From day one, we humans have reacted to the extraordinary with awe and dread. Unprecedented phenomena evoke acute anxiety – even when not immediately threatening – because they are inexplicable. They sow fear because their nature, and whatever mysterious realm they emerge from, are beyond our comprehension. Thus, the compulsion to fit them into some ordered frame of reference. That entailed populating the earth and the sky with spirits, demons, gods and a host of related forces. In the imagination of more literate societies, they were composed into entire families of the supernatural – endowed with human attributes so as to make their persona and machinations more accessible to our mortal minds. The previously unknown becomes not knowable in any overt sense but it can be referenced. Calamities and boons alike can be ascribed to them – either as divine whim or provocation by human actions: (failure to propitiate the divine powers or consorting with malign spirits) Or, we might be victimized by the plotting by the juju men deploy witchcraft in the service of enemies and blasphemers.
These days, we do the exact opposite: we reduce the extraordinary to the banal ordinary. We normalize it. We neutralize by confining it to the mundane categories we rely on in order to understand how the world works and to navigate it. In this way, we alleviate stress – emotional or mental. That allows us to avoid the need to contend with the challenging, with what disturbs our comfort and convenience. This response is recognizable even when the phenomena encountered are of consequence, even among responsible leaders. At this moment, we are witnessing a remarkable example of this phenomenon. America is experiencing an imminent threat to its very essence as a Constitutional Republic – to its foundational values, to its principles of collective life. Yet, the reaction is decidedly undramatic. There is no general sense of crisis or desperate efforts to counter it. No urgency. The numerous assaults on the body politic by Trump and his henchmen are judged as serious, but each is addressed as if it were self-contained rather than part of a comprehensive, revolutionary – if erratic – plan to remake the country in MAGA’s perverse vision.
The harsh reality is that the country is under the brutal rule of a mentally unhinged autocrat with strong Fascist instincts. He, and his Rasputin Elon Musk, share the mentality of juvenile delinquents driven by the impulse to destroy and to coercive use of power. They are dismantling the federal government and subverting our political system. In textbook coup fashion, they have decapitated the senior ranks of every federal administrative unit, supplanting incumbents with loyalists who will do the bidding of their master in the White House.1 They command the blind loyalty of tens of millions of cultists. They control cyberspace. They have intimidated the formal opposition into passive acquiescence. Massive success in these twin projects has been achieved within just six weeks. In four years’ time, little will be left of the political system in place for the past 250 years; our society will be prey to pillage and oppression. The system’s reconstitution would be a Herculean project – even under the most favorable circumstances. At the moment, there is no evidence of such circumstances emerging.
The sine qua non for improving the odds, however slightly, on building some measure of countervailing force, is to cease-and-desist from the deleterious practice of normalizing Trump’s depredations. That includes casting him and his machinations in a positive light whenever a particular action of his conforms to our own views. The outstanding case in point is the termination of the open-ended Ukraine project of exploiting that benighted country as a weapon for subordinating Russia. That catastrophic failure should be recognized as such, and reversion from it is called for. Let us bear in mind, though, that the campaign that was launched by Barack Obama in 2014 was deepened by Trump I and turbocharged by Joe Biden. It reflected an overwhelming consensus by the country’s political class that the plan served major national interests. Several of Trump’s appointees have been vocal promoters of the campaign. Trump is anything but a natural conciliator and humanitarian – as evinced by his plan for extirpating the Palestinians, but his bullying of every country fend or foe in sight, and by his full dedication to confrontation with China. The expediency of calming relations with Russia has much to do with the girding of loins for the priority given aggressive campaigns in the Middle East and East Asia rather than earnest concern for European peace.
At the more practical level, the White House notion as to what should be the basis for an agreement with Russia bears no relation to the realities on the ground or to the Kremlin’s oft-repeated statement of its unnegotiable core objectives. Trump will not be happy with terms, however dressed up, that constitute a clear humiliation of the U.S. Similar ignorance, and fantasy, attaches to the proposal of a ceasefire which makes zero sense from a Moscow perspective. Simply put, the White House has no viable plan to end the war in Ukraine.
Instead of a sober appreciation of these truths, we find many critics of the Ukraine venture tossing bouquets of praise at Trump for his takedown of Zelensky in the White House. This disgraceful display of arrogance backed by mendacity is now being justified and often praised. We are told that Trump “schooled” him, “took him to the woodshed,” “taught him a lesson.” Whatever one thinks of Zelensky, the entire episode was an acute embarrassment for the United States. Our President behaving like a mafia capo engaging in an extortionate shakedown of a fellow gangster registers worldwide in a manner damaging to America’s image and interests. There is widespread backing for the White House claim that Zelensky ‘insulted’ the President and, thereby, the United States – a sin for which he should publicly apologize. This from a man who called Zelensky a “dictator,’ accused him of stealing tens of billions of dollars, lies about his alleged failure to thank Americans for all the wonderful things they have done for Ukrainians, and blames him for starting a war which Washington forced on Kiev. The last is carried to the extreme of coercing Zelensky to back away from the agreement with Russia, initialed in Istanbul at the end of March 2022, which would have spared hundreds of thousands of lives – and America’s (the West’s) ignominious defeat. Who owes whom an apology?
Trump sees Ukraine as a financial investment that went sour. So, you blame your agents for the failure and grab whatever tangible assets are lying around. He never will admit that our aid in fact was spent to make possible the spilling of Ukrainian blood for American purposes. Mea Culpa is not in his vocabulary. How will he react when his simple-minded ideas for ending the war prove to be fanciful? Find a scapegoat – Biden, Zelensky, the Europeans? Concoct another fictional narrative eagerly spread by credulous mass media? Create a noisy distraction? Or, fall on his face as occurred repeatedly in a career as real estate mogul featuring serial bankruptcies?
The blunt truth is that the United States no longer is capable of conducting normal diplomacy. Evident under Biden, it is even more alien to the Trump team. The man is a malignant narcissist, borderline psychotic whose only methods for dealing with the world are bullying, intimidation, and domination. We have seen that in living color for 9 years. He thinks in slogans and indulges any whim that passes through an addled mind. Still, there remain distinguished analysts who put forth the thesis that the displays such as we saw with Zelensky are just calculated showmanship, that in private Trump engages with colleagues in sober, disciplined, informed exercises in policy formation., and the careful weighing of tactical options. Picture Churchill’s war cabinet in May 1940 – substituting Trump, Vance, Rubio, Hegseth, Waltz and Musk for Churchill, Halifax, Attlee, Greenwood, Bevin and Chamberlain.
Even the best of us are not entirely free of the instinct to tint reality to match our wishes.
ENDNOTES:
The post Normalizing the Abnormal first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
