The Death of American Politics

at least in its current form

So, you know, um.

Reading the news and social media, lately, I keep thinking about Sylvia Plath’s poem to her father, the man she described as an engine sending her to the death camps (and “The vampire who said he was you/And drank my blood for a year”). Sylvia Plath stuck her head in an oven, so this is maybe not a great cognitive-emotional model to emulate.

The cycle seems to have become this, all day and every day:

1. We’re going to make some different policy

2. OH GOD YOU’RE EXTERMINATING ME TO DEATH IN YOUR DEATH CAMP TORTURE CHAMBERS OF TERRIFYING SLAUGHTER

The reactions are all layups:

Remember the last thing I posted: A news story in Politico said that the US Forest Service was being consumed in waves of desperate fear and rage as Donald Trump tears down the federal government’s ability to fight wildfires. So I drove up into the mountains and went to Forest Service fire stations, where firefighters said that their staffing levels are fine, but the new administration’s policy course is still unclear and seemingly chaotic and it’s making people frustrated. A little kernel of perfectly reasonable criticism, packaged in explosively emotional framing with ludicrous exaggeration of the stakes. The news.

Take this model and apply it widely. NBC News has a terrifying story about the devastating bloodbath taking place in the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ, as a new director changes the division’s policy priorities.

Ohhhhhhhh God it’s a BLOODBATH!!!!!! Example from the story: “More than a dozen senior lawyers — many with decades of experience working under presidents of both parties — have been reassigned, the current and former officials say.”

Anyway, YOU KNOW WHO ELSE REASSIGNED GOVERNMENT LAWYERS THINK ABOUT IT. So:

1. There’s a BLOODBATH, it’s frightening and destructive and scary!

2. Some government lawyers have been reassigned

None of this is politics. We’re watching the explosive decompression of a sealed chamber under pressure — an extremely obvious extinction burst. I don’t think there’s anything in it to analyze, and I think the best response is watchful calm. In a few months, the haze of hyperemotional overreaction will start to clear, and we’ll have a sense of what’s been left standing. This too will pass:

Calm watchful waiting. Someone posted on I-still-call-it-Twitter recently that they liked the first half of something I had written, but the second half descended into nonsense about Trump playing 4D chess. I apologize for being too lazy to go dig up this post. But I don’t think Trump is playing 4D chess, and I don’t think at all that he sees twelve moves ahead like some staggeringly brilliant political savant. I think he knows what he intends, and what he values, and then he tries a bunch of stuff to see what’ll move the ball in that direction, and some of it doesn’t work. Some of it will. I think he’s a purposeful flailer, with the long-developed tactics of a shit-talking New York City real estate guy, poking at the people on the other side of the table to push them off balance. It’s more playground basketball than 4D chess. Poke and drive, then miss the basket, then shrug and try again and sink it.

Above all, and with all my heart, I think Trump is pushing on a series of open doors, because the opposition is performative rather than structured. I sincerely don’t claim to know how the story ends, but the OH GOD YOU’RE MURDERING ME LIKE ADOLF HITLER people aren’t the winning side. Bloodbaths and bombshells and walls closing in are usually tedious dipshittery.

Lots of noise, very limited action. Please stand by.