It’s A Coup

The American political project is either dead or dying.

A friend sent me a recent resource that came their way, which in turn pushed me to return my focus to the political dimension this week. Since trump reclaimed the presidency, I have been struggling with whether to write a piece like this. I am definitely on the side of not giving the trump regime so much of my energy. That’s very much what they want, and very much at the heart of how they have operated here in the first few weeks of their second attempt at running things. So much of what they are doing is worth next to no cognitive space, if only because it is fundamentally a way of operating that thrives on near-constant capture of people’s attention. It is a constant, elevated, background noise of incoherent cruelty for its own sake. From that frame, I would rather not add to the din. Instead, I want to focus on the long-term implications of how things are setting up here in trump2.0, and what it might mean for the long-term regarding the American political project. None of which is particularly optimistic.

No guardrails left

The most important thing that I have come to understand about the current moment is that there are no significant obstacles preventing the trumpist impulse from using the structures of the American government to pursue its goals. This might be less of a concern if it was really trump, or any of his true-believers, trying to implement their preferred varieties of dumb shit. But the long-term concern is not so…