I am now read the 98 page indictment filed by Fanni Willis in Georgia. It is tedious, but extraordinarily detailed. What struck me most forcefully was that as part of the RICO indictment, Willis charges a great many acts by Trump, Eastman, Giuliani and others in states other than Georgia.The general opinion from experts who know about such things is that it will take years for this trial to be completed. I may not live long enough to see that, but I have lived long enough now to see Trump indicted four times! Sufficient unto the day…
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Four times indicted just means he is 4x more electable to his base. Perhaps many of them don't even know what the word indicted means. And neither do they care. They want Trump.
For the "they" who want Trump, he possesses what David Graeber and David Wengrow would call "charisma." This charisma is actually rather narrowly based. It is found in the language he uses and how he delivers it. Trump's speech is transgressive, which is seen as powerful in the eyes of his followers and which forms the basis of his his appeal. That is why, despite the legal risks, he continues to attack Judge Chutkan and DA Willis. He must attack them to avoid looking weak. The moment he begins to look weak among his followers his charisma, the source of his political power, will deflate like a popped balloon.
That is why we can count on Trump, despite legal risks, to continue his attacks on Judge Chutkan and DA Willis. Moreover, the attacks will likely escalate as long as he can get away with it. Attacks that become routine lose their transgressive magic, and only through escalation can he restore that magic.
It is no coincidence that he is now largely focusing on Judge Chutkan and DA Willis. Trump, to keep from looking weak to himself, must not allow women to get the best of him. And, deep racist that he is, he is doubly compelled to attack Black women, whom he both loathes and fears.
Against Trump's political necessity of attacking those who threaten him stands those in the judicial system who will seek to silence speech that taints the jury pool and intimidates witnesses. There is a fundamental conflict between Trump's need for transgressive speech and the courts' requirement that he be restrained.
If the courts succeed in silencing Trump's transgressive speech, then he will begin to lose some of his charisma. The endless television coverage of Trump sitting in a Georgia courthouse, looking angry, petulant, helpless and mute, will have the same effect. But long before we get to that point, Trump's attacks will get uglier and uglier.
@ Ludwig Richter
Your analysis is plausible
What do you think of Professor Collins's take in Trump's charisma?
http://sociological-eye.blogspot.com/2016/10/does-trump-have-charisma-what-is.html
He grounds charisma (a Weberian idea) in emotional energy, a Durkheimian idea
Furthermore
Professor Collins grounds frontstage Charisma in Goffman's notion of performance, which is rooted in psychological perception.
He adds that there is something called success charisma- a court appearance may damage his aura of invulnerability
Howie, thank you for the link. I will have to give some thought to what Professor Collins writes in this piece. His categorization and characterization of four types of charisma is interesting. In his framework, Trump clearly qualifies as a frontstage performer, though in this age of social media, Trump's charisma doesn't just manifest itself in his rallies or even television appearances. He manages to project charisma even in Truth Social, such as it is.
I note that Professor Collins wrote this piece in 2016. Trump has grown darker since then. He is fighting to stay out of jail, and his use of charisma is no longer aimed at attaining power but retaining it. Transgression was always a key to what Collins alludes to as the surprising quality of performances that distinguished him from other politicians. As Collins notes, Trump doesn't back down. What is different now is that the stakes are higher and that he is faced with opponents who potentially have the power to undermine the source of his power.
Howie, I would say that Trump can't afford to grow stale, and that is why he must escalate.
Could you say more about what you mean by Trump behaving like a premodern figure?
This is off-topic, but in thinking about the most charismatic person I've ever encountered, I realized, by way of contrast, that a charismatic person can be so stirring that it has a lifelong influence on how one sees the world. I imagine that many of Trump's followers feel powerfully stirred by what he says and how he says it. I've never heard anyone admit that Trump has had a transformative effect on them, but it's hard not to suspect that many have had that experience. For such people, Trump will have to look unalterably weakened for them to change how they feel about him.
For one the way he disregards the rule of law and makes everything personal like he's Charlemagne. Professor Collins said certain lines of work operate that way, like the Sopranos (he wrote an essay about that too)
The way he loves pomp, the way he sees himself as the sole font of power
Professor McAdams in his profile went further than me and view Trump's behavior as ape like
The Strange case of Donald J. Trump is the title
He added that Trump lives entirely in the present and must win every encounter by being so and that affects the depth of his relationships
He just strikes me as someone in the entourage of Alexander the Great
Unfortunately, if Trump is similar to Alexander, he still won't die from drinking too much wine. Trump you see is a teetotaler. Unlike Dhu al-Qarnayn (Alexander the Great) who died from a fever brought on by too much hard drinking.
I’m just not sure how to respond to the idea that Trump harks back to some premodern mentality or charismatic style. The premodern world, which I take is the world before the rise of modern institutions, was highly diverse, with all sorts of ways of organizing societies, living in and seeing the world, structuring systems of power, cultivating styles of leadership, and so on. It’s kind of fun to think of Trump as walking out of Gilgamesh or Beowulf or some medieval tale into the modern world, but it doesn’t actually fit who he is and who we are in that world.
Trump fits perfectly his time and the people who were ready to be shaped and transformed by his performances. We are not the first people for whom the rituals of dramatic performances are powerfully important. Trump’s dramatic performances are suited to contemporary forms of mass media. He’s not going to wear a mask and perform a ritual dance. He’s not even going to appear, with a cast of thousands, in a highly stylized film shown in every movie theater for years to come. He’ll use what is at hand: rallies, social media, television appearances. Cut off those performances, and he is nothing but the little man behind the curtain. He knows that. He can’t let them bind him in his greatest hour of need.
"I’m just not sure how to respond to the idea that Trump harks back to some premodern mentality or charismatic style."
It's likely the relevant wiring has been there since at least the Cenozoic. Rather then allude to historical characters who lived large, better to consider Trump the ultimate failson, an idiot savant conman who won the genetic lottery.
To understand the audience and the appeal, Smackdown is on Friday night and Raw is on Monday.
Hi Ludwig and aaall
Maybe I should defer to your judgment: there is something really weird about Trump- there are few Americans just like him today- you can easily overrule me for I have just a hunch and am hardly a scholar, though in a way we are all Trump scholars being bashed by his toxic radiance- but don't be so sure of yourselves- you may buy a copy of McAdams study of Trump and why he is so bizarre
And aaall when you attribute his mutant qualities to some genetic lottery you merely explain Trump away perhaps with a dose of deserved derision- again to McAdams- he sticks to a close study using validated psychological constructs and steers away from speculation
https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2020/03/the-strange-case-of-donald-j-trump-a-psychological-reckoning/
as a preview- am curious of your reaction
His blurb page passes over the chapter devoted to Trump's archaic what he agreed with me as premodern nature- though we all retain certain phenotypic characteristics from way back, only Trump acts in this bizarre ways that McAdams in a personal communication agreed was okay to deem "premodern"
He is perhaps not quite as well informed as you are, but is entitled to his opinion as am I
Interesting takes on Trump from many different angles. I would suggest you exclusively consider that Trump is an individual that could not have existed prior to ~1970. He is not an historical "personality" figure by any characterization. He is a prosthetic synthesis of his own creation in a media dominated world.
Since the ancient world has been mentioned, consider G. E. M. De Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (Duckworth, 1981; p. 352):
“The populares of the Late Republic. . . were simply prominent individual politicians who had what we should call a ‘popular following’, in the sense of support from poorer classes . . . and who adopted policies that were disliked by the oligarchy . . . Some of the politicians concerned were clearly motivated by real concern about the menacing social developments in Italy; others may have taken the courses they did mainly because they felt that was the best way to advance their own careers. . . .
“ The populares, then, served, faute de mieux and sometimes no doubt against their will, as leaders of what was in a very real sense a political class struggle: a blind, spasmodic, ininformed,often misdirected and always easily confused movement, but a movement with deep roots, proceeding from men whose interests were fundamentally opposed to those of the ruling oligarchy, and who were not concerned . . . with the mere exclusiveness, corruption and inefficiency of the senatorial government but with its rapacity and its utter indifference to their interests.”
As this author also reminds, later perceptions of these populares were largely framed by such defenders of the Roman social order as Cicero.
"Winning the genetic lottery" usually means that one was born to the right people, "right" meaning wealthy, influential, etc. Most folks have to run just to get to first. The Donald, Jared, W, etc. NSM.
Without his father Roy Cohn, and NBC to gift, mentor, and bail him out, Trump would have been one of those guys who cold call you to sell you whatever. Run of the mill grifter.
That Trump is mental is obvious. Same for quite a few of our tech-bro overlords. Many years ago I knew a psychologist who had a number of high profile client in business, entertainment, and politics. Without violating confidences, of course, he would relate that if we knew what goes through those folks minds...
Failing upwards isn't pre-modern, it's a characteristic of our species and likely always will be.
"[T]hough in a way we are all Trump scholars being bashed by his toxic radiance. . . ."
Totally agree with you there!
I'm no scholar; you don't need to defer to me.
Thanks for the link to the article on Professor McAdams and his recent book. I don't know how "narrative identity" in psychology differs from "narrative self" in philosophy, or whether they do differ. In any case, it had never occurred to me that Trump may be lacking in a narrative self. That's not something I feel qualified to comment on.
Folks who read the financials knew Trump was a sociopathic clown by the 1980s/90s. What made him was "The Apprentice" which led the unwashed to actually believe the BS and folks like Morning Joe doing cross promotion. It didn't help that he was allowed to testify before the Congress on matters ranging from the economy to remodeling the UN building.
While Trump actually ran a somewhat small family business, the kayfabe said otherwise. I recall one of the cletus safaris after the 2016 election where two representatives of the common clay related that they voted for him because he was a successful businessman and businessmen knew how to run things and they created jobs.
Of course only a degenerate, insurrectionist party would nominate someone like Trump and WFB, Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan, and Gingrich (among others) provided that. Even if Trump isn't nominated the same party will still remain.
https://www.knkx.org/politics/2023-06-20/how-liberal-seattle-created-a-powerful-conservative-influencer-christopher-rufo
https://www.amazon.com/Ringmaster-Vince-McMahon-Unmaking-America-ebook/dp/B0B3Y7K6D5
BTW, if you had your very own 757, enough money, and were facing multiple state and federal indictments what would you do (a tailwind could get you to Minsk)?
If you grew up in New York, you were inoculated to it early on, because he was regarded as a tacky, outer-borough buffoon. He happened to be “rich”, but he wasn’t really. He wasn’t rich-rich, he was pretend-rich. He wasn’t even a “real” developer (like the Zeckendorfs). And so on. He was, as Spy Magazine had it, a “short-fingered vulgarian”. HA ha ha ha! How we all laughed and laughed …
But if you didn’t grow up in New York you didn’t know any of that. When his “book” came out, a college classmate of mine was reading it (sorry, “reading” it.) Spotting it in his pad, I said, essentially, “WTF?” His reply was, Trump was rich and therefore what he had to say was ipso facto valuable. Now this classmate grew up in Dallas, and that’s how rich people act down there. I guess other Texans listen to these types out of habit, or admiration, or some combination of the two.
I learned about ”The Apprentice” when I went to buy socks at the Union Square (SF) Bloomingdales and there was a gigantic crowd of aspiring contestants there. I said to myself, “Donald TRUMP ... ? HAH! Nobody’s going to want to watch that asshole! This show is going to be the biggest flop EVAH!”
You can see why I consider myself to be a kind of anti-Nostradamus.
What's the lesson here? Don't overestimate the taste or intelligence of the great mass of the plain people (thanks, H.L. Mencken).
Sorry, I forgot the first line:
Further to the remarks on Trump and his “charisma” (for lack of a better term):
aaall wrote:
"Of course only a degenerate, insurrectionist party would nominate someone like Trump and WFB, Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan, and Gingrich (among others) provided that."
None of the named people were insurrectionists, except Trump. Nixon operated outside the law in key respects, but never incited a mob to attack the Capitol. And when the Nixon tapes came out and SCOTUS ruled they could not be withheld, Goldwater and other Repub Senators told Nixon he had to resign or would be impeached.
So the Repub Party has changed in certain respects. Only someone fully steeped in the attitude of the LGM blog, where one side is all good and the other all evil, could take aaall's attitude toward U.S. politics, in which anyone with the appellation D is automatically good (except for certain select "tankies"), no matter what they say or how they vote, and vice versa.
And a certain political scientist who should know better rails against Cornel West as a "ratfucker," when that political scientist knows damn well that West's candidacy is not likely to make a f******* bit of difference to the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.
W/r/t election year “Cletus Safaris” (heh heh HEH), I recall listening to an interview with a Cletus on WAMU (the DC NPR station) just before the 2000 contest—he allowed that he was “goin’ ter vote fer Dubyah ‘cause he’s jes’ reg’lar folks lahk me …”
The American art of marketing is truly a wonder to behold. There is no idea—NONE—so ridiculous that it can’t be successfully promoted and nearly instantaneously established as folk wisdom.
Of course there's a big difference between a reporter interviewing one or two people and someone making a more in-depth investigation of why certain people hold the political and other attitudes they do (see e.g. Arlie Hochschild, who I suspect is worth reading though I haven't).
Of course George W. Bush was not "regular folks" but he did a good job of convincing (some) people that he was.
I read Hochschild expecting it to be “in depth” but I thought it was pretty shallow, so feel free to continue to not read her.
I’m pretty sure that there is an actual term in journalism for this sort of thing: the (irascible) Editor (loose tie, rumpled shirt, dangling cigarette) shouts "Go get me an 'idiot quote'!!!” Something like that. I’ve forgotten what it is, I’ll have to ask my journo pal.
The idea is, you gotta have “both sides” … no matter how stupid one side is.
Sometimes this is a thankless job of standing on a street for HOURS desperately looking for an idiot to duly provide you with your 10 seconds of stupidity, but in election years the idiocy flows like water and it takes no time at all.
This trope is, of course, the source for all of those “Area Man” jokes in The Onion.
For those perhaps wondering, John P. and I are referring to
this book
Who is WFB referred to above as a prominent Republican?
s. wallerstein
William F. Buckley Jr.
Anonymous,
Thanks.
aaall,
The problem with the theory that there's a Republican conspiracy dating back to Goldwater and William Buckley, if not before them, and culminating in Trump is that many prominent conservative Republicans have been very critical of Trump.
Here's George W. Bush on what Trump has done to "his" party.
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2021-04-20/george-w-bush-condemns-the-trump-era-republican-party
You'll say that Bush dislikes Trump because of the way Trump treated his brother Jeb during the Republican debates in 2016, but many of us, including George W. Bush, see Trump as qualitatively different than previous Republicans, none of whom I've ever supported or voted for.
As LFC notes above, no Republican previous to Trump fomented an insurrection when he or she lost the presidential race as happened to Nixon in 1960, the most patently corrupt
pre-Trump Republican figure to hold high office in the U.S.
s.w., I don't believe I ever used the word "conspiracy." We don't need a conspiracy when all it takes is a series well intentioned but quite stupid wrong turns. Conservatives have a series of just-so stories about how the world works and things should be (the ideological left has its own set). If only we returned then things would work as they should.
Another factor is demographics. Move a bunch of socially conservative Russians to Israel - what could go wrong. Conservatism became more plausible as those folks who actually had to deal during the Great Depression died off.
Nixon resigned because the choice was resign and be done with it in a day or be impeached/convicted and spend weeks or months in hell. Who knows if Ford threw in a sweetener.
The insurrection/coup was (hopefully) an endpoint of a process. How Nixon handled his situation is irrelevant as the necessities weren't in place. For that matter they weren't in place on Jan. 6, 2020. There was enough to get things rolling but nothing to sustain them. Trump wasn't able to get the right folks in the right places (that's why we should be paying attention to Schedule "F" and Tuberville's treason).
Nixon did commit treason as part of his campaign in 1968. Chotner, Stone, Atwater, Rove, etc. - gifts that keep on giving. Kissinger, Pinochet, Iran Contra, etc.
Academics love playing "are we there yet?" The problem is that its usually too late by the time we get a consensus.
"...but many of us, including George W. Bush, see Trump as qualitatively different..."
Or we might think of Sarah Palin as a sort of John the Baptist. That's why I used the bankruptcy allusion. Neo-liberalism "worked" until it didn't. Seeing a Trump as an exception instead of an inevitable result will get you a free ride in a boxcar.
I still say that had Ron and Jane stayed married and LBJ stayed out of Vietnam we would be in a far better time line.
LFC, I don't see a problem with harsh (and deserved) treatment with West when we talk amongst ourselves. I'm assuming there are always wobblers who will vote Green/Libertarian or Dem/Rep based on who and what. The Greens delude some folks into voting Green to their detriment. If those folks voted in the Dem primary it would help to move the party left. Putting resources into the general in a state like Wisconsin will only pull the state to the right. Waiting until after the election to do a poll trivializes the stakes. In every election there are persuadable voters. If West and the Greens have any effect it will be to move marginal votes away from Biden.
I don't doubt there were problems in 1960 considering Joe's connections and money but that's irrelevant. Trump did a bunch of litigating (as was his right) as did Gore but that was within bounds. The stuff in the indictments as well as the purges/attempted purges in DOD and Justice are another matter.
BTW, it's not unreasonable to consider Bush v. Gore as a coup by the Republican Gang of Five on the SC. No Bush, no Roberts/Alito.
"when we talk amongst ourselves"
Who are the "ourselves" here? Are we all members of some small political club or somesuch???
To xyz:
"Ourselves" are the readers and contributors to The Philosopher's Stone.
What's the problem?
My problem, D. Z., is that the "when we talk amongst ourselves" was prefaced by some remarks not everyone might agree with, even on this blog. Hence, as I tried to suggest by what I went on to say, there was an implication that we are all like thinkers here. I suspect that isn't true even when it comes to contemplating Cornel West's political adventures. But the phrasing has a way of imposing like mindedness--or else silence--on others.
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