Could Trump be the lesser of two evils? No. It’s way too risky to cut one’s policy aspirations hair using a political operation chainsaw!
Below is my latest “conversation” with Randy Fertel’s ongoing engagement of Trump & Trumpism through his masterfully crafted interpretive lens: Improvisation.
For more info, please see:
https://randyfertel.substack.com/p/improvs-paradoxes
http://www.fertel.com/a-taste-for-chaos/
http://shepherdexpress.com/culture/books/winging-it-improvs-power-peril-in-the-time-of-trump/
https://open.substack.com/pub/theologoumenon/p/the-art-and-science-of-improvisation
Improv theory suggests that, in Randy's words, "improvisation is, like chaos apparently carefree and random and yet it is both deterministic and free.”
The deterministic aspect, in my view, reflects the roles that beauty, truth & goodness play in regulating our spontaneity in a manner which holistically integrates our shared aesthetic pursuits, criteria for truth & ethical norms.
This is to recognize that life's tehomic & formless voids, in which we are to be about playing, are not wholly nondeterminate spaces that existentialists are invited to define de novo, but rather are structured (indeed, some more so & some less so) fields of activity with varying degrees of in/determinedness. In a word, improvisation plays upon --- not some absolutely nihilistic abysm, but --- a radically fecund prevenient chaos.
Integrally related to a modicum of public order, grounded in shared, albeit often minimalistic, conceptions of what's beautiful, good & true, our improvisations can enjoy an abyssal freedom that, many would suggest, is in infinite potency to the divine. So derive our best societal, civil & political norms. Such are the grounds of our international declarations of human rights and various national constitutions.
There's another approach to improvisation that's unburdened by truth, unfettered by norms and unhinged from any shared aesthetic. Its spontaneity plays from a freedom that's not generatively abyssal but, instead, degenerately abysmal.
FOR EXAMPLE
Trump is the consummate self-promoter. His chief business instrument is branding. His primary mode of operation is transactional deal-making. In every transaction, Trump is the predator and all of the different counterparties are his prey.
Trump doesn't really produce. He only promotes. That's to say that he doesn't place any personal resources or capital at risk to manufacture goods or services. Rather, he leverages others' wealth and takes a cut, whether as equity or fee for service, primarily in a match-making role. Substantially, those others are the real counterparties, e.g. banks, suppliers & contractors.
Generally, he privatizes any profits & socializes all losses. Specifically, in order to claim his share of any spoils, Trump will assert the prerogatives of equity stakeholders, acting as an owner-operator, but only when an enterprise is successful. When an enterprise fails, he abuses the legal system to disclaim responsibility & assert victimhood by alleging tort claims against suppliers, vendors & contractors & lender liability against financial parties.
Trump's primary aesthetic pursuit is staring at his own reflection with which he long ago fell deeply in love & by which he's fixately mesmerized.
His sole criterion for truth is governed by a vulgar pragmatism, which is to say that if the belief is useful, then and only then is it true.
His guiding ethic is that all which benefits him is good & all else is bad. Ergo, all who promote his agenda are friends. All others are foes. Friends & foes change moment to moment based only on the current transaction. He thus neither holds grudges nor owes loyalty, attending only to those expediences presently at hand.
The above profile describes his business acumen, the ways & means of his self-promotional genius. Politically, this Trump-gun is for hire. He's willing to put his deal-making talents for use in order to take personal fee for service cuts from the spoils of geopolitical transactions of enormously larger magnitudes than Fred's legacy could ever afford him.
Essentially, then, he offers the same services as that all too common breed of lobbyists who operate free of scruples, unfettered by norms & unburdened by truth. Pennsylvania Avenue becomes - not a seat of governance, but - a mean back alley of K Street.
That's all to recognize that there's no Trumpian ideology to decipher!
He's not a foreign policy isolationist, adventurist or realist.
He's not a social conservative moralist, libertarian personalist or social engineering statist.
Economically, he's not a committed laissez-faire capitalist, Keynesian economist, trickle-down supply-sider or Scandanavian socialist.
He's neither reading nor burning the white papers from American Enterprise, Cato, Heritage, Brookings or Center for American Progress in order to construct a coherent governing platform. He's only ever playing these competing constituencies one against the other, alternately demonizing them as scapegoats or valorizing them to exploit their allegiance toward the end of using their support solely in order to secure & maintain an extremely raw, very naked & exclusively self-serving personal power.
In the political arena, Trump's primary aesthetic pursuit remains staring at his own reflection, imagining that self growing ever more rich & powerful, but not so much concerned with popularity as an end, but rather as an indispensable means to cling to power.
His sole criterion for truth remains that vulgar pragmatism, which works overtime manufacturing lies about elections, immigrant crime rates, perpetrators of war, defenders of democracy, racial inequities, deep state conspiracies, national debt levels, budget deficit spending, social safety net security ad in finitum. Some lies are big; some little; all are vicious demagoguery preying on the gullible. That's all toward the means of staying in power & ends of personal enichment, always relying on the mirages of his pyramid scams as grounded in the time-honored greater fool theory that underwrites his meme stocks, cryptocurrencies & cult merch collectibles.
His guiding ethic is that all which benefits him is good & all else is bad; all who promote his agenda are friends. All others are foes. Cross him and you'll get primaried. Reject the deal he's trying to bully you into and he'll mercilessly sully your reputation.
Some support him in the vulgarly transactional sense of a protection racket. Others support him solely for policy outcomes, so - not because of, but - in spite of who he is. I'm not totally unsympathetic to those buying protection or those who vote holding their nose, but am saying they should be clear-eyed about whom they've designated as the lesser evil.
Don't look for international conspiracies. He's not that sophisticated.
Don't look for ideological signals. His only beacon is his own reflection.
Don't even use chess vs checkers metaphors. There are never sophisticated cognitive machinations in play.
Trump's not Machiavellian. He's PTBarnumian.
He's not a modern Al Capone. He's an insidious blend of Eddie Haskel & Chauncey Gardiner. A true Hocus POTUS.
Below, I stipulate strictly for argument sake, that, even though one might reasonably suggest that Trump is in various ways the so-called lesser of two evils, for example, based on one’s particular chosen policy outcome priorities, it is my contention that it’s way too risky to cut one’s policy aspirations hair using a political operation chainsaw.
I share the general realist (not isolationist) policy goal of the US not being over-extended in projecting our military hard power globally. Those democratic allies of each region, whether Europe, Pacific Rim, Middle East, etc should take the lead in decision making & contribute more financially. We also should not overextend in projecting soft power, including humanitarian aid. We don't have budgetary space or deep enough pockets to meet every need, so must prioritize those missions based on our strategic interests. Our strategic projections & curtailments of both hard & soft power need to be constantly reassessed.
It is not that Ukraine is none of our business, it's just that Europe needs to spend more on their defense & take the lead in strategic collaboration, while our alliance participation deescalates to the back seat.
Ukraine can't pound its chest and the alliance can't say: It's Ukraine's decision, alone, on when & on what terms a truce will take place. Not when they're not footing the bill. It's Ukraine's fault that they weren't in NATO or the EU, already. They weren't far enough removed, themselves, from being a kleptocracy, for example, back in 2014 (Crimea).
All that said, the guys implementing this policy are seriously flawed, personally, selling the US stance using the wrong rationale & their mediation tactics are belligerently bullying & cynically exploitative.
Specifically, Russia not Ukraine invaded; Putin not Zelinsky is the dictator; agreements with Putin w/o security guarantees are worthless.
Arguably, we induced Ukraine to give up its best bargaining chips -- 1900 warheads -- in exchange for security assurances. How good were OUR assurances?
https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/ukraine-nuclear-weapons-and-security-assurances-glance
And lying about (seriously exaggerating) what Ukraine owes us, extorting its mineral wealth and lying about Zelensky never saying "thank you" is just despicable. It's no less a Trumpian shakedown than his vision of Mar a Gaza or withholding arms shipments unless Zelensky dished dirt on Hunter. Trump is a moral monster.
So, Trump truly can reasonably be assessed as the lesser of two evils, including not only foreign, budgetary, economic, social or judicial outcomes, in general, or the Ukraine - Russian ceasefire, in particular.
But we must be clear-eyed in that his ways & means are, at best, suboptimal, and consistently morally repugnant. Again, I'm not unsympathetic to supporting the Admin in spite of him but I insist that the risk - reward calculus of cultivating cult-based, authoritarian populism, grounded in falsehoods & exaggerated threats (___phobias du jour), in our country's zeitgeist can make for a seriously treacherous path forward into this new century.
It's worth constantly reassessing what type of Admin will indeed be the lesser of two evils over the long run & overall rather than in this moment for this more immediate outcome, in particular. Reasonable people can disagree. I go back & forth in my own head. But this approach to the conversation is simply not being had. He can also be opposed for the wrong reasons. We've got to reintroduce gray zone conversations vs the simplistic B&W, bumper sticker discourse.
Honestly, I'm less nauseated by MAGA per se & even the die hard Trump cultists than I am by the Tragic Hero narratives of conservative pseudo-sophistcates and rationalizations of the lesser evil apologists.
Pre-Lenten Mardi Gras Meditation
While the treacherous jester engages the abysmal freedom of improv's degenerate dark side, just you wait, for we can be emancipated if we, as friendly jesters, are willing to plumb the abyssal freedom of improv's generative shadows.
This above, roughly translated into Yoruba/Creole, might read like this: enòn enòn, Aìku Aìku nde, Jacouman Fi na ida – n – de, Jacouman Fi na dè.
Or, more simply put, colloquially, like this: God is watching. The jester causes it; we will be emancipated. The jester urges it; we will wait.
Sing it with us: Iko iko un day. Jockomo feeno aah na nay. Jockomo feena nay.