There’s No Method To His Madness

The New Republic recently ran an essay titled “There is No Method to his Madness. He’s Simply Insane.” I couldn’t agree more.

The article began by noting that past heads of state have sometimes pretended irrationality in order to confuse opponents, but noted–confirming what any rational observer has already concluded–Trump is not among them. For one thing, he clearly lacks the intellectual capacity to devise such a strategy. Or any strategy.

It’s not just Trump’s unpredictable tariff policy that appears insane. His entire administration is defined by madness—in both senses. On Friday, he went on another incoherent rant on social media, claiming once that the 2020 election was stolen from him and rewriting history to blame all of our current problems, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on Joe Biden. In other Truth Social posts, he’s boasted about being a king and claimed that the “European Union was formed for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the United States.”

If these acts were merely confined to deranged posts, perhaps one could argue there’s “method in his madness.” After his rant on Friday, Trump gave a speech at the Justice Department wherein he kvetched about various imaginary enemies of the United States (which, coincidentally, are his personal enemies) and made clear that he expects the department to serve as an extension of his personal wrath. Similar delusions have led to the dismantling of USAID, a wasteful visit to Fort Knox to check if the gold had been stolen, and continual talk about annexing other countries.

The article goes on to detail further evidence that our would-be King has no (mental) clothes, despite his courtiers’ efforts to find method in the madness.

What makes the insanity so dangerous, however, isn’t simply Trump’s ignorance of governance and economics, but the venom that characterizes his approach to others, and the festering resentments that impel his actions. Trump is a limited intellect and damaged ego occupying a human body;  fears and jealousies and grievances–not strategies or principles–prompt his eruptions, and explain both his grandiose fantasies (comparing himself to Winston Churchill, annexing Canada) and his tacky decorating fetishes (gold toilets).

While it would be inaccurate to describe them as principles, there are a few long-standing grievances that predictably motivate Trump’s constant stream of illegal (and often ridiculous) Executive Orders. Our mad king thinks he is in a position to take revenge, not just over the legal system which (finally) was holding him to account, but over all those people who sneered at him over the years–those “elitists” with their intellectual and cultural bona fides, the businesspeople who made their fortunes without ripping off suppliers or hiding in bankruptcy court, the women who found his “charms” unpersuasive.

Politics gave Trump the adulation he wanted, but from people he clearly despises.

Those long-standing resentments explain so much: Trump’s war on a legal community defending rules he regularly broke–and his special animus for the lawyers who had the nerve to represent people antagonistic to him. His refusal to allow disclosure of his own GPA undoubtedly sheds some light on his efforts to destroy intellectual inquiry on the nation’s campuses. Both his own resentments and the need to pander to his MAGA cult help explain his efforts to turn academia into a mechanism for Right-wing propaganda.

As for the roots of his White Nationalism–his definition of “DEI” as discrimination against White men and his ferocious efforts to return women and minorities to subservience–I can only assume that he agrees with MAGA that his White skin is a sign that he is superior and that any effort to ensure fair treatment for women and minorities is an attack on that superiority. (Unfortunately, his entire administration demonstrates the folly of believing Whiteness denotes even minimal competence…)

Bottom line: the United States has a president who is ignorant, petulant and demonstrably insane. He is also, in all probability, a Russian asset. Our constitutional system of checks and balances is currently not working, because members of the GOP majorities in the House and Senate fear the mad king and are not living up to their oaths of office, and the Supreme Court’s majority is ethically compromised.

The remedy must come from We the People. And it begins by acknowledging the truth of that last paragraph.

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Poison Gas

I have repeatedly cited the observation by a noted civil libertarian to the effect that poison gas is a great weapon–until the wind shifts.

In case the clear meaning of that observation eludes anyone, it is a recognition that ignoring the rule of law in order to punish people you dislike is a very dangerous tactic, because when those disliked folks gain power–as they inevitably will– they can turn those same illegal tactics against you.

It is abundantly clear that Trump and his MAGA minions don’t understand the operation of due process guarantees. (Granted, Trump is embarrassingly ignorant of all civil liberties, and indeed, ignorant of how the world works.) That ignorance is shown by the increasing hysteria with which the administration keeps asserting that Abrego Garcia is “a bad dude,” and that bad dudes aren’t entitled to due process.

There is substantial evidence to rebut the administration’s accusations about Garcia, but their probity is totally irrelevant. Giving an accused individual due process requires that the government prove its allegations in a court of law. If Garcia is really a gang member or otherwise unfit to live among us, the state should be able to demonstrate that fact. A grant of due process doesn’t keep authorities from expelling bad guys–but it does require government to provide the evidence upon which they are painting an individual as someone who should be expelled from our shores.

If a mere accusation is poison gas sufficient to justify deportation, none of us is safe. The accusatory finger can be pointed at anyone, for any reason. That’s why Talking Points Memo–among many others–has  editorialized about the extreme importance of this case.

As best we can tell, Abrego Garcia was on the third deportation flight from Texas to El Salvador on March 15. The other two flights contained people deported under the Alien Enemies Act without any judicial review. The AEA deportations were the first to be challenged in court, which led to the big blow up in U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s court about whether the Trump administration had willfully violated his order blocking them.

It was in the midst of that legal battle that the case of Abrego Garcia’s mistaken deportation emerged, an error the Trump administration admitted, serving as the perfect signifier for why due process is so essential. If Abrego Garcia could be deported in error – and in violation of an existing order by an immigration judge – isn’t that precisely why the law offers procedural protections that all of the deportees that day were entitled to at some level?

TPM noted that the administration’s positions inside the courtroom have been at odds with its public statements. It  has gone from admitting the deportation was in error to the launch of “a full-scale propaganda campaign from the White House on down, sowing misinformation, inventing facts, smearing Abrego Garcia with falsehoods, and furiously trying to muddy the waters to obscure its own malfeasance.”

The editorial quoted Timothy Snyder, a noted scholar of tyranny:

The president defied a Supreme Court ruling to return a man who was mistakenly sent to a gulag in another country, celebrated the suffering of this innocent person, and spoke of sending Americans to foreign concentration camps.

This is the beginning of an American policy of state terror, and it has to be identified as such to be stopped.

Americans who have been following the news are aware that Garcia is only the most prominent example of extra-legal apprehensions and deportations, which have been accelerating under this lawless regime. This reality–among other Trump acts in defiance of the rule of law–has brought us to the current constitutional crisis, as the administration stonewalls and evades, and refuses to submit to court orders.

The Republicans in the House and Senate could end this crisis. Even if they failed to impeach the mad king, they could assert their powers under the Constitution and take back the authority that Trump has usurped–authority that is rightfully theirs. Their failure to do so–the cowardice preventing them from even publicly protesting Trump’s blatantly illegal, unconstitutional and immoral behaviors–is a betrayal of immense proportions. Assuming we emerge from the current abyss, these Republicans will go down in history as weaklings and traitors whose failure to honor their oaths is a repudiation of the values upon which this country was founded.

It will also be seen as an invitation to turn the poison gas in their direction when Democrats gain control. Of course, if that happens, we really will have lost the Founders’ America.

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NO NO NO

The Trump Administration may be the pre-eminent example of lunacy in government, but the current super-majority in Indiana’s legislature–aided and abetted by our MAGA Governor and his merry band of White Christian Nationalists–are no less impervious to logic, evidence and sound policy. 

A report from Indiana Public Media focuses on one example. It begins:

A measure meant to better align education in Indiana to the state’s workforce needs is headed to the governor’s desk. It received wide support from Senate lawmakers despite lingering concerns about its effect on colleges, universities and employers.

SB 448 requires the Commission for Higher Education to approve all degrees and programs offered by public colleges and universities every 10 years. It also says those schools must assess and consider their staffing needs when reviewing tenured professors.

Sen. Greg Taylor (D-Indianapolis) said he is concerned programs could be cut if they aren’t considered valuable to the state’s employment needs. Additionally, he expressed concern that requiring faculty tenure reviews to take specific staffing needs for approved degrees or programs into account could be detrimental to other areas of study.

“It can get really dangerous for us to start providing this type of, I don’t know, nose under the tent ideology,” he said.

Taylor has identified the two major flaws in this state over-reach. I’ve repeatedly posted about the first– lawmakers’ refusal to understand what education is, and why it is not job training. Our public schools and universities have two vitally important tasks:  giving the nation’s children and youth the intellectual tools and skills they will need, not just to negotiate the economic world they will inhabit, but the tools to lead richer, more fulfilled and considered lives; and equipping them with what I have termed “civic literacy”–enabling them to discharge the responsibilities of citizenship.

Education includes things like art, music, literature and philosophy. Presumably, those studies are unnecessary “frills” when the job of the schools is simply to produce worker bees. 

But SB 448 not only confuses education with job training, it mimics Trump’s efforts to dictate what can and cannot be taught in the nation’s universities, to control and micro-manage institutions of higher education and to “purge” those institutions of ideas with which our overlords disagree.

The American Association of Colleges and Universities has issued a response to these efforts. It began:

As leaders of America’s colleges, universities, and scholarly societies, we speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education. We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight. However, we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses.

The statement notes that the nation’s colleges and universities are diverse. There are “research universities and community colleges; comprehensive universities and liberal arts colleges; public institutions and private ones; freestanding and multi-site campuses.”  Different schools are designed for different students. In order for these institutions to function properly, they must have the

freedom to determine, on academic grounds, whom to admit and what is taught, how, and by whom. Our colleges and universities share a commitment to serve as centers of open inquiry where, in their pursuit of truth, faculty, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation.

I encourage you to click through and read the entire statement, which was signed by dozens of university presidents. I doubt it will move the culture warriors in Washington or the Indiana Statehouse, who shrink from “open inquiry” and want to turn our educational institutions into factories spitting out those obedient worker bees. These are limited individuals who view genuine intellectual engagement and inquiry with fear and disdain. 

During this session, Indiana’s terrible legislature has doubled down on its war on education. It has stolen even more critical funding from our public schools in order to increase a voucher program that all evidence shows does not improve educational outcomes, and is in reality a First Amendment “work-around” allowing public money to flow to religious schools. In a prior session, it passed a highly intrusive bill misleadingly described as an effort to protect “intellectual diversity” on state campuses–in reality, an effort to purge those campuses of perspectives of which our radical legislators disapprove.

Ironically, those Blue states governed by legislators who understand the difference between job training and education–and who support, rather than undermine, their universities’ missions–also have more robust economies.

Too bad Indiana’s “leaders” can’t connect those dots….

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Cultural Revolution?

In a recent newsletter, Paul Krugman compared the Trump administration’s anti-DEI (i.e., pro-racism & misogyny) efforts to China’s cultural revolution under Mao.

Once you’ve seen the parallel between what MAGA is trying to do and China’s Cultural Revolution, the similarities are everywhere. Maoists sent schoolteachers to do farm labor; Trumpists are talking about putting civil servants to work in factories.

The Cultural Revolution was, of course, a huge disaster for China. It inflicted vast suffering on its targets and also devastated the economy. But the Maoists didn’t care. Revenge was their priority, never mind the effects on GDP.

As we’ve seen, China’s efforts failed–albeit not without years of unnecessary suffering. As I’ve previously opined, changing a nation’s culture rarely if ever works. But our would-be king–unhampered by anything suggesting intellect or competent appointees within his “administration,” is certainly trying to fulfill the most ardent wish of his MAGA base–taking American society back to the 1950s (or perhaps before), when women were pushing out babies and doing the dishes in the kitchen, and Black Americans were subject to segregation and confined to subservient positions.

That effort requires eliminating evidence of the worth and competence of women and Blacks. Accordingly, I did a search for federal websites that have been scrubbed of references to the contributions of women and black people.

Here’s what I found.

The Department of Defense undertook a significant purge of DEI-related content, resulting in the removal of profiles and articles about Army Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers, a Black Medal of Honor recipient; the Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team; the Navajo Code Talkers (including profiles of Indigenous veterans; women veterans such as Lisa Jaster, the first female Army Reserve graduate of Ranger School); historical figures like Jackie Robinson, who served in the Army during World War II; the Tuskegee Airmen and Women Airforce Service Pilots; and notable gravesites of Hispanic and Black service members at Arlington National Cemetery.

Some content has been restored following public outcry, but many of those pages remain inaccessible .​

NASA removed profiles of women and people of color from its website. The profile of Rose Ferreira, a Dominican-American intern, was taken down and later reinstated after public backlash. However, the restoration led to harassment directed at Ferreira, highlighting the challenges faced by individuals whose stories were previously celebrated .​

The National Park Service revised its content to align with the administration’s directives. Those erasures included the removal of mentions of transgender individuals from articles about the suffragist movement; changing terminology from “LGBT” to “LGB” and omitting the word “queer;” altering language in articles about the Underground Railroad, including removing a quote and image of Harriet Tubman and the term “slavery.”

The Small Business Administration removed a photograph from its website depicting a diverse group of individuals, including women and people of color, in front of a whiteboard.

Other federal agencies that have complied include the Department of Veterans Affairs, which has removed content related to LGBTQ+ veterans; the Federal Trade Commission, which has deleted over 300 posts, including those reporting on antitrust actions against tech giants; and the State Department, which altered the language in international travel advisories, replacing “LGBTQ+” with “LGB” and omitting references to safety concerns for transgender Americans abroad.

I have no idea how many Americans visit these sites; certainly, the information that has been deleted is widely available elsewhere. (In the age of the Internet, erasure of information previously available is a pipe dream…) That said, these alterations provide additional evidence (as if we needed it) of the central preoccupation of the White Christian Nationalists and other assorted bigots who form the majority of MAGA adherents.

It remains to be seen whether those who supported Trump because he promised to reward their racism–to return them to social dominance– will be steadfast in that support despite the chaos and damage being done to the economy, public health, science, education and the rule of law, among other elements of accelerating collateral damage.

As Krugman admonished readers, looking for rational strategy in Trump’s hysterical assault on DEI and “woke-ism” (aka equality and humanity) is a fool’s errand. “Don’t try to sanewash what’s happening. It’s evil, but it isn’t calculated evil. That is, it’s not a considered political strategy, with a clear end goal. It’s a visceral response from people who, as Thomas Edsall puts it, are addicted to revenge.”

Mao couldn’t change his culture. I don’t think Trump will change America’s, either. But we’ll suffer while he tries.

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A Battle Plan

Twice in the month of April, thousands of people turned out to protest the Trump coup. Here in Red Indiana, thousands gathered on April 5th and again on the 19th, despite cold, rainy weather. They gathered with clever (and not-so-clever) signs, and with determination (some in wheelchairs or with walkers). They came with small children and elderly parents. And they came in surprisingly large numbers.

There are plenty of nay-sayers who dismiss protests of this sort as wasted effort. They’re wrong, for a number of reasons. At the very least, those of us who have participated in these events come away with heightened resolve, recognizing that our concerns and anger are widely shared, that we stand in solidarity with others who are determined to protect what I have called The American Idea.

There are many avenues that citizens can use to resist and hopefully defeat a national turn to autocracy. In a recent Bulwark article, J.V. Last published a “battle plan for dissidents.” That plan was “half mass mobilization and half asymmetric warfare,” in recognition that– during the coming year– such tactics “will matter more than traditional political messaging as it has been practiced here in living memory.”

Last lists eight recommended tactics:

  1. Demonstrate popular power in the provinces through large-scale rallies.
  2. Use these events to organize the resistance into a mass movement that can be called into action.
  3. Direct the mass movement into targeted political strikes: Getting blowout wins in special elections; boycotts of Tesla; etc.
  4. Politicize everything: Attack the authoritarians for every bad thing that happens, anywhere in the world. Flood the zone.
  5. Elevate the corruption/graft in a way that pits the billionaire insiders against the “forgotten man.”
  6. When the moment is right, bring this movement to the Capital for a show of strength.
  7. Use this demonstration as a slingshot to take back legislative power in the 2026 elections.
  8. More importantly, use it to send a message to the institutional actors that people will have their back if they show courage..

While I agree with all eight, it is important to recognize that numbers 1, 2, and 8 are dependent upon the sorts of peaceful mass demonstrations we’re now experiencing. Large turnouts by everyday Americans of the sort we are seeing are a demonstration of power–people who are willing to get off their couches, create signs, gather and march with others are people who will cast ballots in upcoming elections.

The mechanisms used to inform citizens of these upcoming demonstrations will also serve as the initial organizing machinery for further actions–boycotts or strikes, for example. (I will note that those mechanisms need to be greatly expanded; significant numbers of people, many of whom would have been likely to participate, remained totally unaware of April’s protests. As the grass-roots groups sponsoring these events build out their informational webs, that will undoubtedly change.)

But Number 8 is by far the most important of the three identified purposes of these mass protests.

We would not be in the position we’re in if the GOP invertebrates We the People have elected to Congress were doing their jobs. Granted, some of these officials are as bigoted and ignorant as the current administration. Some are “out and proud” White Christian Nationalists rejecting modernity and enthusiastically applauding the destruction of the federal government. (Here in Indiana, that cohort includes Senator Jim Banks.) But a significant number of those elected officials have placed their ability to retain their positions–and escape the ire of the would-be King–over their obligations to the Constitution and fidelity to their oaths of office.

It is that latter group of “institutional actors” that can be moved by mass public demonstrations–by evidence that large numbers of their constituents will “have their backs” if they oppose the ongoing coup, but will vote against them if they continue to cower. (Are you listening, Senator Young?)

There is one other value to these gatherings that the essay failed to note, probably because it is hard to document, and that’s the informational value inherent in such events. In a world where people get their information from wildly disparate sources, significant numbers of Americans remain unaware of the actions of this administration and the very dangerous implications of those actions. When fellow citizens protest in great numbers, some of the uninformed will encounter information they didn’t previously have.

For that matter, protestors angered by specific issues are frequently unaware of the full range of Trump’s bad actions, given their rapidity and number. The speeches and signs at mass events expand participants’ understanding of the threats we face.

Education occurs in many venues. Protests are one of them.

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