I've written only one thing about Donald Trump's second term primarily because I find the thesis of that piece (liberal institutions are complicit and will not save us) the most critical insight I have to offer. Remarking on every little thing would not only water down that message, but more importantly, I think it would serve to scatter my own thinking to an unnecessary degree. Doomscrolling is damaging enough; there's little need to monetize the rot, so to speak.
This prime directive of sorts leads directly to my reticence to speak about recent developments. At the same time, all that doomscrolling has revealed to me the same pattern playing out over and over to such an absurd degree that it almost seemed like the universe was beating me over the head with my own central thesis. The most obvious example of this is the most infamous; supposedly liberal bastion ABC giving way to pressure from their affiliates and the Trump administration and suspending (firing?) Jimmy Kimmel for this statement:
"The MAGA gang [is] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,"
Meanwhile, the supposedly liberal institution that is our university system continues to suppress the speech of its employees. One recent example includes the following quote:
"Charlie Kirk's death is a reflection of the violence, fear, and the hatred he sowed. It does not excuse his death AND it's a sad truth. [...] Charlie Kirk excused the death of children in the name of the second amendment."
And of course, the employer of every right-winger's favorite shadowboxing target (blue-haired baristas) felt the need to explicitly invite customers to harass their employees:
"In response to some conversations on social media Starbucks shared the following:
There are no restrictions on customers using Charlie Kirk’s name on their order, and we are following up with our team."
What's striking about these examples and so many others is that we're not even broaching the topic of impolite speech, let alone celebration of death and/or threats. I would of course argue that any opponent of the right should have the same right to disparage them in the same way they do their opponents. But for most of these cases from the past week, that's not remotely at issue. Rather, we are seeing people punished for sharing level-headed analysis, personal hurt caused by Kirk's rhetoric, or just straight-up factual information. And while Trump and his followers are the vanguard of such persecution, it's the supposedly liberal institutions that are ultimately the ones carrying out their will. Occasional enemy of this blog John Ganz said it well:
"This combination of public and private pressure is the hallmark of the modern dictatorship. Why use thugs in the street when you can just threaten people’s livelihoods? Why make a bloody mess when you can just shatter an individual’s life? The lack of overt violence will make people say, “Thank God they aren’t violent at least,” and keep their heads down. “I can make it through if I keep a low profile.”"
In closing, I want to return to an analysis of Trump's foreign policy that I offered early on in the term:
"The foreign policy departure that Trump does represent in my estimation is not anything particularly material or world-changing, but simply a refusal to continue the niceties, in both word and deed, that gave a veneer of humanitarianism to the maintenance of empire. This change in tone certainly doesn't portend anything good happening in the short-term, but it does lift the veil in a way that allows for a competing vision of world order to take form. Whether we can actually capitalize on that opportunity is to be seen."
While I think this analysis has held up well regarding the ham-handedness of Trump's foreign policy approach, what surprises me is just how well this same line of thought applies to the domestic sphere. Corporations and the like holding power over us is nothing new, but this relation hasn't been so nakedly on display for at least a century. What this parallel suggest to me is that the effects of the so-called "imperial boomerang" might not just be cops using military equipment in the streets, but also domestic institutions deploying the same soft power over their subjects that multinational conglomerates exert over subjects of the empire. As such, the impulse to resist and defeat Trumpism cannot just be aimed at the man himself, but also at his enablers.
