Some Day This Presidency’s Gonna End…
Trump's lack of focus may spare us the worst outcomes in this one instance.
In his classic early 19th-century work Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville notes that public law and administration in a democracy are fickle and dreadful at long-term planning. At every turn (at least back in the 1830s), the majority becomes distracted and moves on to the next hot item. He observes:
“As the majority (in the United States) is the only power which it is important to court, all its projects are taken up with the greatest ardor, but no sooner is its attention distracted than all this ardor ceases; whilst in the free States of Europe the administration is at once independent and secure, so that the projects of the legislature are put into execution, although its immediate attention may be directed to other objects.”
Democracy, Tocqueville warned, needed countervailing forces against its own natural tendencies toward excessive passion, myopia, and fickleness.
Now we can debate whether what Tocqueville claimed about democracies in the 19th century still holds any truth, but what catches my attention here are the governing problems posed by excessive passion, myopia, and fickleness.
Enter Donald Trump as Apocalypse Now’s Colonel Kilgore.
Though the meme is but a day old, much has understandably been made of Trump’s (hopefully) enigmatic “Chipocalypse Now” meme. On this platform, Matt Bernius takes the meme seriously (quite rightly, I think) and does a fine job unpacking its iconography and implications.
Matt points to Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore’s wanton destruction, his disregard for distinguishing proper from improper targets, and his glorying in violence. Matt doesn’t explicitly note it, but he might also have mentioned Kilgore’s forlorn line to Martin Sheen’s character: “Some day this war’s gonna end.” This is not the comment of someone intent on success, but of someone who relishes violence and spectacle for their own sake. The movie suggests Kilgore is a “true” military man because he sees war as process. He only wishes to secure the beach, no matter how absurd the reason. In that sense, the comparison to Trump is apt. Trump’s love of immediate spectacle and the short-lived news cycle it generates nearly always outweighs any concern for precedent (none) or real-world results (minimal).
For years, I’ve told folks that Trump reminds me of Robert Duvall’s character, and for the willing, I’ve shown the clip that prompts the comparison. My own long-standing comparison between Trump and Kilgore differs from the connections that Matt suggests. In a curious and possibly unconvincing way, the connection I’ve always seen between Trump and Kilgore may actually offer a measure of hope that the worst-case scenarios about Trump’s domestic use of the military will not come to pass. And that connection is Trump’s short attention span. Aside from personal grudges (which he never lets go), Trump’s focus is usually fleeting and ever-shifting. His speech patterns alone reveal this—rambling, digressive, constantly losing the thread as he chases tangents upon tangents. The man is forever distracted by his own mental squirrels.
This may explain why some of his followers don’t take his grand pronouncements seriously. Make Canada the 51st state? He moves on. Annex Greenland? He tests the waters, then drops it. The biggest infrastructure bill in history…until it isn’t a bill at all. The greatest healthcare plan until it vanishes altogether. Inject disinfectant for Covid, except no, he’s “just kidding.”
Threaten Chicago with war? He’s trolling, his supporters say. Quit taking him so literally.
I hope this line of thinking is right. Trump goes for the easy kill. Much of what drives him is theater. He probes the soft underbelly for quick wins, but he has little patience for the boring, steady administration of law. He floods the field with big pronouncements, too many to track, and by the time I, for one, focus on one, I find myself well beyond the curve. Both Trump and seemingly the rest of the world have already moved on to the next thirty-minute news cycle. It’s a terrible way to govern, but it may spare us his worst instincts at least in this one instance.
Which brings us back to Kilgore. In the scene I have in mind (starting around 1:50), Kilgore and his men come across a mortally wounded North Vietnamese soldier, clutching a pot lid against his stomach to keep his intestines from spilling out. The man stretches out his arms, begging for water. While others dismiss him, Kilgore surprises everyone with a rare moment of apparent magnanimity. He declares that he’d be proud to let any man “holding his guts in with his own hands” drink from his canteen. He uncaps the canteen, squats by the man, and begins to pour water to his lips. But just then, an underling approaches Kilgore to inform him that Lance Johnson, a surfer(!), has arrived on the scene, and the surf upriver is perfect.
Immediately, Kilgore abandons the wounded man. He spills water mid-sip, springs to his feet, and walks away, talking exuberantly of clearing the riverbank so Lance can surf. The dying soldier is forgotten in a flash. Within seconds, Kilgore transforms from a man seemingly of surprising expansiveness to reveal what he really is—an overgrown child chasing his id.
That’s Trump, or so I hope. I don’t think he’s merely trolling when he makes big pronouncements. I believe he really does want Canada as the 51st state, or Greenland as U.S. territory. But when he meets resistance and lacks support from his team, more often than not, he drops it.
How Trump’s (almost certain) future domestic use of the military unfolds will depend partly on optics and partly on resistance. My hope—crossing my fingers here—is that if he can declare an easy victory (“I’ve ended crime!”), he will. If the bloodlust of his administration and followers pushes him to dig in and to use real force, all bets are off. I pray but don’t exactly expect that he’ll be distracted once more by the next imaginary squirrel racing through his mind, wandering off to some new absurd project—like declaring Mars exclusively ours.
As I’ve noted before, surprise is no longer a luxury we can afford. But we can still hope for the best while bracing for the worst.
I fear that Trump has transformed the American political system. Whoever is next will seize power by hook or by crook. We are honoring Ashli Babbit after all. The holder of the office will rule by his own will, and there will be no pushback from Congress or the courts. The media will only report favorably on our maximum leader. Any boos will be purged. The 22nd amendment will be neutralized. I hope that the next guy will be a good guy.
Yes, JD Vance isn’t much, but I fear he may lack Trump’s redeeming incompetence.
I hope the next guy will be a good guy but there is a part of me that the Democrat who follows engages in the same stuff Trump has done. However, I dont think it will really cause anyone on the right to change their opinions about Trump behavior. I think they will conclude that only Republicans should be able to engage in the immoral and illegal behavior shown by Trump.
Steve
@steve222: Any Democrat immediately following Trump, please, God, will be constrained by SCOTUS.
That was true in his first term. It’s less likely this time around, for the simple reason that Trump’s key aides are fanatics, obsessed with achieving their pet projects. Hegseth dreams of transforming the US military into “warfighters”, which self-evidently implies a war. Bessent, Witkoff, Lutnick and others dream of a new Gilded Age with themselves in the palaces. Miller and Noem are on a crusade to Make America White Again. Kennedy appears to want to reverse medical advances from the last 100 years. Zeldin and others are zealots intent on crushing the “climate change hoax” and the move towards renewable energy. The list goes on, through everything from education to alliances, with at least one person in the regime determined to bring about each of the fundamental changes described in Project 2025.
Most of these people have spent years learning how to manipulate Trump. They’ll continue to get him to back their pet projects, and unlike him, they’re not going to get distracted.
The intersting question is how far will the MAGA adoration of Trump tranfer to any of his likely sucessors.
And also to how nasty the susession fight might get.
JD vs Don Jr: place your bets.
And also, if the tech-bros try to move in fast to ensure their preferences come out on top; and how other interested parties may act.
If the economy does go tits-up in the next couple of years, a Dem presidency may be likely.
Then, will you see Republican states and the Supreme Court attempting to re-assert federalism and congressional authority?
lol.
@JohnSF:
It’s always been a double-edged sword: Trump brings out the infrequent voters who adore him, but also invigorates the opposition in a way someone as bland as JD Vance could never hope to do.
At the same time, MAGA won’t die with Trump himself. It’s in many ways already an independent force which Trump only pretends to control, as seen from his backpedaling on Operation Warp Speed. He always makes sure to get in front of the mob he’s supposedly directing.
A while back I saw an interview with comedian Trae Crowder, a.k.a. Liberal Redneck, and there was one point he made which really stuck with me: he reported that many of the MAGA folks he knows from his native Tennessee used to despise Trump back when he was simply the crass real-estate guy from NYC. Even though Trump has always been fundamentally the same person, he did somewhat of a reinvention of his brand in his path to the presidency. Many would date it to 2015 when he came down that escalator, but I think it really started in 2011 when he embraced birtherism and teased a presidential run he never followed through on–in that cycle. That was when he announced his conversion to pro-life and also bashed free trade–which wasn’t new for him, but combined with his simultaneous appeal to the most deranged, racist, and conspiratorial voters in the GOP, he was essentially starting where Pat Buchanan left off.
He didn’t talk much about immigration at that point. But in the following few years, after the right-wing backlash against the bipartisan immigration bill (with Sarah Palin, herself the most immediate precursor to Trump’s MAGA incarnation, leading the charge), Trump jumped on it with a fury–and the rest is history.
The point is that he molded himself to the movement he’s credited with creating. He just did a more effective job of speaking to their bloodlust than any previous Republican had done. They’re not going to disappear when he’s gone, and I think Vance realizes it. Anyone who thinks a President Vance would in any way represent a return to sanity is fooling themselves; he’ll fall over himself to prove he’s the heir, even with no chance of gaining their respect, much less trust.
The problem that de Tocqueville identifies is primarily a problem of centralizing government activity in a single personality – the executive – to the exclusion of the deliberative entity – the legislature. It is the nature of a legislature to have reach longer term compromises that reflect a broader set of goals where the executive branch is focused on whatever the executive personally is focused on. When that executive is Trump, the problem is exacerbated by Trump’s discursive mindset.
This is reflected not just in Congress lying down for Trump, but even more so in the rescission bill where even the long term compromises already made are upended for Trump’s personal preferences.
Centralizing government power in fewer and fewer personalities is its own problem. Centralizing them in Trump’s is catastrophic.