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GELFAND’S WORLD - “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?” So said Groucho Marx in the movie Duck Soup, creating a satirical image of a classic con man trying to get away with an “alternative fact.” But suddenly we have the entire Trump administration reciting their own alternative facts, this time with respect to the shooting death of a Minnesota housewife. The term “domestic terrorist” is now being bandied about with total impunity. What we do know, from the evidence of our own eyesight, is that a federal officer shot his pistol at point blank range through the driver’s side window of the now-deceased. The fact that this same shooter was not in front of the car, but directly alongside at the time of the two fatal shots is critical to the analysis, because he was not in danger of injury at that moment, much less in danger for his life.
We also have the evidence that the federal agent was acting in anger and rage, because on the video, we hear him saying, Fucking Bitch!” about the dying woman.
There will be additional debate over the fact that federal agents prevented others from attempting to render aid to the shooting victim. I fear that we may be subject to arguments similar to those from the long-ago bank robbery and shootout by two gunmen in the valley, where there was legitimate concern that the two dead (or dying) criminals might be booby-trapped. We’ll see where the authorities take this, but for now the behavior of the ICE agents looks like just one more episode of brutality.
In the old days, a screw-up of this order would result in at least one high level resignation. Somebody would have to take the fall. In this case, the sacrificial lamb should be Kristi Noem. We’re not likely to see anything like this coming from the Trump administration (they are, so far, united in their willingness to lie), but it should be a precondition for any discussions the Democrats join in the next round of government shutdowns.
You all know the old Lilly Tomlin line and its variants: “No matter how cynical you get, it’s never enough to keep up.” This week sets the new record. We had the United States continuing to gloat over its unfounded invasion of a foreign country, we saw 3 of our highest ranking officials blatantly lying about the murder of a fellow citizen by a federal agent, and lately, we’ve been hearing rumors about an imminent U.S. attack on Greenland.
OK, that last rumor is tabloid level, but the fact that you and I are willing to even consider it shows just how far down we have gone.
Let’s accept for the sake of argument that the majority of Trump policies are damaging to the reputation, influence, and overall economy of the United States. These include the inflationary effects of tariffs, the damage and possible future breakup of the NATO alliance, and the threat of war.
Is it useful to speculate as to the motives behind all these actions? Bear with me for a moment, because maybe there is some utility in having the discussion.
To my mind, it comes down to whether Donald Trump sees himself as some latter day Mussolini or whether he is just working for Vladimir Putin. Might I suggest that either of these suggestions works as the model for Trump’s actions, although the latter is marginally closer to the observed facts.
The Mussolini model is of a male leader who suppresses the left, works to expand the fatherland’s territories, and brooks no opposition. He caters to the biggest corporate titans while asking for their aid and support. Put it all together and it spells fascism, particularly that part about creating a power linkage between government and the corporations. Not an unreasonable summary of what we have seen.
One other point, made by an unnamed commenter on an internet site: The United States has not been on a territorial binge since the Spanish American War, and even then our lust for adding colonies was pretty clearly limited. It’s not like we were taking large swaths of Africa or South America – not that they were available -- even if we had had such desires. Two out of the three big territorial grabs were in the form of purchases – The Louisiana Purchase from France and Alaska from Russia – and of course the third was the vast land grab that took everything out to the west coast and was described by that term “manifest destiny.”
No, it’s been a long time since the U.S. added any piece of land as big as California or Texas. Is it likely that Trump’s fantasy is to be the first president since 1898 to add to the United States? All that weird talk about Greenland, and then Canada (and then Greenland again) are consistent with this sort of thinking. The idea of fighting over Canada should have ended by 1814, and the idea of fighting over Greenland should never have come up. But here we are.
I suspect that somebody whispered into Trump’s ear that the Canada thing is impossible. It didn’t take long to discover that in a pinch, Canada could shut off a lot of the electricity that powers the northeast, and with a little bit of this and that, could do a lot to shut down the industrial midwest. And that is in addition to the fact that we are on good terms with them (or at least were) and have (well, had) an excellent trading relationship. And there are millions of them, they are a member of NATO, and they are nicely self sufficient. The idea that the U.S. could waltz over the Canadian border and take control is an adolescent fantasy, the sort of “military porn” that you find in the game Risk or in internet discussion sites.
Enough about the difficulties of imperialistic territorial expansion. It is consistent with a mind that wants to be the next Mussolini. But one thing: This particular mind doesn’t have the courage or will to be the next Stalin. But he can imagine himself to be the next president to increase the size of our empire, demolish everyone to the left of Mussolini within our borders, and – along the way – return us to an ethnic purity we haven’t had for a while. (Actually we never had it, but he is not educated enough to have figured that out.)
But the assertion leads automatically to another question. If Trump is an American fascist, how did he get that way? They teach a kind of anti-fascism in American schools. At least they did when I attended. We were taught about the balance of powers, checks and balances, and the independent judiciary. So how did the Trumpian policy develop? I don’t pretend to be a mind reader, but I have to suspect that there is a simple explanation. And I must confess that it has taken me a long time to buy into this line of reasoning because it seems so strange in modern day America.
But here it is: Trump’s fascism is the outgrowth of patterns of thought that began with his racism. This was developed as a youth atop a pattern of narcissism that is so powerful that it is simply impossible for the rest of us to understand. What’s different about Donald Trump – where his pathology goes over the line – is that he can’t imagine that anyone else could possibly do the job right. It’s what he has said repeatedly, particularly in his earlier campaign speeches. Somehow this links up to an impulsivity that is hard to match – whatever thought enters his brain or is brought to him by one of his lackeys, he immediately tries to execute. Greenland looks big on the Mercator Projection map? Then it’s important to us, so let’s take it. Some other world leader argued with him and insulted him? Let’s invade his country and take him prisoner.
Or this: The United States – in the pre-income-tax era – used to gain much of its revenue from tariffs on foreign imports. Let’s go back to that era.
I’ll leave it to the reader to consider, but I don’t see Trump having the will to persist on his foreign adventures all the way to completion. I don’t see us carrying out a full military occupation of Venezuela. And of course the occasional threats about Canada are becoming fewer, even as the majority of Americans not only oppose the saber rattling, they increasingly don’t believe that anything is really going to happen.
The reason that Trump isn’t going to be the world’s next Mussolini (much less its Stalin) is that he is simply too much of a wimp. The financial world came up with the term TACO (Trump always chickens out) to refer to the early days of his tariff-mongering. It’s not entirely true, as we still have tariffs, but there are cracks in that particular edifice as the courts and the congress begin to get involved.
And this is not the way of a totalitarian dictator, who would have his way no matter what the courts and the legislature want to say.
This is of course a moderately hopeful viewpoint. We’ve got a mentally incompetent person with serious emotional issues elected to our nation’s highest office, but luckily for us, he doesn’t seem to be good at following through with many of his worst ideas. Of course it’s possible for him to do a lot of damage over short periods of time, and so far, he has.
So if we are to persist just one more moment in the motive question, we can continue to ask about Trump’s continuing relationship with Vladimir Putin. So far, most of what he has done in office is consistent with a continuing, malign relationship between the two. Based on the history of how Russia has turned Americans and Brits into Russian assets based on compromising information or bribery, we have plenty of reason to suspect that there is a continuing relationship with these two, and it is not in our best interests.
Take your pick, or come up with your own idea, or continue to be on the side of Trump by believing that the United States should become a South American conquerer, if not quite a world conquerer.
A curious thought: Are the Russian connection and the Epstein file question related?
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
