This is the rotten core of Trump, beneath all the makeup and slurred words and mafia-boss cruelty: He thinks the government and all of its personnel, its buildings and its power are his.Holtmeyer says this is a betrayal of
The rubble of the East Wing, which was destroyed earlier this fall with the deliberation, public input and care given to your average sand castle demolition, made this unmissably clear. But this is the thread that runs from Jan. 6, 2021, to the billions of dollars in federal spending held hostage and the hundreds of thousands of civil servants fired this year.
It is the connective tissue between his talk of an illegal third term, his persecution of political enemies, his mobilization of armed forces against immigrants and citizens, his potential war for no reason with Venezuela. He thinks those are his employees, his generals, his military, his agencies, his money, to wield as he pleases.
the founding principle of popular sovereignty in this country, an idea that stretches back millennia: The people are the source of a government’s power....But even now, at least 40% of the country is fine with Trump's approach to government. The number would probably be even higher if the economy were in better shape. Even people who don't know much about politics or civics know, in some vague way, that we have multiple branches of government and, in theory, checks and balances. They know we have a legislature and courts -- but they're willing to accept a regime that says, in effect, the president is the government.
In other words, our leaders work for us. The multitrillion-dollar institution collectively known as the federal government belongs to all of us, not to just some of us, and certainly not to our elected leaders.
Many of us like autocrats. The people who like autocrats the most might be the ones who grew up with autocratic fathers or pastors. Also, our culture has embraced autocracy as a model for leadership since the Reagan-era backlash to the 1960s.
The Reagan era saw a rise in what I think of as business porn -- tales of swashbuckling corporate leaders who did things their way and earned massive profits. The media called these hero CEOs "rock stars," but it was an odd name for them, because we knew that rock music was made communally, often by frenemy collaborators (John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the ex-lovers in Fleetwood Mac). Also, rock music was, at least according to myth, a rebellion against "the Man." Each of these hero CEOs was "the Man."
But we were disillusioned with government after Vietnam, Nixon, and the energy crises of the 1970s, so some of us liked the idea of rule by autocrat. Starting with Lee Iacocca -- whose mega-selling memoir was published five days before the 1984 election, in which Ronald Reagan won 49 states -- much of America made CEOs into heroes, including CEOs who were proudly evil, like the layoff-mad "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap. CEOs continued to be glamorized well into the era of Big Tech leaders such as Steve Jobs and Elon Musk.
As for Reagan, his poll numbers never dipped below 40%, even after we learned that his administration was selling arms to Iran and using the profits to channel weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras. Congress had blocked military aid to the Contras, but Oliver North told a congressional committee that the president wanted the arms shipments to happen, and that's all that mattered. Millions of Americans agreed that, in effect, the president is the government.
The other cultural trend that reflected this worldview was the rise of vigilante-cop movies starting in the 1970s. Again, millions of Americans embraced the idea that cops should cut through the legal bullshit and operate according to their own moral code. This is a common "copaganda" trope in police procedurals to this day.
Millions of Americans don't want a governmentr run by humble "servants of the people" who respect the law. They want leaders who tell us they are the law. And now we're in this mess.
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