Sometimes politics resembles one of the weirder branches of modern physics or a fantasy version of biology. . . . That is how American politics feels at the moment. By and large, however, Newtonian physics and traditional biology still apply, and that is worth remembering as we watch the Trump administration’s circus of transgression, vindictiveness, and sometimes mere folly.
Like most administrations, including those of considerably more sedate chief executives, that of the 47th president has decided to way overinterpret its mandate. The brute facts remain: Donald Trump received a plurality of votes (albeit a decisive majority in the Electoral College); the Republican Party is holding on to the House of Representatives by a hair and has a slim majority in the Senate. The administration may hate civil servants and seek to undermine their job security, but it will discover that it needs them to keep airplanes flying safely, the financial system functioning, drugs safe for use, and food fit for consumption.
Gravity still works—if somewhat unreliably. Politicians who overinterpret narrow wins in a divided country get pulled back to Earth, usually by the midterms. But not just that—the federal system of government gives a lot of power to the states, and although Congress has become anemic and irresponsible, most state governments have not. And so the governor of Florida has declined to appoint the president’s daughter-in-law to a vacant Senate seat, and the governor of Ohio has passed on one of the president’s more socially awkward tech billionaires for another. These are small but interesting indications of gravity reasserting itself.
Even the appalling sweeping pardons of the January 6 rioters and insurrectionists have their limits. If any of those people attempt violence in Maryland or Virginia or anywhere else outside of D.C., they will discover that assault and other crimes there are tried in state, not federal, courts. And the presidential-pardon power does not reach state prisons, which means that some ghouls will go back to their cleft rocks if they go out looking for revenge.
Newtonian physics also has it that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Precisely so. Pardon every criminal who clubbed a police officer, and police unions will be unamused. Impose high tariffs, and working-class voters will encounter higher prices and possibly unemployment. Blow up the national debt to cut taxes, and sooner or later the markets will react. Give way to vaccine skepticism, and epidemics will break out. Turn the intelligence community and military upside down by purging women and other undesirables, and you will produce not only big, embarrassing, consequential failures but also pushback from those large populations, their families, and those politicians who still care about national defense.
The reckless, violence-feeding mass pardons of the January 6 insurrectionists were evidence of Trumpian lawlessness. The orders to end the security clearances of scores of former senior intelligence officials who criticized Trump, and the stunning decision to remove security protection from John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and Brian Hook—three former senior officials of the first Trump administration—were pure personal meanness.
But Trump’s appointees, who will carry out this and other acts of payback, should consider that before very long they, too, will be out of government. They, too, will want to keep their clearances. And they, too, may incur the wrath of state and non-state enemies who want to kill them. They will wish to consider just how exposed they will inevitably be, once their triumph, like all others, passes into memory. If decency and respect for norms do not motivate them in the right direction, fear may have to serve in place.
More to the point, certain biological realities, including age and its accompanying physical and mental decline, will operate during Trump’s 80s. The flunkies and toadies who surround the president will seek to deny this elemental reality—the Biden team was egregious in this regard—but sooner or later, it will take hold too.
Primatology, in this case, offers a useful guide. In most troops of baboons, an alpha male dominates all the others, who exhibit submissive behavior if they know what is good for them. The dominance may be so pronounced that all the alpha male has to do is bare his fangs and snarl to get the behavior he wants. But baboons age, and although he may not notice, the alpha male’s muscles will atrophy, his fangs will fall out. He may continue to snarl, but the younger male baboons will notice and begin to sense the possibility of a succession crisis. And then they pounce.
So, too, here. Donald Trump is already a lame duck. He is, by any measure, old, which is one of many reasons that comparisons with Hitler or younger contemporary European authoritarians such as Viktor Orbán are misplaced. He will be an even lamer duck in two years, at which point the troop of Republican politicians will begin to struggle for the succession. Former friends—Donald Trump Jr. and J. D. Vance, for example—may fall out, and the coalition of differing subclans may fight more openly. Republican unity in several years is highly unlikely.
It’s a bad time in American politics, to be sure. But we need to remember that natural laws still apply, and things could get better if even just one piece of fantasy biology were to hold true: a large class of political invertebrates were to grow spines.
Thoughts on Life, Love, Politics, Hypocrisy and Coming Out in Mid-Life
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Political Gravity Will Catch Up With Trump
While the unfolding chaos and revenge agenda of Trump 2.0 (or Felon 2.0) is both depressing, frightening and generally unnerving, as a piece in The Atlantic lays out, at some point political gravity, if you will, is going to catch up with the Felon and those currently shamelessly prostituting themselves to him. One reality, is that the Felon and Republicans have no mandate: Trump received less than a majority of votes cast and votes from only around 30% of all voters and Republicans only have narrow majorities in the House and Senate. As the Felon pushes his extreme agenda, at some point the majority of Americans will say "enough!" and congressional Republicans will begin jockeying to protect themselves rather than the Felon as the 2026 mid-term elections get nearer. Cuts to the social safety net, higher prices due to tariffs and economic instability will take their toll on support for the MAGA agenda outside of the true Kool-Aid drinkers. Add to all of this the Felon's age and declining mental abilities and with luck the national nightmare will end sooner than the cultists want to believe. Here are article excerpts:
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