His is not fully a bonapartist dictatorship, but neither would it be correct to either dismiss his tendencies in that direction or dismiss the idea that he could vastly increase those tendencies through the events surrounding this coming election. Nor is how far he can go in that direction predetermined.
Trump's impulse to dictatorship is an attraction to a media role meant to be consumed in clips and sound bites. He tends to pull punches and abandon lines of attack unpredictably: he is inconsistent for example in deploying Chad Wolf's storm troops in Portland even when he could justify it on the same terms he used to justify it in the first place. He appears--for now, and rather unaccountably, to have lost interest. To a large extent, this tergiversation reflects not just a deep, narcissistic lack of interest in governance but an active ideological hostility to the fundamental principle of governance itself. Trump has no real interest in running a government; he has likewise no interest in or respect for functions like those of standards bodies or the research carried out at NIH, or the accurate collection and dissemination of statistics. He has carried to an unprecedented extreme the fundamentally unserious Grover Norquist nostrum about drowning government in a bathtub. He wants to reduce government to a wall around Mar-a-Lago behind which he can do as he pleases surrounded by adoring throngs of sycophants with no real responsibility for anything at all except keeping the "shithole" world at bay. This makes Trump completely unsuitable for the role of dictator, which would require him to actually dictate and follow the results of his dictates closely and accurately. He wants to destroy things like Obamacare and the Postal Service--and not replace them with anything. For all the anti-government rhetoric of his rightwing predecessors, this is a new and uniquely dangerous wrinkle. One of the weakest men ever to occupy the White House has already all but destroyed the government at the head of which he stands and is unstoppable by any force except that of his own weakness. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#343): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/343 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/76175329/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES<br />#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.<br />#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.<br />#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
