opponents and critics, collecting some money here and there, and gilding his White House décor, he is like a 10-year-old boy with hyperactive imaginations, but not cosmic ambitions. But our existential reality — say, America’s post-liberal political fate — is caught in the whimsical vortex of its boy-emperor at his most far-reaching and terrifying.
Before Trump, the American Republic under capitalism’s privatized economic power was only half gone. Now, squeezed between two jaws — capitalist and Trumpist — it is completely gone and our liberal democracy will never return: Trumpism, now rising, simply cannot coexist with liberalism.
As bystanders and players — both fascinated and dumbfounded — we witness a dying nation in its death-throes giving birth to a new one whose future is yet unknown.
Jon Huer, retired professor and columnist for the Recorder, lives in Greenfield and writes for posterity.
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