Gangster Party

As gangsterism, it all makes sense.

(Photo: Getty)

Republicans who have broken their backs supporting Donald Trump are finding, to their dismay, that the bad things that Donald Trump is doing may also affect Republicans. Red state Senators are concerned that the mass firings of federal workers seem to include many workers who served red states. Proud MAGA congressmen who sport plastered-on smiles in public are desperately backchanneling with the administration about how the cuts are harming their own constituents. Fascist television hosts are groveling to try to get the dear leader to save their fired friends. Sober military veterans who took the proffered buyout offer are shocked to find that they have been stabbed in the back. Dazzled Trump voters are newly distraught that they have been unceremoniously canned despite being patriotic Americans, fully aboard the Trump train.

How are we to understand the seemingly irrational actions of an administration that seems so uncaring towards its own supporters? What theory explains why a politician would act with such exaggerated carelessness towards his ostensible base—and, furthermore, why all of the elected officials who are his political allies would continue to sit back and tolerate the decimation of their own bases, like torture victims trying to maintain a grin as they are publicly broken on the rack? By any traditional metric of political science, Trump’s style of governance appears not just reckless, but bizarre. The actual policy goals could be pursued with far less chaos cognitive dissonance. What is the point of doing things in such a “fuck everyone” way?

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Much of the ongoing confoundment with Donald Trump’s governing style comes down to what metaphor you apply to him. Is he a wannabe strongman? Sure. A fascist? Of course. An autocrat, an authoritarian, an aspiring dictator? Yes, clearly, though there is no guarantee that he knows what those words mean. Leave those terms in the textbooks. There is a much more accurate way to describe who Donald Trump is: He is a gangster. He governs like a gangster. And if you think of him not as any variety of politician but rather as a gangster—who sits atop not a political party, but a gang—his actions make perfect sense.

If Trump was out to Bolster The Republican Party, he would only be slashing budgets in blue states and protecting red ones. Instead he is lashing out at everything, ignoring every rule. The humiliating ritual of forcing Republican allies to come and beg him to restore cuts he has already made is the point. This process reflects the success of the system that Trump wants: All control of all things in his own hands. Rules and laws—even the ones that Republicans traditionally like!—are impediments to his own control of all decisions. Therefore rules and laws must be smashed, discarded at a whim, openly violated, ignored. Do not search for some archaic form of ideological conservatism at work here. The goal of all this is not “remaking the government in a conservative image”—it is “if you want anything, you have to ask me for it.” The rules that governed how the government works are tossed out and replaced with “Trump’s will.” That’s how mob bosses rule.

For a decade, pundits and theorists and journalists and Washington insiders have tried to project various ideologies onto Trump, and then been miffed when he didn’t seem to conform to them. That is because gangsters do not have political ideologies per se. They are out for control of everything, and absolute loyalty. The outcomes of this process are less important than establishing and ruthlessly reinforcing the process itself. So Trump may be a gutter racist calling for the execution of the (innocent) Central Park Five, but if you kiss his ring properly, he will pardon an unjustly sentenced black woman. The principle that he pursues is not “law and order.” He hates law and order! The principle he pursues is “I am the boss.” To force the rest of the world to demean itself to confirm in the most exaggerated fashion possible that He Is The Boss, and that they love him, is the fulfillment of his goal. Elon Musk takes care to do this, and Trump lets him run off and wreck the government. Does Trump care very much about the particulars of what Elon Musk destroys? No. Trump cares that Elon Musk is a loyal and groveling subject. When Musk goes too far, the only recourse is for others to come and beg for Trump to fix it. All of it reinforces Trump’s own power. The power itself, rather than how it is used, is the point.

MAGA rally, 1992.

Likewise, this explains why the Republican Party has transformed from a despicable but predictable vehicle for the interests of capital into an enormous cult of personality in which you must either be a legitimate lunatic zealot or a remarkably shameless ass kisser in order to rise in status. This is a mob. Genuine hitmen, like Kash Patel and Russ Vought, who enjoy combat and want to kill, are useful to the boss. Terrified foot soldiers, like most Republicans in Congress, are useful to the boss as long as they do exactly what he wants, and as soon as they deviate from that path, they are cast out, primaried, clipped. Everyone else is an obstacle, to be stabbed in the front, or the back. So far, these political stabbings have been conducted metaphorically, but give it time.

The government does not need to work. That is not important. What is important is that it is under his control. Gangsters do not care about “the public welfare.” That is not important. What is important is that the public acquiesces to the power of the boss. (Maybe a gangster will, you know, pass out free turkeys to the public at Thanksgiving, in order to bask in their gratitude, and then go back to extorting them the next day.) Allies do not need to be respected. That is not important. It is actually preferable if allies are disrespected and forced to demonstrate that they will happily eat shit and keep coming back, because it confirms their loyalty and submission to the boss. This is basic gangster shit. This is how America is run now.

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When you understand that we are up against gangsters, the path forward also becomes very straightforward. The good news is that the coalition of people who should naturally be opposed to the gangster is not a narrow one, based on political ideology—it is “everyone who doesn’t care to be extorted.” That is a large majority of people. There is only one reason why gangsters are not immediately stamped out by the majority whenever they take power: fear. You subtract from that majority the number of people who are afraid of the gangster. As long as enough people remain afraid, the gangster retains power. His incentive is therefore to crank up the level of fear as the quiet dissatisfaction with his dictatorial rule increases. And so, I guarantee you, we will see more ruthless oppression, more crackdowns by the loyalist FBI on domestic enemies, more frivolous prosecutions of political opponents by the loyalist Justice Department, more abuse of the police and military, in Trump’s second term. He must maintain a level of fear that is higher than the level of anger at him. Because he has already fucked over not just the opposing party but also a significant portion of his own party, you can be sure that the actions he takes to instill fear will be drastic enough to shock everyone.

No matter how cool gangster movies are, the reality of gangsterism is a drag. It is a pyramid scheme backed up with guns. It serves one person at the top, and his most zealous believers, and everyone else gets scammed, extorted, stepped on, screwed over. It produces a kingdom of fear in which no one wants to tell the truth and everyone is scared that they will be the next victim if they stick their neck out. It incentivizes constant double crossing and lack of trust. It is not a good way to run an organization. It is not a good way to run a neighborhood. And it is a really awful way to run the richest and most powerful nation on earth, because the tools that the boss can use to maintain his power are so vast that the entire world will end up suffering in service of one entitled scumbag who wants people to tell him he looks good playing golf.

The more time this system is allowed to persist, the worse it gets. Gangsters never last forever. Sooner or later, they fall prey to the inherent fragility of the world they build around themselves. No matter how many guns or how much money they amass, they cannot escape the fact that they are unpopular, resented, and always detrimental to the public good. Their supporters are mostly those too weak to resist. All of the people with good character eventually align against them. All of these processes are playing out in tandem right now, in America. We’ve all seen this movie before. It’s up to us how long we decide to keep sitting through it again.

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• Related reading: They Are a Minority; Speaking Plainly About Who Is Robbing You; Stupid Power; You Are Invited to the Predator’s Ball, As Food.

• I wrote a piece for In These Times this week about the Democratic Party’s unconscionable delay in embracing class war. I also wrote a piece for Flaming Hydra about a magical debate. I also wrote a book called “The Hammer,” which is about how the labor movement can be the tool that we all pick up to smash gangster capitalism in America. You can order it wherever books are sold. It’s good!

• Thank you all for reading this publication, How Things Work. I say this pretty often, but I will say it again: Independent media is more important than ever, given the economic and political situation in this country. All independent media, including How Things Work, depends on the support of the people who read it. Since I launched this site, I have kept it paywall-free, so that anyone can read it regardless of their income. In exchange for that, I ask that if you read this site, and you like it, and you are not broke, you take a few seconds to become a paid subscriber. It doesn’t cost too much and it’s a good cause, in my opinion. We are marching doggedly into the misty future together, my people.