Oh man, this is so good. I was going to write something on Sunday comparing Trump and his ilk to cannibals, and might still, but this is better.
I’ve lived in Mexico for a couple decades now, and have been just amazed watching Trump’s warm interactions with both Lopez Obrador (2018-2024 president) and now Claudia Sheinbaum, the current president.
This framing makes their popularity with him obvious: in Mexico, politicians KNOW how to deal with gangsters because they have to. If you have political power here, you’ve got to know how to work around them while showing some sort of deference in order to get anything done, and it’s practically an art form among the political class (it’s also why average Mexicans hated the Emilia Perez movie: don’t you dare humanize these monsters). It’s not that we accept narcos…we just can’t get rid of them. The US is about to find out what that’s like.
I write for Mexico News Daily, and this angle is 100% going to be a column next month. Thanks for the analogy — it opened up a new section of my brain!
Though one might suggest, as I think the president of Mexico did recently, that the US wouldn't have as much of a problem with illegal drugs if there weren't so many Americans willing to pay for them. Which probably says something not very flattering about American society. But America is maybe now in the same position as China had been in the 1840s when America, Britain, and France were smuggling opium into China:
Wikipedia: "British and American merchants sent opium to warehouses in the free-trade port of Canton, and sold it to Chinese smugglers."
This is bang on. Suddenly the chaos makes sense. I noted that, given the only defense right now is judicial, the scatter-gun approach makes a ton of sense, too. If you have a huge spread, even if many miss, a few get through. If the targets are running amok, no one knows where to place their sights. It's like drug runners sending out shipments all over knowing many will get popped, but banking on the fact that we can't catch them all. It's a crazy, gangsta way to manage, for sure.
Sure, Trump is a gangster, a fascist, and an aspiring dictator. But Trump, for all is hogging of the media world, is really not the issue. It is the people around him and their plans that should really frighten us.
This is from a post by Mike Block on his Notes From the Circus website:
"Donald Trump, the supposed strongman at the heart of it all, is oblivious. He has no grand ideological project beyond his own power. He does not understand the system being built around him, nor the fact that his own presidency is merely a vehicle for forces that see him as a useful, temporary battering ram against democracy.
"But those around him? They understand perfectly.
"J.D. Vance, the Vice President in waiting, has studied Curtis Yarvin’s work. Peter Thiel, his longtime patron, has been funding this vision for over a decade. Balaji Srinivasan is writing the blueprint. Elon Musk is laying the infrastructure. And the young operatives now wiring AI models into the Treasury Department—disbanding civil service, bypassing traditional government, and replacing democratic accountability with technological sovereignty—are working toward a future that will long outlast Trump himself.
"This is not about Trump. This is about what comes after him.
"Actuarial realities do not favor an aging leader with a declining grasp on policy. But they favor the thirty- and forty-somethings laying the foundation for the post-democratic order. The men who have spent the past decade engineering an exit from democracy are no longer whispering in the dark corners of the internet. They are in power, with money, AI, and a plan. And democracy, in its current form, has never been closer to the brink.
"But in the world they are building, the people have no voice. The algorithms speak for them. The executives decide for them. The future is optimized, efficient, and entirely out of their hands."
Block has a lot more to say, but this is the part that gets to the heart of what is going on.
I would quarrel with his statement that "democracy... has never been closer to the brink." Democracy has been pushed over the cliff. It's gone. Our fight now is to create a new kind of democracy -- working class democracy.
Exactly. Trump is a gangster, but he is but the titular head of this truly dark deep state mafia, who in fact have a core philosophy, agenda and blueprint. It's a long, uncertain battle to unwind of this serpent's grip.
Though I'm reminded of a quip from the old Pogo cartoon strip -- "we have seen the enemy, and he is us."
I'm thinking of the well-known and well-regarded British biologist Richard Dawkins who's no fan to Trump, but who still accepts that Trump is right on the money when it comes to kicking transwomen out of women's sports, for defending and endorsing standard biological definitions for the sexes:
RD: "In my opinion Donald Trump is a loathsome individual, utterly unfit to be President, but his statement that 'sex is determined at conception and is based on the size of the gamete that the resulting individual will produce' is accurate in every particular, perhaps the only true statement he ever made."
Rather large number of people -- many erstwhile Democrats included -- voted for him for that alone. Trump may well be a cure worse than the "diseases" preying on the American public, that of transgenderism in particular. But still some reason to argue that since the patient was on death's doorstep, virtually anything was worth a shot.
They do have deep, sinister plans. What they don't have is the kind of mass appeal that Trump commands. Vance, Musk and others in the admin are not popular figures.
Someone, in a comment section somewhere, said this, and I wish I could cite the source more firmly but at least I'm not taking full credit when I say:
If you remember that Trump came up through New York real estate, it makes perfect sense that he treats every interaction like Cosa Nostra is involved because those were probably his most important negotiations.
It was something like that, but that was at least the gist of it.
Gangster organizations generally are about an out group that wants power and is often denied it by the in-group (see Wilhoit's Law). Immigrants at various times in US history have formed gangs/extortion networks and built power that way, even infiltrating the local police. It says something about American society that white people of a certain age feel like some oppressed minority who need to anoint and follow a gang leader for any chance at a fair shake.
Great piece! I grew up in Providence where mafia figures and mafia-adjacent politicians (Buddy Cianci) were revered by many even though they were terrible, vicious people. Their brutality was somehow "balanced" by their alleged magnanimity, especially to the Catholic church, which provided some type of cover to their greed and narcissistic desire for power. Trump has the evangelicals to anoint a higher purpose to his cruelty and narcissism. I never understood the glorification of mafia leaders in media—they are shallow, misogynistic bullies.
"We haven't yet seen the mass street protests we saw in 2017 or the aftermath of the 2020 George Floyd murder, but they are springing up organically all over the country. People are showing up at Tesla showrooms to protest Musk and closing down streets to oppose the deportations. Federal workers who are being treated despicably by the DOGE operation are rallying in Washington and elsewhere. High school kids are walking out of classes and boycotts are being organized to oppose corporate America folding to Donald Trump's crusade against DEI."
I know that I was thinking of the resistance being a massive organized thing that we would have to build. but this is much better BECAUSE it's not coordinated beforehand and BECAUSE its organic...Wack a Mole so to speak...
Yes....and, I don't think they give a fuck how many of us take to the streets. They've been planning this since Nixon. And now they have the all three sectors of the Federal government, access to finance of every kind thanks to our embrace of technology, and who can guess how much firepower with Federal, state and local law enforcement. I'm old. I'm scared for my grandkids. I'll stand at the front of the protest. I just don't think it will matter....not for a while anyway. We saw it coming. We delayed. 💔
Thanks for linking this; I'd not read it. Though I am not naive about all the horrendous challenges ahead, the embedded video was heartening. May all other red districts in the country speak out in the same way. There's a time and a place for boos and catcalls, and this is one of them.
I have only recently come across your work, and I am already a big fan. Your writing is so honest, funny and incisive. I love it. I am not usually a big self-promoter, but this piece I wrote several years ago is such a kindred spirit to Gangster Party that I humbly offer it...https://janinalamb.substack.com/p/fuggedaboudit
And re: "So far, these political stabbings have been conducted metaphorically, but give it time,"
I'm begging someone to remember that Trump has already assassinated a dissident, antifa member Michael Reinoehl - in his first term, before SCOTUS granted him immunity. We ain't seen nothin' yet.
Absolutely the best distillation of the Trump strongman rule. Our only real hope is that he will die, then we will be able to resurrect the American project as his vicious heirs fight among themselves over the spoils.
Thank you for your well-considered thoughts on Trump.
Yep. He's a gangster, but of the worst possible kind. The misanthropic kind - and of that kind, like he says, he is the "bestest of the best" or some such doublespeak nonsense. Trump is a hater of everything and everybody. He is a dangerous maniac.
Oh man, this is so good. I was going to write something on Sunday comparing Trump and his ilk to cannibals, and might still, but this is better.
I’ve lived in Mexico for a couple decades now, and have been just amazed watching Trump’s warm interactions with both Lopez Obrador (2018-2024 president) and now Claudia Sheinbaum, the current president.
This framing makes their popularity with him obvious: in Mexico, politicians KNOW how to deal with gangsters because they have to. If you have political power here, you’ve got to know how to work around them while showing some sort of deference in order to get anything done, and it’s practically an art form among the political class (it’s also why average Mexicans hated the Emilia Perez movie: don’t you dare humanize these monsters). It’s not that we accept narcos…we just can’t get rid of them. The US is about to find out what that’s like.
I write for Mexico News Daily, and this angle is 100% going to be a column next month. Thanks for the analogy — it opened up a new section of my brain!
> "It’s not that we accept narcos…we just can’t get rid of them. The US is about to find out what that’s like."
Rather "amused" by this old Guardian story:
"Mexican cartels are fifth-largest employers in the country, study finds
Organized crime groups have about 175,000 members and authors say the best way to reduce violence is to cut membership"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/21/mexico-cartels-fifth-largest-employer-study
Though one might suggest, as I think the president of Mexico did recently, that the US wouldn't have as much of a problem with illegal drugs if there weren't so many Americans willing to pay for them. Which probably says something not very flattering about American society. But America is maybe now in the same position as China had been in the 1840s when America, Britain, and France were smuggling opium into China:
Wikipedia: "British and American merchants sent opium to warehouses in the free-trade port of Canton, and sold it to Chinese smugglers."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars#First_Opium_War
Karma never loses an address ...
This is bang on. Suddenly the chaos makes sense. I noted that, given the only defense right now is judicial, the scatter-gun approach makes a ton of sense, too. If you have a huge spread, even if many miss, a few get through. If the targets are running amok, no one knows where to place their sights. It's like drug runners sending out shipments all over knowing many will get popped, but banking on the fact that we can't catch them all. It's a crazy, gangsta way to manage, for sure.
Sure, Trump is a gangster, a fascist, and an aspiring dictator. But Trump, for all is hogging of the media world, is really not the issue. It is the people around him and their plans that should really frighten us.
This is from a post by Mike Block on his Notes From the Circus website:
"Donald Trump, the supposed strongman at the heart of it all, is oblivious. He has no grand ideological project beyond his own power. He does not understand the system being built around him, nor the fact that his own presidency is merely a vehicle for forces that see him as a useful, temporary battering ram against democracy.
"But those around him? They understand perfectly.
"J.D. Vance, the Vice President in waiting, has studied Curtis Yarvin’s work. Peter Thiel, his longtime patron, has been funding this vision for over a decade. Balaji Srinivasan is writing the blueprint. Elon Musk is laying the infrastructure. And the young operatives now wiring AI models into the Treasury Department—disbanding civil service, bypassing traditional government, and replacing democratic accountability with technological sovereignty—are working toward a future that will long outlast Trump himself.
"This is not about Trump. This is about what comes after him.
"Actuarial realities do not favor an aging leader with a declining grasp on policy. But they favor the thirty- and forty-somethings laying the foundation for the post-democratic order. The men who have spent the past decade engineering an exit from democracy are no longer whispering in the dark corners of the internet. They are in power, with money, AI, and a plan. And democracy, in its current form, has never been closer to the brink.
"But in the world they are building, the people have no voice. The algorithms speak for them. The executives decide for them. The future is optimized, efficient, and entirely out of their hands."
Block has a lot more to say, but this is the part that gets to the heart of what is going on.
I would quarrel with his statement that "democracy... has never been closer to the brink." Democracy has been pushed over the cliff. It's gone. Our fight now is to create a new kind of democracy -- working class democracy.
Exactly. Trump is a gangster, but he is but the titular head of this truly dark deep state mafia, who in fact have a core philosophy, agenda and blueprint. It's a long, uncertain battle to unwind of this serpent's grip.
A Like at least for your user name ... 👍🙂
Though I'm reminded of a quip from the old Pogo cartoon strip -- "we have seen the enemy, and he is us."
I'm thinking of the well-known and well-regarded British biologist Richard Dawkins who's no fan to Trump, but who still accepts that Trump is right on the money when it comes to kicking transwomen out of women's sports, for defending and endorsing standard biological definitions for the sexes:
RD: "In my opinion Donald Trump is a loathsome individual, utterly unfit to be President, but his statement that 'sex is determined at conception and is based on the size of the gamete that the resulting individual will produce' is accurate in every particular, perhaps the only true statement he ever made."
https://richarddawkins.substack.com/p/denying-that-sex-is-binary-a-study
Rather large number of people -- many erstwhile Democrats included -- voted for him for that alone. Trump may well be a cure worse than the "diseases" preying on the American public, that of transgenderism in particular. But still some reason to argue that since the patient was on death's doorstep, virtually anything was worth a shot.
They do have deep, sinister plans. What they don't have is the kind of mass appeal that Trump commands. Vance, Musk and others in the admin are not popular figures.
Someone, in a comment section somewhere, said this, and I wish I could cite the source more firmly but at least I'm not taking full credit when I say:
If you remember that Trump came up through New York real estate, it makes perfect sense that he treats every interaction like Cosa Nostra is involved because those were probably his most important negotiations.
It was something like that, but that was at least the gist of it.
Yes, mob lawyer Roy Cohn was a huge influence.
This is excellent.
Gangster organizations generally are about an out group that wants power and is often denied it by the in-group (see Wilhoit's Law). Immigrants at various times in US history have formed gangs/extortion networks and built power that way, even infiltrating the local police. It says something about American society that white people of a certain age feel like some oppressed minority who need to anoint and follow a gang leader for any chance at a fair shake.
Great piece! I grew up in Providence where mafia figures and mafia-adjacent politicians (Buddy Cianci) were revered by many even though they were terrible, vicious people. Their brutality was somehow "balanced" by their alleged magnanimity, especially to the Catholic church, which provided some type of cover to their greed and narcissistic desire for power. Trump has the evangelicals to anoint a higher purpose to his cruelty and narcissism. I never understood the glorification of mafia leaders in media—they are shallow, misogynistic bullies.
From Heather Digby Parton over at Salon
https://www.salon.com/2025/02/21/never-meant-to-be-ruled-by-a-dictator-or-a-king-the-doge-backlash-hits-districts/
"We haven't yet seen the mass street protests we saw in 2017 or the aftermath of the 2020 George Floyd murder, but they are springing up organically all over the country. People are showing up at Tesla showrooms to protest Musk and closing down streets to oppose the deportations. Federal workers who are being treated despicably by the DOGE operation are rallying in Washington and elsewhere. High school kids are walking out of classes and boycotts are being organized to oppose corporate America folding to Donald Trump's crusade against DEI."
I know that I was thinking of the resistance being a massive organized thing that we would have to build. but this is much better BECAUSE it's not coordinated beforehand and BECAUSE its organic...Wack a Mole so to speak...
Yes....and, I don't think they give a fuck how many of us take to the streets. They've been planning this since Nixon. And now they have the all three sectors of the Federal government, access to finance of every kind thanks to our embrace of technology, and who can guess how much firepower with Federal, state and local law enforcement. I'm old. I'm scared for my grandkids. I'll stand at the front of the protest. I just don't think it will matter....not for a while anyway. We saw it coming. We delayed. 💔
Thanks for linking this; I'd not read it. Though I am not naive about all the horrendous challenges ahead, the embedded video was heartening. May all other red districts in the country speak out in the same way. There's a time and a place for boos and catcalls, and this is one of them.
indeed~
I have only recently come across your work, and I am already a big fan. Your writing is so honest, funny and incisive. I love it. I am not usually a big self-promoter, but this piece I wrote several years ago is such a kindred spirit to Gangster Party that I humbly offer it...https://janinalamb.substack.com/p/fuggedaboudit
Excellent piece.
And re: "So far, these political stabbings have been conducted metaphorically, but give it time,"
I'm begging someone to remember that Trump has already assassinated a dissident, antifa member Michael Reinoehl - in his first term, before SCOTUS granted him immunity. We ain't seen nothin' yet.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/15/politics/trump-fugitive-shooting/index.html
Absolutely the best distillation of the Trump strongman rule. Our only real hope is that he will die, then we will be able to resurrect the American project as his vicious heirs fight among themselves over the spoils.
You are a must read. Thanks for keeping it real.
Hear, hear!
This is great and the piece in "In these times" is also excellent.
Thank you for your well-considered thoughts on Trump.
Yep. He's a gangster, but of the worst possible kind. The misanthropic kind - and of that kind, like he says, he is the "bestest of the best" or some such doublespeak nonsense. Trump is a hater of everything and everybody. He is a dangerous maniac.
This does make perfect sense. The country has elected Don Donald, head of the Trump crime family, as Capo di tutti Capi.