CNN is reporting that Pelosi is victorious in the State of the Union tug of war:
In his latest skirmish with Pelosi, Trump effectively admitted defeat late Wednesday and conceded that he would not be able to give his State of the Union address until after the shutdown ends. Earlier in the day, he had publicly thrown down a gauntlet and tried to force the speaker to back down over her refusal to let next Tuesday’s showpiece speech take place in the House chamber.
Pelosi’s victory came ahead of a pair of Senate votes due to take place on Thursday on dueling Republican and Democratic plans designed to end the shutdown. Neither is likely to break the deadlock, and may simply underline that Trump’s hopes of a win remain slim.
The President is trying hard to reshape a political battlefield that is stacked against him, as sources suggest he is increasingly mystified that his tactics have not turned the tables on Democrats. Throughout his life, in business and in politics, Trump has leveraged his domineering personality, flair for showmanship and an unshakable self-belief that often defies the facts of a situation to get his way.
I’m wary of declaring quick victory in political spats like this one. Experienced politicians who are full of bitterness, rather than wisdom, sometimes lie in wait for another go at the victor, reducing the battleground to rubble.
But whoever wrote that Trump is “mystified” (the article has multiple authors) seems to be in line with my thinking on the matter. With no invidious comparison meant, Trump’s story arc, from entering the Republican Presidential nomination process to today, has a strong resemblance to Adolf Hitler’s. No, I’m not saying there is any moral correspondence between the two, but rather a tactical correspondence. Hitler recognized that the traditional military approach to invading France, which would be a costly long grind against the Maginot Line, or wall, would be costly; but using what we came to know as blitzkrieg tactics (fast moving air, tank, and infantry tactics), then only tested in a limited way during the Spanish Civil War., would be effective. His war tactical insights, in combination with a German population that was, to a substantial extent, deeply resentful of their diminished position in the world due to the foolishness of Kaiser Wilhelm II and, just as importantly, the punitive Versailles Treaty, and led by a man possessing a modicum of charisma and a willingness to feed their egos as well as alleviate their economic distress, led to his early successes.
Similarly, Trump’s daring tactical insights during the Republican nominating process, based on his recognition that the small towns and rural areas of America felt disrespected, neglected, and were in economic distress, distinguished him from the more conventional field. It didn’t hurt that, despite media reports that the Republicans had a “deep bench”, they were by and large a pack of power-grasping second- and third-raters, with the possible exception of Governor Kasich of Ohio. Their general anti-Obama-anything message and little differentiation in message, accomplishments, or personality made them relatively easy prey for Trump, because he was willing to say things that rode the line on xenophobia. He would tell any lie that would conform to the personal conceptions of his target voters, whether it be xenophobia, their perception of being patronized by the “bit big city folks” (the progressive wing of the liberals didn’t help matters), or a perception that crime was sky-high under Obama, rather than the FBI’s report that crime was reaching historic low points. On that latter point, as ever, local information is more important to most folks than comprehensive information, i.e., the senses out-vote the intellect.
We engage in analogies in order to draw conclusions, and the better the initial conditions of an analogy are in correspondence, the more believable the predicted conclusion. At this point, it’s worth meditating on a point of this analogy concerning norms. Aggressive war is a wholesale violation of those norms that recognize peace as a more probable path to prosperity and enrichment, while and aggressive war, with all of its moral violations, is repudiated by moral personalities, within established norms. But those established norms had failed the German people. They faced rampant inflation and a failing economy – obviously, something was wrong. And Hitler, who had witnessed and survived the horrors of World War I (the ‘Great War’), was willing to transgress those norms and lead them towards what he claimed would be a return to glory, paved as it was with the bodies of the Jews, the Allies, and, as it turned out, their own military.
The Trumpists display a similar hunger for breaking norms, although there are notable differences. In the governmental arena, Trump and his aides have long displayed a tendency to ignore and damage norms that has been delineated by anyone who values them, including myself, and my long time readers are aware of this, so I shall not belabor the point. For his supporters, the norms are not as strong as those for peace. Gay marriage, transgendering, and other social issues, which are notably recent breaks from traditional American morality, are used to gather up the Trump voter, not a hunger for war, and given their recent debuts as norms, they’ve not necessarily been accepted by the Trumpists. There are similar scenarios of economic distress, and in this the analogy’s correspondence is stronger. However, the corresponding true cause of the German economic depression, which was the past war and the Versailles Treaty, has as its corresponding motivation free (that is, governmentally unconstrained) trade, far better and economically (if not environmentally) cheaper transport mechanisms, and a better information mechanism; it’s significant that the Trumpists have not raised significant principled objections to the trade wars or modifications to NAFTA, and, if they do, they do not remain Trumpists.
I’d also argue that, like many people, the Trumpists have dug in their heels on economic as well as social change. They want to believe that change cannot happen to them, that change is bad. Just consider the coal workers who have continued along in the industry long after its glory days have been consigned to the dust-bin of history. They consider it a a deeply ‘honorable’ occupation, even though it’s terribly polluting and contributes heavily to climate change – which is then denied by those miners. ‘Clean coal’ is trotted out, but this is a myth, according to experts, and even Senator McConnell (R-KY), an industry ally, admits the industry is finished in a free market. Only government interference, anathema to Republicans, can save it, and indeed this has been attempted, but has not yet been emplaced as an actual government policy.
The Germans, on the other hand, wanted, even needed change, under the weight of the Versailles Treaty. The Trumpists violently reject change, and Trump is their standard bearer. So there are differences in the substance of the two subjects, but in the end they may not be terribly significant changes.
I’ll omit the comparisons of the reactions of world leaders, prior to Churchill’s ascension to leadership of Britain, to Hitler’s moves, to those of the Republican establishment and, to a lesser degree, the Democratic establishment. Suffice to say the shock at the abrogation of norms is similar.
But it’s worth noting when Hitler failed. After the successful implementation of the blitzkrieg against France and the Low Countries, isolating Great Britain from the rest of the world, and the partition of Poland, Hitler then attacked Russia, his ally of convenience and the rock upon which the ship of Nazi Germany would founder. He was a fool to do so; he might have forced a peace at this moment, instead, and avoided the imminent entry of America of war, not to mention the disastrous siege of Stalingrad which essentially broke Germany. He was a fool and demonstrated his amateurism, as his generals had long warned him not to go into Russia. He then descended into madness, believing that destroyed armies still existed, and sending them orders that could not be executed. Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt hemmed him in and he finally failed.
Trump has had his successes, but in Pelosi he has met an experienced political warrior, unencumbered by the demands of the Trumpists, and he may have met that defeat that heralds his eventual removal from power. He’s ‘mystified’, they claim in the above report, and this is consistent with the amateur who has tried to ride his initial tactical insight to continuing success and power. He lacks the wisdom to recognize how to maneuver in waters strange to him, and, assuming what works in his old world will work in the new, now looks like a weak old man in his mistake. It’ll be an interesting challenge for his propagandists and apologists to rationalize this failure.
Onwards to analogical conclusions, then. While there’s little enough to say about the general disaster that befell Germany, it’s worth noting that examination of the individuals involved in leading Germany down this path, whether or not the Versailles Treaty made it inevitable, reveals personalities driven by greed, hatred, and even insanity. Whether the name was Hitler, Goering, Hess, or a host of others, their belief that the old norms against theft, rape, and large-scale murder did not apply to them is notable. The Trumpists, while not matching the Nazis in sheer magnitude of norm abrogation, have committed some notable transgressions, such as those of separating families at the border. Will Trump and his movement end up on trial and be condemned, in some sense of the word? That remains to be seen.
For the moment, the drama will continue.
