Donald Trump, the President of the United States, says whatever he wants, whenever he wants. He speaks without regard to truth or civility, remarking, for instance, that Haitian immigrants are “eating the dogs” during the 2024 presidential debate and recently admonishing a journalist with the words “quiet, piggy.”
More dangerous than his words, however, are his actions. In his second term of office, Trump has reshaped government structures by renaming the Department of Defense the Department of War; signing an executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship; banning or discouraging the use of hundreds of words, including “woman,” “segregation,” and “climate crisis”; withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement and repealing climate regulations; dismantling the Department of Education; gutting scientific research; and dissolving USAID.
Trump has expanded executive power with the help of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which has allowed him to mass-fire federal employees from agencies independent of executive control–firings which break longstanding precedent that protects such agencies from political interference. His Department of Homeland Security has acted without regard to habeas corpus, detaining people without cause en masse. He has sent Immigration and Customs Enforcement to terrorize American cities, resulting in the deaths of two innocent American citizens murdered by ICE while peacefully protesting in Minnesota.
His imperialist approach to international relations has caused what Prime Minister Mark Carney called in his Davos address “a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality, where the large, main power is submitted to no limits, no constraints.”
Carney said this regarding Trump’s widespread tariffs and threats against Greenland, even before the United States captured the president of Venezuela and went to war against Iran without authorization from Congress.
Every day, a new headline tells another story of needless destruction, of seemingly senseless abuse of power.
Source: BBC
In George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, the Party rules over the continent of Oceania with open and totalizing brutality. Each agency of the Party acts in opposition to its stated purpose. The Ministry of Love houses the “Thought Police,” who monitor all Party members and arrest, torture, and vaporize all dissenters; the Ministry of Peace keeps up constant war; the Ministry of Plenty ensures shortages of basic goods; and the Ministry of Truth, where the protagonist Winston works, promotes falsehoods by rewriting history and disseminating propaganda. Through the ironic roles of these agencies, Orwell makes the methods of the Party’s assertion of control–surveillance, ongoing warfare and scarcity, and falsification of history–immediately visible.
However, Orwell frames 1984 around a deeper mystery: Winston wonders about the Party’s “ultimate motive.” The phrase implies the existence of an achievable end goal to the Party’s oppression. After Winston first learns how the Party falsifies facts to preserve power, he writes in his diary, “I understand HOW: I do not understand WHY.” Orwell italicizes Winston’s words and isolates them from the rest of the paragraph, establishing their importance as a central conundrum. By juxtaposing Winston’s dueling realizations, Orwell highlights a key dichotomy: Winston understands how the Party maintains absolute power, but he does not yet understand why the Party must maintain this absolute power–he does not know the “ultimate motive.”
When Winston pursues resistance to the Party, O’Brien, a man he believes to be a fellow revolutionary, presents him with a book meant to reveal the Party’s secrets. Winston arrives at the point of discovery, with the book about to reveal “the original motive, the never questioned instinct that first led to the seizure of power.” And yet, at this climactic moment, Winston stops reading. By suspensefully having him close the book right before the revelation of the Party’s rationale, Orwell conceals the Party’s true objective – leaving Winston, and the reader, still wondering: the Party abuses its control to establish and maintain power, but what is this power’s purpose?
Source: The New Yorker
In a recent New York Times opinion piece, the conservative political commentator David Brooks describes Trump’s assaults on American institutions–the Constitution, international alliances, science, charity, and education. What is to be made of a leader who only seeks to destroy, he asks? As he rewrites history, dismantles government structures, and attacks other nations, what does Trump want?
Brooks pinpoints the Trumpian ideology: “Trumpism,” he writes, “is primarily about the acquisition of power–power for its own sake.”
In her book The Authoritarian Dynamic, the social scientist Karen Stenner theorizes that there have been three types of supporters of the Republican Party since the 1980s: “laissez-faire” conservatives who oppose intervention in the market, “status quo” conservatives who oppose social change, and authoritarians. The authoritarians are the most “malleable or changeable depending on the current environment” – that is to say, they have no real beliefs, no guiding principles or values, except for a common desire to obtain and assert power.
Trump, a former registered Democrat who went from calling himself pro-choice to causing the overturn of Roe v. Wade, who believed in “America first” until he decided to kidnap Nicolas Maduro and wage war on Iran, is a textbook authoritarian, according to the prominent social psychologist Jonathen Haidt.
Source: Brookings Institute
In 1984, before Winston can finish the book explaining the Party’s secret, O’Brien, revealed to be a member of the Thought Police, captures him and brings him to the Ministry of Love. As part of Winston’s torture, O’Brien questions him: “You understand well enough how the Party maintains itself in power. Now tell me why we cling to power. What is our motive? Why should we want power?”
When Winston cannot respond to his question, O’Brien reveals the answer: the Party “seeks power entirely for its own sake.”The Party does not want power in order to accomplish anything; its destruction, suppression, war, murder, and torture have no deeper motive, no hidden objective except power itself. O’Brien continues, explaining, “The object of power is power.” With this final collapse of logic, 1984 warns that when power becomes the goal and its own justification, abuse of power requires no rationale.
After months of torture, Winston learns and accepts the Party’s secret, writing the last ideological slogan: “GOD IS POWER.” This declaration, using the word “God”, which creates a sacred, religious connotation, is the Party’s last inversion: war instead of peace, slavery instead of freedom, strength instead of ignorance–and ultimately, power instead of God.
Source: New York Times
In an interview at the start of this year, the New York Times asked the president if anything could check his power. He responded, “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
Be First to Comment