We See The Direction This Is Heading, But No One Knows How Far It Will Go Before Trump Is... Gone

A popular fascist website was promoting political violence and civil war yesterday by claiming leftists advocate assassination. “[T]he left has embraced violence,” wrote neo-Nazi David Strom, “arguing that there is nothing fringe about the riots, assaults, vandalism, and even murder that has been sweeping our country.”

“[W]ho,” asked Paul Krugman about Trump and his circle, “put these malevolent clowns in power?” He blamed ignorant voters. I’d rather blame the David Stroms of the world. [P]olitical ignorance takes two different forms,” wrote Krugman. “On one side there are ‘less engaged’ voters who don’t follow politics closely. And to be fair, ordinary Americans have good excuses for not paying close attention to the news: They have jobs to do, children to raise, lives to live. Unfortunately, many of these voters believed Trump’s fabulist promises. They are only now beginning to understand what they voted for… But less-engaged voters weren’t the only people who missed the warning signs and supported Donald Trump. Trump also had a number of ultra-wealthy backers, both on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, who are now shocked, shocked to discover that he is who he always was… Many wealthy people imagined that Trump II would be like Trump I, mostly a standard right-winger with a bit of a protectionist hobby. They thought he would cut their taxes, eliminate financial and environmental regulations and promote crypto, making them even wealthier. They expected him to back off his tariff obsession if the stock market started to fall. If he ripped up the social safety net, well, they don’t depend on food stamps or Medicaid. And if Trump II really had been like Trump I, America’s oligarchs would be very happy right now... To be honest, I’m actually glad that Trump II is proving to be such a disaster for the economy. If he had exercised some restraint, if he had simply claimed credit for the very good economy Joe Biden left him, many wealthy people would have cheered him on while he destroyed democracy. Now they may turn on him. But I hope the rest of us have learned a lesson from the oligarchy’s support for Trump, even if it’s now cracking: Extreme wealth inequality has given great power to people who exert a malign influence on our politics.”

In two essays, Andrew Egger and then Bill Kristol explored hubris. “Once you break it,” wrote Egger, “good luck fixing it... Trump is breaking the entire global economy, which is in cardiac arrest over his outrageously nonsensical tariffs. U.S. markets have hemorrhaged $11 trillion in value since Inauguration Day. More than half of that came in just the last few days, as markets have tried futilely to solve for Trump’s brain-boggling policy goal of zero trade deficits with any other country… [W]hat stands out most about this moment is how truly unbothered Trump appears. It’s not just confidence that his hairbrained plan will work out eventually; it’s indifference to all the suffering he is causing. It’s easy to insist that a little pain will be good for us when one doesn’t have to experience it for themselves.”

What takes your breath away is the hubris. The window for a quick and relatively painless exit from this trade war is closing very fast. Trump spent a whole weekend ostentatiously not working on it.

But of course hubris has been the organizing principle of Trump’s life. And it has now grown into the organizing principle of a White House made in his image.

The hubris is everywhere you look. Over the weekend, Attorney General Pam Bondi placed a Justice Department prosecutor on administrative leave. His misdeed? Acknowledging to a judge Friday that he didn’t have good answers to explain under what authority immigration officials had seized Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man the administration acknowledged last week it had erroneously deported. Bondi informed Erez Reuveni, acting deputy director for the Office of Immigration Litigation, that he had failed “to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States.”

Meanwhile, the White House was sneering off a judicial order requiring them to seek Abrego Garcia’s return. “Marxist judge now thinks she’s president of El Salvador,” Trump adviser Stephen Miller tweeted. Bukele openly jeered the judge’s order on Friday, to the great amusement of Elon Musk.

That’s raw hubris. So is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the most powerful anti-vaxxer ever to make it into government, attending the weekend funeral of a Texas girl who died last week of measles. Kennedy told reporters Sunday that “the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine.” Left unaddressed was how he once said there was no such thing as a “safe and effective” vaccine and the ant-vax crank he brought aboard HHS to “study” the debunked link between vaccines and autism.

These people are adrift in self-spun fantasias; they are utterly high on their own supply. They have inflicted tremendous damage to our country in such a short period of time.

But their actions are also losing propositions in the end. They seem not to realize how much their program of populist lawlessness and antiscience zealotry relies on the perception of broad public support— and how difficult public support, once lost, is for a president and his team to regain.

Kristol took from there: “The Founders understood the dangers of hubris. They built a system to provide guardrails against it. The separation of powers is a key part of that, as ambition was to counteract ambition. Other features of the American republic, ranging from the Electoral College to the very size of the republic, were designed to limit the ability of one hubristic man to take over and exert unchecked power. And political parties, which emerged in the 19th century, were also designed to channel and limit the sway of any one individual. These guardrails have been weakened. That’s our fault, not Trump’s. Trump’s hubris may be his weakness, but his success has been our failure. But perhaps by June we will awaken and begin to act to rectify our failure. Life and literature suggest that hubris fails. Hubris is punished in the end. It brings nemesis. It results in tragedy. The trouble is that a considerable cost is paid. Great damage is done. We know this from the Greeks, and from Shakespeare… I’m confident Trump’s hubris will do him in. He will be a failed president. The question is whether he’ll leave us a failed country.”

I’m afraid, there’s no getting around that at this point. It calls to mind Victor Frankenstein, who, in his thirst to dominate nature and cheat death, creates something he cannot understand, control or even accept responsibility for. As with Trump, the damage wrought by Frankenstein’s pride is not confined to himself— it spreads outward, destroying lives, communities, and eventually, the creator’s own soul. And like Trump, Frankenstein is never truly chastened. He doubles down until the very end, chasing illusions while others bear the consequences— destructive pride masquerading as genius.