Ruling Class Rebels

Why do elites support Trump’s war on their system?

Zuck, Musk, & the Bez at the Inauguration ((AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, Pool))

Many commentators have noted the irony that Trump’s over-the-top jingoism is actually a palliative for his frank admission of America’s decline as global hegemon. “Make America Great Again” admits to a lost greatness that’s been obvious to most people but was ignored by official politics.

The new National Security Strategy document calls for America to retreat from seeking global hegemony to better focus on regaining control of the Western hemisphere and protecting itself from non-white immigrants. Instead of challenging China, the Trump regime will attack Venezuela… and Minnesota.

There are some in the administration for whom this might represent a real strategic argument about managing imperial decline. But it also mirrors the growing appeal to the people running the country of avoiding major challenges in favor of picking fights against enemies they think they can beat, including their own disempowered populace.

It’s one of many awful lessons they learned from COVID. Faced with a global pandemic that would require a long, sustained to even partially contain, the ruling class came to embrace the right wing policy of surrender. Rather than try to fight the virus and save lives, they would pursue a strategy of doing nothing.

They called it “herd immunity”, which made no sense epidemiologically for a virus that quickly mutates into new variants that cause repeated re-infections. But herd immunity allowed them to

argue that the real danger comes not from the virus but from the people trying to slow its spread. A pandemic is hard to fight, even for billionaires and demagogues; public health systems are much easier targets. Even as tens of thousands of people died each month (and continue to!) public sentiment was shifted from a determination to protect one another from the virus towards anger at those who “went too far” in trying to keep people alive.

If leftists quint hard, we can kinda recognize this strategy: organizing against capitalism is a long and often overwhelming task; we need small victories along the way. If you’re trying to form a union, for example, you may start by picking a relatively minor battle with a low-level supervisor, because it’s something your small organizing committee can win, and demonstrate to others that when we fight we can win.

Of course, our side needs this approach because most of us have internalized the idea that we have no power. There is a different set of reasoning for people who have as much power as anyone in the world.

---

For Trump himself, there’s just his bizarre sociopathy. This is a man for whom winning is everything, and context is nothing. His constant need for validation is more sated by defeating a chicken at Tic-Tac-Toe than narrowly losing a presidential election, and therefore he requires a constant diet of victories against weak foes like migrant families and Chuck Schumer to go with his burger and fries.

Trump’s earth-rattling discovery was that his sociopathy appeals to a substantial subset of a depressed and angry citizenry. MAGA is a mind palace where Americans can close their eyes to the real ecological and economic terrors of the twenty-first century, and cheer on crusades against trans people, Palestinians, and other palookas hand-picked by Stephen Miller.

This is also known as scapegoating, of course, which is a timeless tool of power hungry dirtbags. What feels newer is how Trump’s small victories approach is appealing to an American ruling elite that used to have its sights set much higher. These are the people atop a country that hasn’t been able to slow China’s 21st century rise as an imperial rival, and that is uniquely ill-suited to deal with climate change because its own 20th century rise was built on dominating global access to fossil fuels.

Also, as in all late-stage empires, a bunch of them are inbred (sociologically speaking) nepo babies whose greed and privilege has stupefied them into falling various paths of least resistance that don’t hurt their short-term bottom lines. “Capital” is not just an abstract system of production but also a bunch of people with massive egos and incredibly limited social intelligence. They can’t recognize that they feel impotent in the face of long-term decline, and that these anxieties make them just susceptible to Trump’s stupidity as the most gullible QAnon schmuck.

Anyways, these are my thoughts for today about the questions that occupy me constantly: Why are the richest people in the world casting their lot with this rube’s rebellion against the system that enriches them? What fuels a revolution against American institutions led by people (with apologies to Stephen Miller and a few other actual nazis) who have no vision beyond immediate gain and gratification?

As you can see, I don’t yet have many coherent answers, but I’ll keep working on it.