Excellent insights, "Corruption is the point" should become a meme.
This resonates with Michelle Goldman's column in the NYTimes today pointing out that Trump and MAGA thrive on degradation. Also Paul Krugman's recent column explaining that Trump's people degrade themselves - with obvious lies and sickening sycophantic praise - as a proof of their loyalty. The video of Trump dumping shit on New Yorkers and the demolition of the East Wing are visual evidence of what's happening.
I fear that all this is only the eruption into daylight of a moral collapse that has been working underground in our society for a generation or more. (Personally, I first saw something had gone wrong when the Bush-Cheney torturers were never exposed and punished.)
What's striking to me is how innocence itself becomes a kind of crime to these people. The fact that the people they beat, kidnap and harass have done nothing wrong, and are simply living their lives and going to work is almost offensive to the bottom of the barrel types who are the most fervent soldiers for Trumpism.
To be innocent is to put on airs, to assert superiority to the people who are your designated social betters, and requires even harsher punishment.
I wonder how the more bourgeois, respectable MAGA people can stomach this. Maybe they are not even that aware of it? Or maybe the bourgeoisie has always delegated a certain amount of its dirty work to gangster-like criminals. Maybe, secretly, respectable MAGAs kind of wish they were gangsters. Maybe they admire them.
Susan Collins has been exploiting it for decades. "She's above it, and it concerns her" is a so far unbeatable performance that her colleagues might wanna try.
The Democrats are the party of the Bourgeoise in the United States. It is a core component of the Democratic Party and you can find bougie types who are enthused about Mamdani and also people like Sherill and Spanberger are super-bourgeosie. Liberalism might be returning to its 19th century roots as a political philosophy of the educated middle-classes.
When ICE raided that rundown apartment building in Chicago, they not only zip-tied naked children and put them in vans, but they also stole what little there was of value in the apartments. So they had fun and profited!
over on bluesky @utopia-defer.red routinely makes the point that ice operations are indistinguishable from cartel operations south of the border in territories they have partial control over--a squad of militarized unmarked vehicles rolling up in a neighborhood, masked men with guns in half-tacticool half-casual attire jumping out and snatching some people before scurrying off the scene
organized crime syndicates and terrorist groups are para-statal entities that exist on an organizational continuum with formal solidified states, thus we might see the burgeoning criminal economy and terroristic operations of the trump regime as the embryonic prerogative component of the dual state model of fascism
great piece. who can deny any of this? when trump said yesterday he is helping himself to the cashbox because of all the trouble we people cause him, i just dunno how anybody can't see it. there is no government. hasn't been for months. (the business in the courts is to conjure up a gov't on multiple issues. it's slow & ineffective, usually.) and whether it is "open" or "shutdown" makes little difference. Some thievery is a lot easier with a "shutdown."
This perfectly describes Buzz Windrip's supporters from It Can't Happen Here. The Forgotten Man who's too dumb to better himself and too proud to accept it. He so desperately wants to win but can only do so by cheating so when he finds a politician willing to cheat on his behalf, he'll follow him slavishly.
A lot of ink has been spilled on the question of whether Dems should treat Trump as an aberration from the "traditional" Republican Party or as its apotheosis.
But I agree with the conclusion here, the key issue isn't so much conceptually cleaving MAGA from the Republican Party, it's conceptually cleaving MAGA from its voters.
The 77 million people who voted for Trump are Americans like the rest of us and they too deserve better than to have our commonwealth looted and vandalized like this.
Yes, "corruption is the point." I guess as a clinical psychologist I'd like to reflect on the difference between sociopaths and traumatized people. I think it's safe to say that sociopathy and sociopathic narcissism is rife in the upper ranks of the Trump administration/gang. But I also feel for the poor suckers who lack education and responsible loving parents, who were likely abused or neglected, and who end up as part of the "scum, offal, refuse of all classes." We are rightly disgusted. But it also seems the left needs to find a way to speak to this group and offer them something other than contempt and disgust if we're hoping not going to drive them even further into the arms of sick ideologies.
Yeah, the Santos pardon kind of distills this all down in microcosm. There isn’t even anything especially transactional - Santos is broke, the GOP even kicked him to the curb, and to the base he’s just an immigrant homo. His function for Trump is to transmit a message - “if you’re a criminal but you like me, you will not pay. I will make sure of that.” Every goon signing up to strap on an ICE vest to beat the shit out of immigrants knows this, knows they can do anything they want.
The crypto-fascist right in the US - particularly the Confederate franchise - has depended on paramilitaries since at least reconstruction. There's a good (although not complete) argument that the 2nd amendment was all about ensuring those militias were well trained and capable of grabbing undesirables whoever they might be. So I don't think the Trump militia is that much of a stretch for the bourgeois GOP. For a lot of those people, they just put the MAGA face mask in the closet next to their Klan robes, the OpusDei merch and the nazi memorabilia they collect just for fun.
If one takes a close look at what passes for lumpen society, we see that most of these folks "the true lumpen" make their livings with either one or more low-wage jobs, or a whole series of side hustles, which at the heart of things are nascent small businesses, and very likely a lot of folks combine low-wage jobs with side hustles.
A typical small business could be regarded as a side hustle with money.
Worth noting is that the rank and file of such movements can come from the lumpen, bu leadership invariably comes from high end white collar people and the aforesaid "lumpen-ish" small business folks, and of course from much larger privately-held businesses.
So what do we do with this crowd? They aren't going away and they might outnumber us. So far the best hope is that Trump seems to be the first politician to really animate this crowd into voting and there is probably no one waiting in the wings with the same kind of dark charisma.* J.D. Vance tries but he is J.D. Vance and probably is being propped up by Trump.
*A related but not always overlapping crowd is the people who really see Trump as the "cure/response" to Obama because they are in a sustained freakout that we elected a Black Man to POTUS twice. I write related but not overlapping because I have met people in this crowd who look like and come across as grandmothers.
Excellent insights, "Corruption is the point" should become a meme.
This resonates with Michelle Goldman's column in the NYTimes today pointing out that Trump and MAGA thrive on degradation. Also Paul Krugman's recent column explaining that Trump's people degrade themselves - with obvious lies and sickening sycophantic praise - as a proof of their loyalty. The video of Trump dumping shit on New Yorkers and the demolition of the East Wing are visual evidence of what's happening.
I fear that all this is only the eruption into daylight of a moral collapse that has been working underground in our society for a generation or more. (Personally, I first saw something had gone wrong when the Bush-Cheney torturers were never exposed and punished.)
What's striking to me is how innocence itself becomes a kind of crime to these people. The fact that the people they beat, kidnap and harass have done nothing wrong, and are simply living their lives and going to work is almost offensive to the bottom of the barrel types who are the most fervent soldiers for Trumpism.
To be innocent is to put on airs, to assert superiority to the people who are your designated social betters, and requires even harsher punishment.
Duncan Black notes that the scum are also out of shape.
https://www.eschatonblog.com/2025/10/master-race.html
These are people who cannot or will not get jobs in lines of work that contribute to society.
I wonder how the more bourgeois, respectable MAGA people can stomach this. Maybe they are not even that aware of it? Or maybe the bourgeoisie has always delegated a certain amount of its dirty work to gangster-like criminals. Maybe, secretly, respectable MAGAs kind of wish they were gangsters. Maybe they admire them.
All three
Susan Collins has been exploiting it for decades. "She's above it, and it concerns her" is a so far unbeatable performance that her colleagues might wanna try.
The Democrats are the party of the Bourgeoise in the United States. It is a core component of the Democratic Party and you can find bougie types who are enthused about Mamdani and also people like Sherill and Spanberger are super-bourgeosie. Liberalism might be returning to its 19th century roots as a political philosophy of the educated middle-classes.
When ICE raided that rundown apartment building in Chicago, they not only zip-tied naked children and put them in vans, but they also stole what little there was of value in the apartments. So they had fun and profited!
Great Piece
over on bluesky @utopia-defer.red routinely makes the point that ice operations are indistinguishable from cartel operations south of the border in territories they have partial control over--a squad of militarized unmarked vehicles rolling up in a neighborhood, masked men with guns in half-tacticool half-casual attire jumping out and snatching some people before scurrying off the scene
organized crime syndicates and terrorist groups are para-statal entities that exist on an organizational continuum with formal solidified states, thus we might see the burgeoning criminal economy and terroristic operations of the trump regime as the embryonic prerogative component of the dual state model of fascism
I just really hope that if we're ever graced with a Democratic administration again, they won't keep ICE around because they're "government employees"
great piece. who can deny any of this? when trump said yesterday he is helping himself to the cashbox because of all the trouble we people cause him, i just dunno how anybody can't see it. there is no government. hasn't been for months. (the business in the courts is to conjure up a gov't on multiple issues. it's slow & ineffective, usually.) and whether it is "open" or "shutdown" makes little difference. Some thievery is a lot easier with a "shutdown."
This perfectly describes Buzz Windrip's supporters from It Can't Happen Here. The Forgotten Man who's too dumb to better himself and too proud to accept it. He so desperately wants to win but can only do so by cheating so when he finds a politician willing to cheat on his behalf, he'll follow him slavishly.
A lot of ink has been spilled on the question of whether Dems should treat Trump as an aberration from the "traditional" Republican Party or as its apotheosis.
But I agree with the conclusion here, the key issue isn't so much conceptually cleaving MAGA from the Republican Party, it's conceptually cleaving MAGA from its voters.
The 77 million people who voted for Trump are Americans like the rest of us and they too deserve better than to have our commonwealth looted and vandalized like this.
Yes, "corruption is the point." I guess as a clinical psychologist I'd like to reflect on the difference between sociopaths and traumatized people. I think it's safe to say that sociopathy and sociopathic narcissism is rife in the upper ranks of the Trump administration/gang. But I also feel for the poor suckers who lack education and responsible loving parents, who were likely abused or neglected, and who end up as part of the "scum, offal, refuse of all classes." We are rightly disgusted. But it also seems the left needs to find a way to speak to this group and offer them something other than contempt and disgust if we're hoping not going to drive them even further into the arms of sick ideologies.
Yeah, the Santos pardon kind of distills this all down in microcosm. There isn’t even anything especially transactional - Santos is broke, the GOP even kicked him to the curb, and to the base he’s just an immigrant homo. His function for Trump is to transmit a message - “if you’re a criminal but you like me, you will not pay. I will make sure of that.” Every goon signing up to strap on an ICE vest to beat the shit out of immigrants knows this, knows they can do anything they want.
The crypto-fascist right in the US - particularly the Confederate franchise - has depended on paramilitaries since at least reconstruction. There's a good (although not complete) argument that the 2nd amendment was all about ensuring those militias were well trained and capable of grabbing undesirables whoever they might be. So I don't think the Trump militia is that much of a stretch for the bourgeois GOP. For a lot of those people, they just put the MAGA face mask in the closet next to their Klan robes, the OpusDei merch and the nazi memorabilia they collect just for fun.
If one takes a close look at what passes for lumpen society, we see that most of these folks "the true lumpen" make their livings with either one or more low-wage jobs, or a whole series of side hustles, which at the heart of things are nascent small businesses, and very likely a lot of folks combine low-wage jobs with side hustles.
A typical small business could be regarded as a side hustle with money.
Worth noting is that the rank and file of such movements can come from the lumpen, bu leadership invariably comes from high end white collar people and the aforesaid "lumpen-ish" small business folks, and of course from much larger privately-held businesses.
So what do we do with this crowd? They aren't going away and they might outnumber us. So far the best hope is that Trump seems to be the first politician to really animate this crowd into voting and there is probably no one waiting in the wings with the same kind of dark charisma.* J.D. Vance tries but he is J.D. Vance and probably is being propped up by Trump.
*A related but not always overlapping crowd is the people who really see Trump as the "cure/response" to Obama because they are in a sustained freakout that we elected a Black Man to POTUS twice. I write related but not overlapping because I have met people in this crowd who look like and come across as grandmothers.
Vandal in a Construction Helmet
Arsonist on a Fire Engine
He’s got the shtick and they love it.