"Blow the whole thing up" and "Burn the place to the ground" were common refrains among rank-and-file Trumpites in 2015-16. They might say they meant "the old GOP." They might say "Trump is a builder!" But by lionizing someone who "isn't afraid to challenge traditional norms," they chose first of all a destroyer who would "break what ne…
"Blow the whole thing up" and "Burn the place to the ground" were common refrains among rank-and-file Trumpites in 2015-16. They might say they meant "the old GOP." They might say "Trump is a builder!" But by lionizing someone who "isn't afraid to challenge traditional norms," they chose first of all a destroyer who would "break what needs to be broken," as one Trump intellectual said.
The more respectable line is that it's about trimming back the "administrative state" that removes decisions from democratic accountability -- which is fine as far is it goes. The idea is that the permanent bureaucracy warps the constitutional order. The promoters of Schedule F will say it's about letting a "duly elected president" enact his own agenda as the Constitution allows.
But when Donald Trump is the hero of that project -- and when Trump loyalists applaud playing hardball to prevent a Democratic president from enacting his agenda -- one has to suspect that something other than democratic accountability is at its heart. It looks more like: "A president who will do what I want should not be limited in any way -- or held accountable for illegal acts."
Trump himself clearly has an expansive view of presidential powers & immunities. His elite defenders aren't bothered by it. Instead, they attack those who insist that the president is not supposed to be a monarch.
Among hard-core Trumpites are people who suggest that democracy itself is problematic in that it allows the wrong kinds of people to gain power. And unlike much of America, they don't identify Trump as the wrong kind of person. Also in MAGA-land one can find a belief that the Constitution is defective insofar as it's informed by Enlightenment liberalism and doesn't give religion a dominant place in public life, and it allows cultural changes they dislike.
So if you delve into the world of those saying “We must restore and defend the American constitutional order," you may come upon a fantasy of repealing essential features of the Constitution and putting in place a different kind of governance.
"Break what needs to be broken." But what needs to be broken and why?
If democracy is only used to pass laws that help enforce horizontal inequality by education and wealth, then isn't that system *worth* destroying? What good is a fucked up form of democracy that basically enforces economic oligarchy/feudalism? For a lot of working class people, they'd rather have authoritarianism with a chance of their kids making it up the economic ladder than a liberal democracy where their kids are locked out of economic mobility by the people with the best education and inherited wealth. If democracy can't deliver on its promises because the economic winners are using it maliciously to keep others out, then what good is democracy if you've got a better chance making it economically by getting rid of democracy rather than maintaining it? The greed of this country's last several generation of economic winners led them to concentrate their wealth across class and fortify their children's station in life before they were even grown up--even when it destroyed the nation's meritocracy and cut people who weren't already members of their club off from ever having a chance of marrying up and joining them.
If we do end up sliding into anocracy in 2024 or beyond, it will be because the people who had it best in this country couldn't be bothered to take responsibility for the power they accumulated, using that power to live their most selfish lives instead of lifting other less-fortunate members of society up. They didn't care about how much anger they were creating against the system they were manipulating because, well, they only thought about themselves as individuals or families as opposed to citizens of a collective nation that relied on one another. The educated and wealthy went their own way since the 1970's and then got real real surprised that after about five decades of that shit people were ready to burn down democracy and eat the elites. Wake the fuck up. With great power comes great responsibility, the responsibility to use that power to help society, not just helping yourself and your family. When the well-off ignore those responsibilities, they generate rage from those left behind. When that rage builds big enough and long enough, it comes for the things that the powerful love the most: their freedoms to be greedy and selfish with their power. We'll see how long this worn out glue holds the country together, but I wouldn't bet that this experiment in democracy lasts another 50 years the way that the winners of the economic system it produces carry themselves as a culture.
"Blow the whole thing up" and "Burn the place to the ground" were common refrains among rank-and-file Trumpites in 2015-16. They might say they meant "the old GOP." They might say "Trump is a builder!" But by lionizing someone who "isn't afraid to challenge traditional norms," they chose first of all a destroyer who would "break what needs to be broken," as one Trump intellectual said.
The more respectable line is that it's about trimming back the "administrative state" that removes decisions from democratic accountability -- which is fine as far is it goes. The idea is that the permanent bureaucracy warps the constitutional order. The promoters of Schedule F will say it's about letting a "duly elected president" enact his own agenda as the Constitution allows.
But when Donald Trump is the hero of that project -- and when Trump loyalists applaud playing hardball to prevent a Democratic president from enacting his agenda -- one has to suspect that something other than democratic accountability is at its heart. It looks more like: "A president who will do what I want should not be limited in any way -- or held accountable for illegal acts."
Trump himself clearly has an expansive view of presidential powers & immunities. His elite defenders aren't bothered by it. Instead, they attack those who insist that the president is not supposed to be a monarch.
Among hard-core Trumpites are people who suggest that democracy itself is problematic in that it allows the wrong kinds of people to gain power. And unlike much of America, they don't identify Trump as the wrong kind of person. Also in MAGA-land one can find a belief that the Constitution is defective insofar as it's informed by Enlightenment liberalism and doesn't give religion a dominant place in public life, and it allows cultural changes they dislike.
So if you delve into the world of those saying “We must restore and defend the American constitutional order," you may come upon a fantasy of repealing essential features of the Constitution and putting in place a different kind of governance.
"Break what needs to be broken." But what needs to be broken and why?
If democracy is only used to pass laws that help enforce horizontal inequality by education and wealth, then isn't that system *worth* destroying? What good is a fucked up form of democracy that basically enforces economic oligarchy/feudalism? For a lot of working class people, they'd rather have authoritarianism with a chance of their kids making it up the economic ladder than a liberal democracy where their kids are locked out of economic mobility by the people with the best education and inherited wealth. If democracy can't deliver on its promises because the economic winners are using it maliciously to keep others out, then what good is democracy if you've got a better chance making it economically by getting rid of democracy rather than maintaining it? The greed of this country's last several generation of economic winners led them to concentrate their wealth across class and fortify their children's station in life before they were even grown up--even when it destroyed the nation's meritocracy and cut people who weren't already members of their club off from ever having a chance of marrying up and joining them.
If we do end up sliding into anocracy in 2024 or beyond, it will be because the people who had it best in this country couldn't be bothered to take responsibility for the power they accumulated, using that power to live their most selfish lives instead of lifting other less-fortunate members of society up. They didn't care about how much anger they were creating against the system they were manipulating because, well, they only thought about themselves as individuals or families as opposed to citizens of a collective nation that relied on one another. The educated and wealthy went their own way since the 1970's and then got real real surprised that after about five decades of that shit people were ready to burn down democracy and eat the elites. Wake the fuck up. With great power comes great responsibility, the responsibility to use that power to help society, not just helping yourself and your family. When the well-off ignore those responsibilities, they generate rage from those left behind. When that rage builds big enough and long enough, it comes for the things that the powerful love the most: their freedoms to be greedy and selfish with their power. We'll see how long this worn out glue holds the country together, but I wouldn't bet that this experiment in democracy lasts another 50 years the way that the winners of the economic system it produces carry themselves as a culture.