18 Month Check-In

Need to do some writing to try and make sense out of this all.  There's a lot of nihilism and despair about right now, for obvious reasons, but taking a broader view of things reveals some other things.

So the thing I want to do is assess the successes and failures of Trump's rule 18 months in.  The very notion that Trump's rule has had "successes" goes against common sense, and saying it opens me up to the charge that I'm moving the goalposts.  I'm not - I just don't think that measuring him by the standards of an American President, by which standards he is in every way grossly deficient, is appropriate.  He needs to be judged by the standards of an autocratic ruler.

By those standards, his most stunning success is maintaining and solidifying his hold on the unshakable, unquestionable support of his power base, consisting of 40% of Americans.  This support is essential and critical - this is what protects him and allows him completely unrestrained latitude in personal action.  The rest of the Republican party may scheme against him, but as long as he has the support of the rank and file Naz^H^H^HRepublicans, speaking against him, as a Republican, appears futile.  His utter conquest over the concept of "anti-Trump Republicans" is impressive (though unsurprising, as the entire history of the Republican party from Goldwater on has laid the groundwork for someone just like him - he is the culmination of the post-Eisenhower party).

He has also - and again, we're judging him as an autocrat - been tremendously successful at eroding the norms of liberal democracy.  He has shown himself to have the ability to lie, to torture, and this week to openly commit treason, without being held to account.  He has clearly and nakedly shown the limits of democratic governance.

Unfortunately, and here we start getting into the all-important "failures" category, he has not done this to his own benefit.  The most important thing for a dictator to do is to undermine and weaken your opposition, and he's completely failed to do this at every step.  His invocation of the popular totalitarian "lugenpresse" lie has not been followed up by controls on the press.  Merely taking the reins of the existing pro-totalitarian propaganda machine is not sufficient.  The second most important thing for a dictator to do is to empower your supporters, and this he has also failed to do.  While it is impressive that he has sustained a rule based on naked lies for so long, the essence of totalitarianism is to reshape reality to support the lies it is based on.  He hasn't done this.  Nobody in America is demonstrably, measurably better off for his rule.

As of this writing, Donald Trump holds supreme political power in a country which, in large part due to his actions, cannot effectively be led - only ruled.  Yet he does not rule, is in fact incapable of ruling.  This is his greatest failure.