“Weakness on a scale unprecedented in modern American history”. He’s an insecure little child.
Impotence and unfreedom, together
snyder.substack.com
Americans have a certain idea of
freedom. We are fine just the way we are and the only problem are the barriers in the outside world. In this mental world, Musk’s hollowing out of the government can seem justified. Trump’s betrayal of friends and destruction of alliances can seem convenient. We will be great again by being all alone, with no one to trouble us.
This fantasy leads right to tragedy. It sets the stage for the weak strongman.
Trump is a strongman in the sense that he makes others weak. He is strong in a relative sense; as Musk destroys institutions, what remains is Trump’s
presence. But other sorts of power meaning vanish, as Musk takes apart the departments of the American government that deal with money, weapons, and intelligence. And then the United States has no actual tools to deal with the rest of the world.
The strongman is weak because no one beyond the United States has anything to want (or fear) from the self-immolation. And weak because Trump submits to foreign aggression, putting waning American power behind Russia.
The weak strongman undermines the rules, but cannot replace them with anything else. He creates the image of power by his rhetorical imperialism: America will control Greenland, Panama, Mexico, Canada, Gaza, etc. From there, it is hard to say that others are wrong when they invade other countries. The weak strongman is left endorsing other people’s invasions, as with Russia and Ukraine. He lacks the power to resist them. And he lacks the power to coerce them. And, ironically, he lacks the power to carry out wars himself. He lacks the patience, and he lacks the instruments.
Many Americans fear Trump, and so imagine that others must. No one beyond America fears Trump as such. He can generate fear only in his capacity as neighborhood arsonist, as someone who destroys what others have created. America’s friends are afraid not of him but of what we all have to lose. America’s enemies are not frightened when Trump kicks over the lantern and sets things on fire. Quite the contrary: he is doing exactly what they want…….
The cruelty that makes Trump a strongman at home arose from the destruction of norms of civil behavior and democratic practice. Unlike any other American politician before him, Trump has scorned the law and used hate speech to deter political opponents here. For years he has used his tweets to inspire stochastic violence. This intimidates some Americans. It has, for example, led to a kind of self-purge of the Republican Party, opening the way for Trump, or in fact for Musk, to rule with the help of tamed and therefore predictable cadres. The effect of this is that people who have submitted to Trump see him as a strongman. But what they are experiencing is in fact their own weakness. And their own weakness cannot magically become strength in the wider world. Quite the contrary……
Stochastic violence cannot be applied to foreign leaders. Trump has said that he can stop the war in Ukraine. He wrote a tweet directed at Vladimir Putin; but the capital letters and exclamation points did not change the emotional state of the Russian leader, let alone Russian policy. And no one in Irkutsk is going to threaten or hurt Putin because Donald Trump wrote something on the internet. Something that works in the United States is not relevant abroad. In fact, the tweet was a sign of weakness, since it was not followed by any policy. Putin quite rightly saw it as such. Trump and his cabinet now repeat Putin’s talking points about the Russian invasion of Ukraine…..
And now Trump is trying to make concessions to Russia regarding issues directly related to Ukrainian sovereignty on his own, without Ukraine, and indeed without any allies. He is showing weakness on a level unprecedented in modern US history. His position is so weak that it is unlikely to convince anyone. Trump is a sheep in wolf’s clothing. The wolves can tell the difference. Russians will naturally think that they can get still more.
www.the-express.com
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