Trying to make sense of Trump 2.0? First, hit the study corner

Obviously, the good citizen answer is “yes!”, but you have to realise we ask each other these questions shamelessly because during such transactions we are really asking whether we believe our taxes work for us.

Obviously the good citizen answer to that question is “Bruh. Public school teachers are underpaid while politician spouses get allowances, and they keep firing the Auditor and Comptroller General. Receipt for what?”

But back to Mr Trump. This man has me questioning my sanity as I try to understand how he is able to do and undo all kinds of nonsense in a brief period of time with complete impunity.

Like: what even is a ‘mature and stable’ country if American systems can be punched in the face by a fully chaotic head of state, and they’re the current hegemon?

It. Doesn’t. Make. Sense.

The United States of America is an enviably well-documented polity. Their history has been recorded — complete with biases and omissions — ever since the first European genocidaires landed on what they hoped was ‘available’ land to do their thing. Of course, it is morally questionable — it is an empire complete with a deeply problematic habit of violence.

There is a school of thought that the American state is fragile because of the brutality of its birthing process that remains in its political DNA.

Perhaps, but remember how well-documented it insists on being? This transparency makes it easy to track their experiment in democracy as it grows over time, often through great effort.

That dead sexy belief in freedoms and rights and participation and laws helped sell democracy as a viable, desirable option for a modern nation state.

A large part of what gave this whole thing credibility over time was the squashing of hereditary privileges, literally trying to forge a new way of doing power that was the antithesis of monarchy.

Only to land in 2025 with a superannuated head of state with a hefty Mad King vibe, a handful of billionaires who have all the money and an anxious citizenry that is realising they’ve been herded into an economy in which they struggle to afford eggs.

That is why I have all these tabs open. The Trump presidency is happening in a polity with hundreds of years of experience trying to systematise government so that no individual could dominate it, and I am a systems girl.

The Trump apologists are utterly useless at explaining why they are flirting with potential state failure, and everyone else is having a hard time piecing the explanations together.

But we do need an explanation: there has got to be more to human striving than this ridiculous pendulum swing between long periods of deifying rich male tyrants and brief respites when we remember our dignity. I am sure the answer is online somewhere.

One last observation about ‘developed’ vs ‘developing’ countries: when “no taxation without representation” fails, self-inflicted tariff blitzes crush the working class and the State becomes obviously predatory? ‘Receipt for what?’ starts to make a grim kind of sense doesn’t it? Third world skills for a third world government. Don’t knock ‘em.

Scholarship as Comfort.

But we do need an explanation: there has got to be more to human striving than this ridiculous pendulum swing between long periods of deifying rich male tyrants and brief respites when we remember our dignity. I am sure the answer is online somewhere.