All Aboard the Trump Train From Anarchy to Autocracy!

Is it Idiocy, Narcissism, or a Plan? Who knows, but it's headed somewhere terrible.

I don't love writing about politics.

As you might be able to tell from the title of this journal and my penchant for using film stills to embellish my essays, this is supposed to be a place where I mostly write about movies, with the occasional digression into various ephemera. (To that end, if you want to hear about a movie that is worth watching if you like things that are light and funny and cheeky and tremendously well written, check out the footnote at the end of this sentence.¹)

However, unlike Bill and Ted, you and I have no means of moving from one time to another. We are stuck in this moment, and right now the single most important thing happening in American culture is the grostesquerie that has descended onto Washington D.C. in the shape of the orange fatman overflowing the Oval Office.

So I’ll begin my next leap into the breach by noting something that you might be tempted to ascribe to the domain of the "pet peeve," but which I think shows the way our own language can both reveal and betray us.

What pushed me into this train of thought was a Friday morning Politico podcast in which the hosts kept talking about how Trump is "testing" the limits of Presidential power.

"Testing."

This is common verbiage, the kind of phrase that gets repeated so often that it becomes imprinted into us. But here's the funny thing about words: they actually mean something.

Do they have a meaning the way concrete has a hardness? Well, no not really. (Although I'll be really disappointed if I don't have one pedantic reader who is dying to point out that concrete is soft at first, when it's being poured, and then is hard when it sets, and then it can get crumbly around the edges if it's really old and weathered, so maybe it doesn't have a "hardness" as such. But you know what I mean.)

Instead, words have a kind of cluster of meanings, some assumed, some implied, some misunderstood, and many up for debate. Consider the way that many people say "on" when they mean "about" ("I'm going to offer you some thoughts on a hot fudge sundae, covered with nuts" vs. "I'm going to offer you some thoughts about a hot fudge sundae, covered with nuts") or the way that for virulent defenders of the Second Amendment, the words "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," have so little meaning that they might as well not exist.

And the cluster of meanings around the word "testing" imply someone who is either giving presidential power an exam, like they want to see if it's up to snuff, or poking at it in a rather genteel way, to see where its weak and strong spots are.

To hear the Politico podcast hosts chortling on about this last week – in an episode in which they also reassured us that there is really no Constitutional crisis going on – was to hear people so captured by their own linguistic habits that they are incapable of confronting reality.

People who talk like this have grown so accustomed to described American politics as a kind of game – in which one or another of the players is always "testing boundaries," or employing wily strategies, or employing "novel legal theories" (which is often code for inventing batshit crazy ideas and passing them off as reasonable) – that those politics have become for them a kind of game on which they report, no more and no less.

But you and I, dear reader, are here because language is important.

And so we can ask: Is what Trump is doing really just "testing" the boundaries of the powers of the executive branch? Is it really all just some kind of gentlemanly game in which he's trying to see what he can get away with?

If you want to answer these questions, my humble suggestion is that as you're perusing the news in the next few days and you see this word "testing" pop up, you might ask yourself questions like the following:

• Is Trump's use of trade wars with our allies an example of a man just "testing" what he can do, or is it better described as the unhinged action of a megalomaniac who doesn't care what happens to your retirement fund or the economy of Midwestern states – both of which will crater if we really do stumble into a tit-for-tat set of tariff impositions – as long as his fervid imagination believes that he's being "tough"?

• Is Trump's attack on the FBI, including the attempt to summarily fire its leadership, along with as many as 6,000 agents (out of 38,000) for their involvement in the investigation into the January 6^th Insurrection just a guy "testing" the limits of his power? Or is it, along with his nomination of Kash Patel – a human dog turd stuck to the boot of the republic – to be the director of the FBI better described as an attempt to wipe out any semblance of independent, non-MAGA controlled law enforcement in this country?

• Is Shadow President Elon Musk's announcement in a late night bout of twitter flatulence that he was going to shut down U.S.A.I.D. (the foreign aid agency of the United States government) no more than a little "test" of what might happen if we tried something? Or is it better described as a clearly unconstitutional gambit by the world's richest and most morally deficient man to single-handedly annul the act of Congress that funds said agency?

• Is the fact that Musk is assigning this job – along with that of gaining control of the entire U.S. Treasury Department's payment system, which dispenses those little peccadilloes like the entirety of Social Security and Medicare – to six very slightly post-pubescent men between the age of 20 and 24 (at least one of whom is apparently still in college) who have no governmental experience just a wee "test" of the power of an unelected friend of the president? Or is it actually an act of almost incomprehensible idiocy, given the potential for both economic and data breach disaster, as well as a clear attack on democratic protocols? (The names of the men now controlling this payment system, which might be worth knowing since not a single one of you voted for them (or Musk for that matter), and not a single one of them has been vetted in any way, are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran.)

Just to make my point clear, Donald Trump is not "testing" the system. He is attempting to render it entirely dysfunctional.

That much is obvious. But what may be less obvious is why.

To answer this question, we need to do something odious, which is to try to imagine what it would be like to be someone like Donald Trump. I know, it makes the skin crawl. But terrible times call for terrible measures.²

So here's my take on what it's like inside that pumpkin-colored-blivet.

I think that, in an important way, the exterior world has ceased to exist for Donald Trump. It's like he's walking around with a box on his head, and the inside of that box is made of mirrors.

The only thing he can see is his own face.

The only voice he can hear is his own voice.

And so when he looks at you, he's actually looking at himself, smiling at himself, preening for himself. And he loves what he sees. He loves those smile, he loves that laughter coming back at him, he loves that attention. (Beneath that, I suspect, he hates what he sees, because self-loathing down in some inaccessible part of that place where the rest of us have a soul is the only thing that can drive someone like him to do what he does. But that's perhaps too deep a spelunking for this essay.)

The point is that Trump can no longer understand (if he ever could) that any of the rest of us exist. He imagines, dimly, that there are other people out there, but really all he's doing is entertaining his own reflection. Because he's a man who lives with his head in a mirrored box.

I know this might sound ridiculous, but if you think I've gone over the top here, consider this literal exchange that happened less than twelve hours after the terrible aviation accident in Washington D.C. last week:

Reporter: "Do you have a plan to visit the site?"

Trump: "What’s the site? The water? You want me to go swimming?"

Yuk, yuk. There he is again, the funniest man who's ever lived, cracking wise in the mirror while showing that ghostly voice from outside the box who's really in charge.

And this is not to mention the fact that his analysis of the accident included the claim that it occurred because those flaming liberals Barrack Hussein Obama and Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. had installed people who were mentally incompetent as air traffic controllers, including people who struggled in the areas of "hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism."

I'll let the Washington Post tell the rest of the joke: "But here’s the rub: During Trump’s first term, the FAA began a program to hire air traffic controllers with the conditions that Trump decried."

So, by his logic, it was Trump himself who hired the air traffic controllers who caused the tragedy that occasioned his oh-so-memorable "You want me to go swimming?” riff. Head like a box of mirrors, folks.

Gaze on this moment in awe. Give yourself a plaudit. You live in the age of the most bananas motherfucker ever to ascend to the hallowed seat of the U.S. Presidency.

Now what does this have to do with the question of whether Trump is just "testing" the limits of his authority or in fact intentionally trying to destroy the functioning of the government?

I think that at play is a bet Trump has made with all those infinite reflections of himself he lives with.

He, along with the encrustations around him – J.D. Vance, and Elon Musk with his 22-year-old coders, Kash Patel with his enemies list of people he promises he will never, no never, use the powers of the FBI to go after; R.F.K Jr., who got done killing 83 children in American Samoa by convincing their parents not to get them vaccinated during a measles outbreak just in time to be nominated for Secretary of H.H.S.; Tulsi Gabbard, who went to Syria to meet with Bashar Assad while he was in the midst of murdering tens of thousands of his own citizens, and then claimed in her confirmation hearing that she just ran into him accidentally, even though she took Dennis Kucinich along with her because he also wanted to meet Assad – all of them have made a bet.

This bet is that if things get wild and dysfunctional enough, Americans will respond not by throwing them out of power, but by calling for them to be granted even more power.

They have made a bet that they will be able to make the government dysfunctional, and then point to the chaos, and say: "See, we were right all along. It doesn't work. So give us the reins and let us control it all. In perpetuity."

This is the Trump Train from Anarchy (which he is causing) to Autocracy (which he wants to impose). He's up there in the locomotive with his head full of mirrors, yanking on the siren, and they're all in there with him.

And who's riding on this train? You and me, friend.

That this cohort believes that the American people will fall for this chaos-to-control maneuver shows how anti-American they are: they do not love America, with all its flaws and its huge (albeit sometimes crazy) heart. They love themselves.

And the fact that many Americans might actually fall for it shows how hard the rest of us have to work to educate one another, talk to one another, remind one another that what they are trying to destroy is very precious indeed.

My humble suggestion is that we not let them win.

They are intellectually unserious and morally destitute, and the fact that we've given them so much power is an obscenity. Let's claw it back.

1. I somehow missed seeing The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022) when it came out a couple of years ago, which is a mistake that I've now thankfully rectified. Starring Nicolas Cage, playing a character name Nick Cage, who's a fictionalized version of himself, the film is as sharply made as any comedy of the past ten years. The plot involves this Nick Cage, at a faltering moment in his career, being paid a million dollars to make an appearance at the birthday party of an eccentric billionaire (Pedro Pascal, showing sublime comedic chops and going toe to toe with Cage in terms of on-screen charisma, which is no mean feat) who, it turns out, might just be a drug-lord-criminal-mastermind.

The movie slides seamlessly from self-referential Hollywood satire to broad comedy to silly action, and is well worth watching for its entertainment value alone. Beyond this, though, it's one of the best recent examples of what a treasure Cage is, and the deep respect he should command from people who love movies, too many of whom, unfortunately and mainly, I think, through ignorance, see him as a crazy man just short of a buffoon. Cage is and always has been a fine and talented actor – incidentally, my wife has been on set with him, and reports that her main takeaway was his absolute professionalism and commitment to the material rather than to his own ego ­– but what shines through here is his willingness to take chances that very, very few other Hollywood actors would.

The role of "Nick Cage" becomes, in the hands of Nicolas Cage, at once a chance to reflect on the temptations and pitfalls of his own persona (or perhaps we should say "persona," as the character is clearly both Cage and not really Cage at all) and to explore the addicting temptations of fame itself. On top of this, in a way reminiscent of everything from Day for Night and The Stunt Man to The Player and What Just Happened, the film works as a reminder of the gravitational allure of movies themselves and of the magical hold they have on everyone who loves them.

If you haven't seen it, but like this kind of movie, do so – it will bring some joy into your life.

2. This is another area – the psychologizing of the madman who are running the country – where I have a small bone to pick.

You know what's a stupid policy? That one called the "Goldwater Rule" where professional psychologists decline to offer diagnoses of insane people who have way too much power, because that would be an irresponsible use of their knowledge.

Your job, you professional psychologists, the thing you have spent your life studying, is understanding human beings…and in a moment of crisis you're going to refuse to do it? Have you thought about what's going to happen instead? If you don't diagnose these people, you know who is going to?

We are! The rest of the population, who don't know shit about psychology!

You know what that's like? It's like going to a football game and then deciding that instead of the players out there on the field, yeah, wouldn't it be great if the fans just played instead? All of us fat, beer-addled lumpheads lumbering around beaning each other with the ball and falling down when we try to tackle one another? That would be some great football to watch. Really entertaining.