by Laurence Peterson
If you have to argue, you’ve already lost. —Unknown
There is so much about the Trump regime that is troublingly peculiar: the base cruelty, the arrogant racism and sexism, the evangelistic ignorance, the fearless disregard for existing law, the super-conspicuous corruption; one can go on and on. What I want to focus on here today is how he, and his toadies and operatives in the administration, lie to all of us. As I shall try to explain below, the intention underlying the lies can vary somewhat depending on the part of the population being addressed at any given time, but one feature seems to stand out in almost all of the messaging: the content of the communication is not as important as the expression or implication of possible contempt for the recipients of that content.
Just in the last few days, Trump has escalated the military buildup off Venezuela to such an outsized point that it is rather clear that an attempt is being fostered to instigate a commission of some kind of rash mistake (by either side, with only the slightest degree of plausible deniability) that will result in hostilities between Americans and Venezuelans (or Colombians), which would then result in a manufacture of consent amongst the American electorate to tolerate a more vigorous attempt at regime change than they seem to be willing to countenance right now. It is also evident that there are other forces in the administration pushing in other directions, and that Trump enjoys playing them off against each other, but commitment to the first component appears to be the dominant component of Venezuela policy. Whatever the outcome of the jockeying, the Trump stance has (until very recently) been consistently expressed as an attempt to combat the importation of illegal drugs into the United States, especially fentanyl and cocaine, despite the demonstrated fact that Venezuela plays at best a very minor role in the trafficking of either drug to the US. In the very midst of all this, Trump pardoned the ex-President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was convicted by a US court (and imprisoned there), of, you guessed it, trafficking 400 tons of cocaine into the US. Hernandez is even alleged to have said “We are going to shove the drugs up the noses of the gringos, and they won’t even know it.”
Also in the last few days, The Guardian reported that Trump owned two mortgages he claimed were primary dwellings, the very charge that Trump directed his Department of Justice to (unsuccessfully) indict former New York City prosecutor Letitia James on. James, it will be remembered, was the prosecutor who in 2022 filed a civil suit against Trump that resulted in penalties and a fine of four hundred million dollars (which was later voided as excessive; James plans to appeal this).
I have chosen these incidents as illustrative of my contention because they are so obviously contradictory and involve actions so hypocritical that it is impossible, if one is paying any attention to them at all, to avoid a conclusion that Trump and his administration have absolutely no respect for the recipients of this information, or that they are at all concerned about any possible consequences of presenting such blatantly offensive duplicity as its modus operandi to innumerable multitudes of citizens. They are, in the most direct way, putting up the biggest of middle fingers to the very ones they took an oath to serve and protect. How is this possible? What does it mean that we have come to this absurd point?
I believe there really is a kind of crude, perhaps, underlying mentality amongst many in what many refer to as “Trumpworld” which divides the population at large into three groups; we can call them “the good”, “the bad”, and “the ugly”. The good are Trump’s wealthy supporters, celebrities, famous criminals and dictators he admires and his family (with extreme reservations, seemingly, at times). Or, to be more specific, those in these groups who appear to him to follow his will to the letter and, when required, pander to and even degrade themselves before him. The bad consist of liberals and Democrats (people holding more radical views, despite Trump’s designation of the Democratic leadership as the “radical left” do not enter his consideration, most of the time; Trump couldn’t tell a Marxist from a local Democrat civic club member) considered to be opposing his agenda or messaging, non-whites, immigrants without a whole lot of money or foreign leaders he considers, for a variety of reasons, weak or vulnerable. The ugly refers to Trump’s stated and possible supporters who are not wealthy or famous, but support him, especially the most enthusiastic ones. Except for demanding and wallowing in their demonstrated support at rallies, Trump would not touch such supporters with a very large stick, and does not care about their concerns except when they coincide with his, cruelty towards immigrants perhaps being the best example of this. His indifference towards those millions in red states who lost Medicaid coverage a few weeks ago is also telling here, as well as the case of those who may be unable to afford their health insurance next month.
Trump’s messaging toward the good tends to take the form of outright insider dealing and bargaining. Communications with the rest of us about these parlays are shrouded in opacity, secrecy and, on occasion, a peculiarly shameless variety of spin. The few questions that make their way to Trump, or his minions, on these matters are disregarded almost as the expression of heresy or crass insubordination. When Trump lies to or about these people, money or power tends to be on the line, unless and until some kind of break with Trump occurs, as it sometimes does. It is only then that you get the nasty stuff. It is when the bad are addressed that the kind of contempt I am speaking of comes to the fore from the beginning. Trump feels he can lie to them in the most insulting way, and that they will either simply accept this or, which perhaps amounts to the same thing, show themselves abjectly unable to resist or simply respond in a significant or meaningful way. In this way, I think Trump and his people feel that the bad have proven themselves unworthy–and not entitled to–anything like truth. Not that anyone else particularly deserves something as plebeian as truth, of course; truth is always something that can be thrown over the railing. But the bad have somehow revealed a weakness that disqualifies them from truth altogether. As such, where they are concerned, the more potentially insulting the departure from truth, the better. The point becomes to emphasize how powerless the good are and how pointless their resistance even to the most offensive insults will certainly be.
As for the ugly, these people are despised for falling for Trump’s patent nonsense and even scams. They exist in the Trumpian mind merely to be abused and to show themselves thankful to the utmost for that. Occasionally, one of them will be celebrated, usually, it seems, for dying, but other than that, the sentiment flows in one direction only: towards Trump. I am absolutely convinced that Trump and his people ridicule their supporters outside the public eye frequently and in the most disrespectful way. These people are beneath even the contempt shown to the bad, because of their perceived one-dimensional and all-encompassing stupidity.
But things are changing, even in this perverted world of elite mentalities. Back during the regime of George W. Bush, I began to think of the good, bad and ugly along the lines of what I have claimed the Trumpian mind has resurrected and expanded upon. But structural factors prove themselves more powerful than the wacky world-views of plutocrats. During Bush II, I would venture, the ugly were pretty much led by the nose by wealthy donors; their political power was dependent on the creation and maintenance of astroturf organizations and the like; now (for reasons I simply am not prepared to elucidate) this scheme seems to be reversed to a significant degree. I personally sense this has much to do with the sheer instability of the the Republican and even MAGA structures.
But there is perhaps one further group I should speak of. I get the sense that a not inconsiderable amount of Trump supporters realize the otherworldly extent of the number and shamelessness of Trump’s lies, and fail to resist precisely because, first of all, they think our politics are so degraded that the very notion of resistance itself is the greatest of all duplicities; and, secondly, they may feel that they are in with Trump on the secret that Trump is pursuing policies harmful to them, and lying about it, in order to do ultimate harm to the hapless, do-gooder bad, who are ones who really don’t get it. Maybe, in this sense, they feel Trump would respect them, assuming Trump would ever deign to think about them at all.
And what of Trump’s lackeys in the administration? They, too, when all is said and done, occupy an extremely dicey territory; inasmuch as Trump demands demonstrations of loyalty that extend to extreme displays of self-abnegation, something he despises, Trump’s loyal courtiers constantly invite contemptuous outbursts from the boss. But if they stand up for themselves, this will likely prove suspicions of disloyalty which could well turn into those of betrayal. Perhaps, after all, the good are the ones most to be pitied in this mad, mad world.
Postscript (and shameless plug): to some readers, much of what I have spoken of here brings to mind discussions of the notion of bullshit. I have provided my own ideas on the matter in these pages here and here.
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