America Elected The Joker

"Some men just want to watch the world burn."

Regular readers of the Trident will not be surprised to learn that the candidate who ran the most extreme campaign in American history is assembling the most extreme cabinet in American history. Most people have no idea how disruptive the next several years are likely to be as a result. Maybe they would rather not know. Speaking personally, I prefer to have some idea of what’s coming, in order to prepare myself and my family and to resist where possible.

The Joker of the title is of course not Cesar Romero’s campy portrayal of the character in the 1960s Batman TV series but Heath Ledger’s terrifying performance as the disfigured psychopath in the film The Dark Knight. (More on the Joker later.)

Donald Trump did not expect to win the 2016 election. Consequently he had no plan for governing and no idea whom to select for his cabinet. Over the next four years he frequently found himself stymied by appointees who placed their adherence to the rule of law above personal loyalty to him. This time, however, Trump has a plan. The president-elect is quickly putting together what one might call an anti-cabinet, a slate of grossly unqualified nominees whose manifest unfitness is meant to shock us and to create a new reality. To subvert democracy, an authoritarian always seeks to control or corrupt the “power ministries”: Justice, Defense, and the intelligence agencies. In each case Trump’s pick is meant to signal his contempt for the institution in question. Since he despises the military, who better to lead the Department of Defense than a womanizing Fox News host with no management experience who, when he served in the National Guard, was flagged as an “insider threat” due to his apparent religious extremism ?

The people’s choice

The cabinet appointment that is most likely to affect the lives of ordinary Americans is that of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy’s views are a farrago of anti-science nuttery, but he is consistent in his nonsensical belief that there is no such thing as a safe and effective vaccine. I agree with the conservative writer Jonathan Last that Kennedy’s merger with Trumpism means that vaccine denial will become part of the MAGA belief system. Indeed, it’s already happening, as Republicans in Congress are suddenly expressing “doubts” about the efficacy of vaccinations. What that means in practical terms is that vaccination rates will drop, particularly in Republican-governed areas. Lots of Americans- mostly children- will fall ill needlessly, and some will die. (In 2019 Kennedy’s anti-vaccine advocacy caused a measles outbreak in American Samoa that killed 83 people.) Trump surely knows what the ramifications are of putting Kennedy in charge of a federal public health agency. That he has chosen to do so regardless is evidence of the sadism that is usually a component of a malignant narcissist’s personality.

The new Republican majority in the Senate could use its constitutional powers of advice and consent to prevent the creation of Trump’s anti-cabinet. Trump has a keen sense of strongman politics, and he has framed the Senate’s approval of his appointees en masse as a loyalty test. He means to break Senate Republicans by forcing them to vote in favor of his comically unqualified slate of nominees. Each capitulation to the Leader paves the way for the next.

When assessing Trump’s incoming team, it’s striking how central misogyny and sexual compulsion are to its makeup. At the top of the depth chart you have Trump himself, the proud sexual predator and adjudicated rapist. Next comes the philandering, thrice-married Secretary of Defense nominee. Then there is Trump’s choice for Attorney General, an (alleged) pedophile and (alleged) child sex trafficker. And let’s not forget Trump’s favorite oligarch, Elon Musk, and his 12 children by three different women, none of whom he is married to. (Oh, I almost forgot ! Kennedy’s first wife killed herself after finding his detailed records of dozens of affairs.)

It’s uncomfortable to consider the possibility that Donald Trump, profoundly corrupt and uniquely disordered as he is, understood America and Americans better than many in the pro-democracy movement. He believed that he was strong and that his opponents- Republicans, the media, Democrats, the courts- were weak. (In fact, his opponents are not weak, but they have so far preferred the predictable outcomes of conformity to the unpredictability of resistance.) He understood that institutions are just people. He knew that enough Americans now think of politics as just a fun TV show that his words didn’t matter as long as he brought the sizzle. He understood that most people don’t know what government does and don’t care. He knew that people often enjoy living inside a lie. He knew there were just enough enough Americans who yearned for a Leader to whom they could relinquish their power. And like the Joker, he understood that there are Americans who, bored by the bourgeois comforts their grandparents would have found unfathomable, feel an irrational urge to burn it all down, even if their own house is consumed in the flames. That urge dovetails perfectly with Trump’s plan to break the constitutional order so that he can stay in power for the rest of his life.