On fiefdoms – David Runciman in LRB:
“Trump’s speech on Monday sounded nothing like either of McKinley’s. It wasn’t merely boastful but staggeringly narcissistic. Unlike Cleveland, he revelled in his return and forced his defeated opponents to sit through a thorough trashing of their record. Unlike Harrison, he brought his audience in from the brutal cold and did it all in the cosy setting of the Capitol Rotunda. Yet despite this, there is something 19th-century about Trump’s politics. He cited McKinley – a ‘great president’ and a ‘natural businessman’ – as someone who had used tariff policy to enrich the nation. He made no mention of the dollar but neither, more surprisingly, did he discuss crypto, despite the fact that the recently launched memecoin $TRUMP looks set to make his family billions. He reminded his audience of the economies about to be unleashed by the Department of Government Efficiency, as its cost-cutter in chief, Elon Musk, looked lovingly on. He talked about changing names on the map. He promised a new era of frontier spirit and international aggrandisement. He sounded like he wished it was 1896 all over again.”
(…)
“ Trump is not the end of the American system of constitutional government. But he is an inversion of it. He represents many of the things it was created to guard against, including the politics of personal grievance and private greed. His 19th-century forerunners would have seen this more clearly than some of his immediate predecessors, for whom politics tended to be reduced to electoral rather than constitutional considerations. The question Trump’s opponents want answered is whether he can get away with it. Will his coalition hold, will his policies backfire, will his party baulk, will his rivals circle, will his cheerleaders lose heart, will he ever meet an effective resistance? But there is another question. What happens when he does get away with it? Traditional American political language has a word for what comes next. It’s called spoils.”
(…)
“Corruption thrives on the politics of personal relationships and private fiefdoms. Inevitably, Trump’s personal relationships will corrode quickly, as they did the first time around. He and Musk are unlikely to remain friends for long. But this time he comes into office with much more patronage at his disposal, given his secure mandate, his party’s control of the various branches of government and his determination not to let the opportunity slip. The presence at his inauguration of America’s richest men – tousled Zuckerberg and gleaming Bezos alongside Musk with his pinched, jowly, Ozempic-ravaged face, each of them looking like a panel from a medieval morality painting – is testament to how much more Trump has to offer in his second term than he did in his first. He is promising feeding time at the trough.”
(…)
“ If confidence in the durability of the dollar, or the creditworthiness of the government, or the impartiality of the law, falls away it can be hard to get it back.”
Read the article here.
We’ll see what we’ll get back.
A bit of 19th century I guess, with some spices from the early 20th century.
Ozempic-ravaged faces?
Ozempic for all. Let them eat Ozempic.
The circus and the games are undeniable fairly entertaining.
Th burden of the past (high culture) is just elitism and snobbery.
The new snob will have money, power, Ozempic, whether he wants to be loved by The New York Times is less important, he wants to be loved period. Or feared. Or both at the same time.