I was listening to the Political Gabfest last week and John Dickerson said something that really resonated with me. It cleared up a lot of questions for me about the Trump administration and what its goals are. He said, and I am paraphrasing here, that Trump and MAGA are treating America as a nation they conquered. When you conquer a nation, you need to destroy its institutions and society if you want to hold it. You need to raze its structures of laws and norms, break up groups and organizations that can stand against you. The media, labor unions, trade groups, education institutions, think tanks, the judiciary. It all needs to go if you want to achieve a lasting hold on the nation.
I really think they want to tear down all institutions and norms, whether they align with MAGA goals or not, so that there is no institution, no group, no organization that can stand against them. Maybe, when this has been accomplished, they will rebuild parts of it as they see fit, but until they are gone they don’t care what the damage is they just need to get a clean slate.
For instance, with tariffs the stated goal is we need to bring manufacturing back to America and decrease our trade balance. But if this is true, why gut the chip and infrastructure acts? Why attack colleges, our engines of innovation? Why gut science and healthcare; where we lead the world? Why attack our media which is the most powerful and prosperous in the world?
It doesn’t matter to him that the Federalist society, oligarchs, media moguls, and evangelicals are on his side. He will turn on all of them when the time is right. While President Trump relied on them to get to where he is, they are not MAGA and will also need to go if they cannot be brought to heel.
I can list a bunch of other acts that Trump has done that ultimately weakens both the Nation and his movement, but I think my argument is clear. What do you think?
I believe you’re mistaken here. Trump has no goals other than to punish the country for not keeping him in office for back-to-back terms. The administration itself doesn’t have any real goals either.
The people with goals are Project 2025 and they have made no secret that they want to destroy our most cherished institutions beginning, of course, with the constitution.
They are treating America like they won an election in an overwhelming landslide, rather than by just 1.5% of the vote. Conquering doesn’t come into it.
I disagree with the premise, if not the sentiment. If America was being treated as a true conquered nation, the purging would be free of the fig-leafs they are currently applying. I do agree that the goal of Project 2025 and a number of like minded individuals is to burn down the current order, laws, and guiderails so that those at the top can rule by fiat (which is what they’re trying to do, but still being hobbled in detail by some of the norms and courts).
Are we going to get to that stage? Now… I think it’s likely. Do we get free and clear 2026 elections? I doubt it. For that matter, it is NOT out of the question that Republicans gain power in 2026 without fixing the game - MAGA is emboldened by the big talk, and Democrats are fragmented in what they want other than Not Trump. Especially if Republicans gain seats in 2026 or just keep a slim majority, they’ll break the system in 2028, especially if Trump is still alive and semi-functional. And then, with that mandate, they may well move on to literal purges.
I think out best hope is Trump’s early demise or collapse, which if we’re luckier than we have been until now, will split the various MAGA flavors as they all try to be the Heir, and the unified block splinters as each voter picks their own favorite, and ideally turns away from whatever coalition arises. Again, if we’re lucky.
But I think the slide towards an end of representative government has been going on for quite some time, and is sadly popular, and NOT just in the USA. And as always, it will be with substantial (if not majority) popular support.
You’re not thinking politically enough. In the eyes of MAGA, colleges, media, science and healthcare are packed chock-full with liberals. They want that garden thoroughly weeded. They don’t think science, colleges, media and healthcare are inherently bad - indeed, they fully recognize how essential those things are - but rather, that those fields are totally dominated by liberals and need to be ‘retaken.’
Have you heard of the Seven Mountain (7M) Mandate? It’s a MAGA-Christian worldview promoted by Lance Wallnau and some other Trumpy figures who argue that God has called Christians to seize and retake “mountains” of influence away from the liberals - family, religion, education, media, arts/entertainment, business, and government.
I disagree. They think facts and logic are evil, and suffering & ignorance are good. Therefore science should be destroyed, education forbidden, rationality mocked & persecuted, and the sick left to die. Like a fascist Khmer Rouge.
Known as Gleichschaltung in a certain European country (the image is of switching the points do that all the rail tracks run in the same direction). Other countries have gone through a similar totalitarianisation with varying degrees of repression or ‘re-education’.
Probably after Trump dies and is replaced by a true believer instead of a narcissist.
And they tend to prefer the term “The Day of the Rope”, their long-fantasied day when they can systematically murder all the people they hate. Which is most people.
Notably, the January 6th coup-attempters set up a gallows and rope.
There have been USA governments that did come into office in overwhelming landslides. None of them behaved like this.
I’m not sure whether it’s got to do with thinking of the country as being conquered – but it does seem to me to be pretty clear that both Trump and many of the people backing and/or trying to use him think of anyone who disagrees with/won’t obey them as enemies.
Including, eventually if not immediately, each other.
Yeah, I was going to say this. They see these institutions as enemy strongholds, and want to retake or at least weaken them. And there’s a big problem with taking them over: lack of talent within Maga. You can’t just conjure up qualified and interested right-wingers to staff academia, media etc, and they’d have to reverse a long-standing conservative denigration of them to even begin. (Ironically, this is the same sort of pipeline problem that hampers left-wing DEI efforts.) Weakening institutions is much easier, and they care more about gaining more power for themselves than the good of the country.
The underlying issue is that institutions, and the civil service, have power separate from the elected government, and since they are controlled/staffed by the opposition, they act to thwart Maga’s aims. That is why the Trump admin views this as so important.
Kind of an odd view, considering that every time my conservative acquaintances had appendicitis, severe uterine bleeding, lacerations, etc. they always went to the hospital and never said, “We sick should be left to die.” But I digress.
The operative word in your entire post is “we”. “We” should not suffer the consequences of our decisions or votes. “We” should not go without healthcare, because “we” deserve it. Those “others” don’t, and should salvage some bootstraps.
It’s the same principle as the rightwing women who protest at abortion clinics, get an abortion when they want one, then go right back to protesting. Rightwingers want a tyranny, but they also don’t want any of the consequences to apply to them.
What Trump and MAGA are doing are typical behaviors of groups who want to cement power and establish a dictatorship. They achieve that by destroying any institutions with power that could oppose them. If they don’t outright destroy them, they co-opt them and fill them with lackeys and people who will rubber stamp the dictator’s agenda.
Groups that dictators generally target to either destroy or co-opt include
the media
judiciary
legislative branch
universities
labor unions
student activists
military
intelligence agencies
Oligarchs
Religious institutions
Regional political leaders (governors, etc)
Groups like these tend to have the power to oppose a dictatorship in a meaningful way, and the dictatorship wants to either destroy them, or co-opt them so they are not a threat.
If anything, IMO, MAGA views America as a nation conquered by others and they want to ‘purify’ the nation of the conquering others. They feel America has been conquered by non-whites, feminists, secularists, immigrants, etc and they want to establish a dictatorship designed to promote the interests of white, christian native born men and their allies.
Another thing dictators need to take power is strong ties to the secret police. The group whose job it is to kidnap, torture and kill dissidents. Several dictators got their start as being head of the secret police (Stalin, Putin, Saddam Hussein), and once you have the secret police under your thumb it becomes much much easier to control everyone else. This is why Trump is trying to form alliances with nations like El Salvador, so they can send political dissidents to prison there.
In the US we don’t have a secret police, but the Trump administration is trying to use deportation to El Salvador combined with a corrupted DOJ as the equivalent of a secret police.
You can see how this plays out in the Russia/Ukraine war.
Putin didn’t want the military to have the power to overthrow him, so generals were appointed due to loyalty, not competence.
Also because Putin doesn’t want the military to become so independent that they could threaten him, the Russian military has no real NCO group. Independent thought and action among the rank and file in the military is discouraged, which prevents the Russian military from having the flexibility necessary to deal with threats.
Combine that with the fact that Putin appointed corrupt loyalists all over the military, and as a result Russian military equipment has not been repaired or maintained properly.
The end result is the Russian military looks strong on paper but its run by incompetent generals, its not able to deal with threats in a flexible way, and its equipment is poorly maintained.
Its one of the Achilles heels of a dictatorship, the fact that you have to appoint incompetent loyalists to positions of power.
Add in the fact that the masses may not like a dictatorship, including large numbers of soldiers, and a dictatorship can fall. Once the public decide they don’t like a dictatorship and the military refuses to suppress the public, a dictatorship can fall.
Yes. And Trump isn’t a dictator (though neither was Putin when he was first elected) but he has the same motivation to appoint yes-men rather than competent underlings, and that’s what he’s mostly been doing in his second term. It’s good that Trump is both dumber than Putin, and unlikely to be capable of being President for too much longer.
Putin wasn’t able to be president for more than 2 consecutive terms, so he hand picked the next president and got himself appointed prime minister. Putin just found ways around the constitutional limitations on his power.
I could see Trump trying something like that, but theres really no truly powerful position in government that equals the president. Speaker of the house maybe, but still not close.
I think Trump will keep his cult of personality going until he dies, which sadly may not be for another 15 years because Trumps father lived to be 93. Donald is 78.