Going Rogue

Some thoughts on Tubby’s latest mouth-shart

I don’t even have to show you what Trump said about the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife in his Truth Social post and in his live response to the outrage it generated. You certainly know about it by now.

Even if you hadn’t heard about it you probably could have guessed Trump would say something disgusting. You might also have guessed that some of his prominent fans who usually cheer his every cruelty would balk at it, if only out of social anxiety (though if it weren’t for events that had recently shaken his air of invincibility they probably wouldn’t have shown even that much propriety.)

Basically it’s just another wad of shit falling out of his pie-hole, of the kind to which we have become accustomed. But this much about it is worthy of remark:

We’ve known for a long time that Trump is not equipped for, nor interested in, service to the United States. I have said a few times over the years that conservatives have abandoned policy — the means and manner of government — and Trump is the perfection and consequence of that abandonment.

In his first term Trump pantomimed some policy interests, but these were impossible to take seriously. You may recall, for example, his stupid “Trumpcare” alternative to the ACA that was so poorly conceived his factota in Congress dragged their feet on it, terrified at how voters would react if it were actually put into practice, until John McCain did them the favor of killing it in the Senate. And with COVID he mainly handed off the work to the health bureaucracy while yammering so nonsensically about it on TV that it killed his 2020 campaign.

In this second term you can see what Trump, relieved of any obligation to make it look good for political reasons, is really about, and it ain’t steering the ship of state.

Since Congress ended the subsidies that were keeping ACA premiums down, his approach to the chaos that ensued isn’t some new version of Trumpcare 2.0 — it’s just letting everyone know he doesn’t give a shit what happens (“Don’t make it sound so bad”). He is observably content to see millions of Americans lose their insurance as revenge for having signed up for something called “Obamacare” in the first place.

Revenge is a big part of what fills in for policy in Trump governance. His reaction to the rebuke he received from the electorate for his pandemic malfeasance, too, has been a pathological act of vengeance against the health care establishment — indeed, against the very idea of health care, with the appointment of an actual dangerous lunatic to run it.

Beyond that and his own aggrandizement and enrichment, Trump has never had what could be called an agenda, though the cruelty and stupidity of his actions align closely with conservatism. We call him a fascist and he is, but by instinct, not ideology; he didn’t get it out of a book; he’s a fascist the way a badly brought up five year old might be if given unlimited power.

What looked like policy in his election campaigns was just bloody shirts and bullshit. In 2024 he appealed to the dumbest, shittiest voters with visions of vengeance against the Other they imagined were oppressing them — MASS DEPORTATION NOW, as the signs at his 2024 convention said — and now, though even those people are horrified by the dystopian ICE raids his goon Stephen Miller has unleashed in response, he refuses to back down. (Don’t believe the Access Sallys’ planted stories about “moving away from sweeping raids.”)

The reason he doesn’t back down is not a commitment to a course of action dictated by philosophy (well, maybe it is for Miller, but not for Trump). If you were to ask him and he were somehow compelled to be honest for once in his life, his answer would be simple: Why should I?

This is the signal truth of his second term. He doesn’t give a shit. You people were stupid enough to put him back in office, now you can fuck off while he rakes in bribes and kickbacks and pursues vendettas against prosecutors who attempted to hold him to account for his crimes and immigrants whose refusal to acquiesce in their illegal removal made him look bad. Plotters like Miller attach their agendas to his mood swings, but they’re not his agenda, as is shown by his incoherence when he’s called upon to explain them. He’s just doing what he feels like doing.

People are repulsed by his Reiner remarks because those remarks are supremely antisocial, the kind of thing normal people don’t say in public. But Trump himself is antisocial, solipsistic and self-centered. As far as he’s concerned nobody but him exists and there is no reason to do anything that serves anyone else’s interests. He goes on TV because he likes being on TV. He sues people and institutions because he figures since he’s president a lawsuit is like a command and judges who don’t give him what he wants are traitors. He razes the East Wing for a gigantic ballroom and plans a triumphal arch, not for any public good, but because he feels entitled to them.

That’s all he’s about; this incident just made that clearer than usual. And it’s important to keep the fact in front of the public, because once they accept that he really, really doesn’t care about the people he’s supposed to serve we might stand a chance of getting this country unfucked.