The Limits of Trumpism

The symbol of chaos, originating in Michael Moorcock's Elric series, is an eight pointed star. A radial pattern with eight spokes, or arrows charging out from the centre. A symbol, almost kinetic in appearance, of advancing into everywhere at once. This is a useful heuristic for getting a handle on the seemingly mad works of Donald J Trump and his new administration. In three weeks he's shut down all public funding for medical research, stopped and then restored federal funding for welfare programmes, announced tariffs on Mexican and Canadian products before pausing them for a month, tried doing the same with Colombia before retreating, reiterated his desire to acquire Greenland, contributed to two fatal air crashes by firing air traffic control staff, destroyed American soft power by pulling the US AID programme, threatened the EU, put thousands of federal employees who were hired under diversity, equality, and inclusivity efforts on leave, and let a bunch of Elon Musk interns run riot with the federal payments system. And that doesn't cover the half of it.

Then on Tuesday, he announced the most Trump-brained scheme imaginable. Welcoming indicted war criminal, Benjamin Netanyahu to the Oval Office the president announced his scheme for lasting peace in the Middle East: expel all Palestinians from Gaza. Under this "initiative", Israeli troops would withdraw and US troops would come in to facilitate the relocation of the remaining population to neighbouring Arab states. Not having consulted the governments of these countries, and Amman making it clear that such an expulsion would mean Jordan going to war with Israel, it's fair to say the proposal hasn't landed well. White House pressers and Trump's State Department stooge, the ultra-Zionist Marco Rubio, found this too much to stomach. Any transfer would be "temporary", he said and wouldn't involve any American troops. Unfortunately for little Marco, the boss has other ideas.

On his Truth Social vanity site, Trump restated his support for removing Palestinians. Gaza should be turned over to the US after they've been resettled. And how is this going to happen? Presumably, by Israel. Which would can the pause in the massacre and the exchange of hostages and spark off another round of bloodletting. But all Trump can see are the beach front real estate opportunities, of turning the site of this century's live-streamed genocide into a tourist trap. What a moral blank of a man. And one unlikely to get his way.

It was far from intentional, but Israel's indiscriminate "revenge" for the 7th October Hamas offensive sparked off a series of events that consolidated the State Department's Middle Eastern objectives. Hamas and Hezbollah, severely weakened. Iran's military capacities diminished. Supply routes from Tehran to Beirut curtailed. Al-Assad gone. Russian bases removed. And client Arab regimes safe from the backlash against their craven acceptance of the massacre, for the moment. Trump's comment alone threaten to reverse the strong US position by uniting Arab publics and governments against America. And the only way such an operation could be achieved is by a US occupation, which would lead to hundreds if not thousands of US soldiers heading home in body bags, an even more febrile Middle East, and undoubtedly a turn away from America to China. And, for that matter, a global distancing from the US. It would be an unparalleled and grimly ludicrous failure of statecraft.

And there's the home front too. No one among the MAGA base are keen to see American lives expended in Palestine. No Republican member of Congress wants to bleed votes. And that's before we get to the humongous anti-war movement Trump's stupidity would touch off. The new White House might want to bury politics-as-usual under a blizzard of unhinged and vindictive executive orders, but not even the Donald's tangerine dream world can ignore political realities.

Following the Steve Bannan play book of "flooding the zone with shit", the into-everywhere-at-once chaos of Trump's presidency has discombobulated and demoralised swathes of bourgeois opposition that fashionably associated with "the resistance" between 2016-2020. Which itself takes advantage of the zero preparation the Democrats have undertaken for life in opposition to Trump since their miserable failure in November. But doing so much at once threatens opposition on all fronts too. Despite this, the administration cannot help itself. That having re-won the presidency by something of a sliver, different sections of the Trump coalition are going fast and hard on meeting their own individual objectives. It's every oligarch for themselves with little sense of a common project or case for things like maintaining popular consent for their rule. In Musk's case, it's dismantling regulators and shaking down the state, and smashing up other agencies as red meat for the base. Presently, this behaviour has stunned domestic politics and has left America's allies/satraps aghast and consequences there will be for the US in general and Trump's presidency in particular. The retreats on tariffs and welfare cheques, and the speed at which decisions are made are demonstrative of a fundamental weakness in the Trump project. It is not time for opponents to give up or, worse, bend the knee. Amid the razzmatazz of reaction lies a regime vulnerable to elite and mass opposition. Trump and his acolytes are testing their limits, which makes now the best and potentially most decisive moment for fighting back.

Image Credit