Plague Journal (28): all the power

I was trying to resume regular blogging before this pandemic started, but wasn't being very consistent. My goal was to "say something reasonably intelligent, almost every day." Those caveats, "reasonably" and "almost," were carefully chosen. But hey, thanks to the coronavirus I have at least been meeting the latter goal of "almost every day."

Yesterday was perhaps the most beautiful day of the Spring so far. There are a few early flowers, crocuses and daffodils. 

Meanwhile, the president made one of his historically inaccurate statements yesterday (he's made so many of them). I'm speaking of his already notorious "all the power" disquisition on the constitutional authority of the president in a time of a crisis. 

The response to this was widespread condemnation from his critics or a nervous silence on the part of his allies. The usual knee-jerk defense by those allies is generally to assert that the quotation was taken out of context, but when you look for the context it usually doesn't help their case. Such was the case here.

Trump's main purpose in his daily press conference appears to be self-promotion; it's an effort to portray himself as not only competently handling the crisis, but ultimately in control of all the strings. While Lincoln admitted that "events are in the saddle and ride mankind," the Trumpian conceit is all about an other-worldly dominance of events. His apologists depict him as some sort of master of 3-D chess (I've heard that simile many times). 

But in the end he often backs down when challenged. This is one of the standard marks of a bully, of course. He made his "all the power" statement in the context of news reports that governors were banning together to make regional compacts having to do with decisions about re-opening their economies. With Trump for many weeks now pretending to be the man in charge, he couldn't less this pass (and thus, his "I have all the power" statement). I told a friend that he would back down rather than actually challengee to governors, and so he did within 24 hours.

Trump uses language like a kid just learning to fold paper airplanes. The little one makes imprecise folds and tosses them into the air, hoping they'll fly. And if they don't, he grabs another sheet and folds again. Trump throws words into the air in the same way. Let's see if "all the power" will fly. If it doesn't, he moves on. Perhaps he never really meant it.

But we shouldn't dismiss such test flights too readily. As one of Trumps most vigorous apologists used to say, "Words have meaning." Words, when they are troubling, should trouble us. I think William Kristol puts it well:

What if the quick dismissal of Trump’s silly invocations of authoritarianism is too easy? What if loose authoritarian talk today is a harbinger or serious authoritarian deeds tomorrow? Can’t performative authoritarian gestures lay the groundwork for more thoroughgoing authoritarian actions? Can’t relatively small acts of corruption now beget a more fundamental long-term corruption of the constitutional order? Can’t the chaos produced by random gestures of authoritarianism prefigure a far more purposeful project of authoritarian rule?