Power Is the Order of the Day, and Other Beds Trump Has Made
One of the biggest challenges I have met in the past nine months and especially since the summer is how to transmit both the very fragile and thin nature of Trump power and also the extent of the threat that his government poses. Jammeme Bouie captured a key dimension of this in a weekend chronicle in Times: if you wanted to lead the country to a literal disunity, it is difficult to imagine what you would do differently from what it is doing right now. It is both rhetorically and (with an increasing intensity) literally releasing the American army on the strongest bastions of the opposition to its government (essentially blue cities in the Blue States). It also cancels more and more funding that the federal government gives these states, despite the fact that it is funded disproportionately by the taxes of these states. This is the fairly close definition of Warlordsm, a broken state in which the chief retains power – if not legitimacy – in hoarding of the state resources for loyalists and by depriving the opponents of one of them.
I have a deep ideological commitment to the American Union. And beyond ideology, red and blue states are largely a fiction. Large red and blue states have huge minorities from the other “side” inside their borders. However, governance in these terms is illegitimate and unbearable. The only recourse is a much more aggressive use of the sovereign powers of states than the governments of the States.
Do you want to continue reading?
Join TPM and get the newsletter from Backchannel members as well as unlimited access to all articles and features of TPM members.
