by Vlad Vexler
(1) Trump’s brain is not in a good way. (a) His narcissistic personality disorder, impulsivity and rigidity are all getting worse with age. (b) He is going to hate the “fake” mid terms result, especially as the Democrats have taken the Senate. (c) Trump is going to hate the formal beginning of his lame duck period.
(2) Trump is in a political bind - because he represents the buffoonish 1.0 wave of post-truth authoritarianism. After his first term, he realised he needed to build a revolutionary elite around him. As the vandalism of his second term shows, he accomplished this to a degree. But he couldn’t do it properly - the way an Orban or a Putin may have done. He failed to cultivate an elite capable of substance beyond theatrics, animated by a coherent political vision. He also failed to reform the Republican party - it is emaciated, but not remade in the image of any new political project.
(3) There cannot be Trumpism 2.0. Trumpism was always going to collapse, and it will not be possible to substantively call what comes after it “Trumpism 2.0”. Rather, it will be the next post-Trump wave of authoritarian populism.
(4) The Republican party cannot return to “normal”. The social fabric for this no longer exists. Economic, political, cultural and social forces mean that the desire to revert to a Reagenite or Bushite “normal” a fantasy.
(5) The Democratic party cannot return to normal either - technocratic centrism, partly a cause of Trumpism, is now a politics of the past.
(6) It is however possible that a centrist Democrat or, less likely, an old school Republican, is elected as president in 2028. However, this would accelerate the demise of these politics. Biden himself was a product of unconsummated progressive momentum - contingently propelled to the presidency by the selection process. It is still possible he was not the last one.
(7) What will follow Trumpism on the right will be a more disciplined and strategic authoritarian populism 2.0. What will follow on the Democrat side is regrettably still unknown. What is needed is a progressive project that is big on solidarity over identity politics, tough on the border, and committed to taking on gross economic exclusion and re-establishing a dignity of labour.
(8) Geopolitically, Trump will want to escalate in Iran after the mid terms. However, whether he extends the escalation to large scale attacks on civilian infrastructure and assassinations is uncertain. It is worth noting that Trump is able to recognise strength - we have seen him get bullied by Russia and China. He is beginning to perceive Iran’s unwillingness and inability to give him what he wants as a kind of strength.
On Ukraine, Trump will carry on lashing out at Zelensky, and will think more urgently about deals he can make with Putin that will benefit him once he is out of the White House. - a younger Trump would be doing everything to stay in the White House beyond his term; this Trump does not have the energy or concentration to focus on this task properly.
(9) Behind all these points, is a progressing decline in citizen trust. I’ve spoken about this at length, so here I will add only one detail. Citizens find the ‘might is right’ neoliberalism of political and economic elites sickening. Are the new elites really that different? The answer is yes, in two ways. First, ‘might is right’ politics now takes up - let’s be rough - 90% and not 60% of the elite horizon. Two, this horizon has not been ideologised. For instance, a new kind of 'might is right' worldview now obtains among many billionaires. As Nietzsche would say, if there is anything worse than a very bad thing, it is justifying it at the level of principle.
Vlad Vexler's Substack
Vlad Vexler's Substack
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