The Purpose of Trump
The Purpose of Trump
An Unexpected Insight from Star Wars : Andor
This Tuesday, Trump announced his intention to run for the 2024 election, and Republicans/conservatives aren’t sure what to make of it.
There’s the personal layer of “Do I like / dislike Trump (what he says, how he handles situations, what he stands for, etc.)?” and the pragmatic layer of “Is he the person who can both win a national election and (should we win) implement policy through coordination with Congress, world leaders, and all the other mechanisms of presidential influence?”
An evaluation of Trump’s usefulness and impact should also be categorized with respect to a specific period of time and state of culture. Despite the mental concept of “Donald Trump” feeling like some sort of independent constant, it’s actually a very different exercise to conduct an assessment each of:
Trump in 2016
Trump in 2020
Trump in 2024
Trump broke reality so hard in 2016 that it left a hyper-salient imprint in everyone’s consciousnesses. Residuals of Trump’s initial memetic burst of 2016 energy are still being felt 7 years later, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a deep contemplation of the 2016 cycle would trigger in-the-moment change in a reader’s physiology, via fluctuations in dopamine and cortisol levels.
What do you feel when you think about that period of time? How strongly do you notice the sensation it elicits within you?. . .
Yet we take a moment to notice that it’s now about 2024, and it’s important for Republicans and Democrats alike to recalibrate with a fresh perspective.
I was watching episode 7 (“Announcement”) from Star Wars : Andor the other day, and one scene particularly caught my eye (SPOILER Warning).
Context: The universe is ruled by an oppressive and orderly Empire. The story of Andor showcases early stages in the formation of the Rebellion, which would ultimately defeat the Empire, in the greater Star Wars story. This scene involves Luthen (played by Stellan Skarsgård) and Senator Mon Mothma (played by Genevieve O'Reilly).
Up until this point, Luthen and Mon Mothma were slowly building a network of resistance to the Empire, under great secrecy and caution. Luthen, to Mon Mothma’s shock, shares that he orchestrated a recent high profile robbery of the Empire (stealing wealth that funds an entire sector’s payroll).
The dialogue was as follows (my emphasis in bold):
Luthen:
You knew where this was going. You’ve known all along.
Has anyone ever built a weapon that wasn’t used?
The network’s been built. It’s up. It grows or it dies.
We’ve waited long enough.Mon Mothma:
You realize what you’ve set in motion? (concerned)
. . . Palpatine [tyrannical leader of the Empire] won’t hesitate now.Luthen:
Exactly! We need it. We need the fear.
We need them to overreact.
Mon Mothma:
You can’t be serious. . .Luthen:
The Empire has been choking us so slowly, we’re starting not to notice. The time has come to force their hand.
I can’t help but notice a parallel to the run of Trump in 2016, can you? I even wonder, since this show was produced long after Trump, to what extent its producers leveraged the MAGA ethos as source material for this scene.
At least from the perspective of the right wing, here’s how the analogy would play out:
Conservatives have had great fear of the slow burn, where inch-by-inch the progressive vision would disrupt the stable “way of life”, with respect to “freedoms”, family affairs, etc. The concern was that moderate centrists are too indifferent and sleepy. E.g. They don’t appreciate the media bias, the slippery slope of loose sexual ethics, problems related to unregulated immigration, the US being taken advantage of diplomatically on the international stage, etc.
“The Empire [Progressive Agenda] has been choking us so slowly, we’re starting not to notice.”
The fear was that by the time a slow approach (e.g. a lineage of polite, potentially compromised, nice guys like “Jeb!”) produced any fruits, it would be too late. The progressive foothold in society would be too rooted, hence the desire for something drastic, if not paradoxically counterproductive and destructive.
“We’ve waited long enough. . . The time has come. . . [we need to do this big punch to the Empire, both concretely and symbolically, with the robbery]”
In particular, consider the migration of Republicans who disapproved of Trump initially (think back to the primaries when there were the Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and even Ben Carson factions). They saw how much of a reaction Trump provoked from the left wing, as well as how he seemed impenetrable to some of the standard attacks by Democrats and even debate moderators (listen to Dave Chapelle’s "Honest Liar" description from his monologue on SNL last weekend; it’s a perfect reminder of what the initial Trump allure was all about). The hope was that with Trump’s no-holds-barred style, the Left could easily be provoked to overstep. A meaningful overreaction would serve to “awaken” the average person as to how radical the progressive and/or globalist vision is—at least that’s what the intention of electing Trump seemed to be.
In response to ~‘The progressives won’t hesitate attacking conservatives now’ : “Exactly! We need it. We need the fear. We need them to overreact (and cause more people to be scared).”
In other words, the nomination of Trump as the 2016 Republican Presidential candidate, as well as his election to the office of US President seems to parallel this depicted decision in Star Wars for the Rebellion to escalate, almost recklessly, against the Empire. Both decisions capitalized on the counter-movement’s sense of urgency, fear of complacency, desire for shock, and willingness to use provocation and agitation as a means for broadening the scope of the counterculture.
Did the act of electing Trump accomplish the provocation of “Empire” overreach?
Causation is inherently difficult to infer, especially in real life, since we never have access to the counterfactual (the alternative universe of what would have happened instead of what actually did).
We see only what happened, not what didn’t happen. We saw life under Trump as President and can only speculate as to what a Hilary Clinton or Jeb Bush presidency would have looked like.
Still, there are some notable socio-political and cultural changes that we’ve seen take place over these recent years, and I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide to what extent these should be attributed to the splash of Trump:
We saw an explicit rise and reveal of “cancel culture”.
Pre-Trump, some conservatives would complain about “political correctness” and express fears that free speech was under threat. But this censoring (including the implicit pressure to self-censor) was so subtle, that the mainstream person thought conservatives voicing these concerns were being overly paranoid. In other words, conservatives were promoting an untested theory of “If I spoke freely and openly about my views (despite them not being extreme, violent, or causing damage in any objective sense), I would lose my job / livelihood / state in life.”
Post-Trump, nearly everyone has seen someone get “cancelled” (culminating, ironically, with what may be the Greatest Cancellation of Them All, via the US President and Twitter) such that censorship and the scope of free speech has been thrust into the limelight as a primary issue. I don’t recall progressives being so forthright with desires for censorship, pre-Trump. He expanded the Overton Window such that those on the Right felt more emboldened to reveal their views, which triggered institutions on the Left to “show their cards” with respect to their actual level of political tolerance.
Everything became political (or maybe it always had been and we just hadn’t noticed).
Consider how late night talk show hosts, SNL, and other entertainers would focus, almost obsessively, on refuting Trump. Jokes started to feel more like attempts at persuasion first, with comedy for its own sake as an afterthought. These comedians seemed to care more about encouraging the audience to “think correctly” rather than making them laugh.
Commerce decisions became entangled with social causes. Are you supporting businesses whose owners promote the policies you favor and boycotting those who don’t? Are you being intentional in doing business with those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds?
There was increased social media pressure to “take sides”, most notably in the profile picture campaigns (consider peak George Floyd energy, for example). People wanted to know “Are you for me or against me?”, making the fallacy of false binary the rhetorical default for American politics.
Even the holy, and “unbiased” realm of Science was infected, where “Trust the Science” became more like a religious cry for solidarity than an actual appeal to sound methodology.
The Left’s default image of being an open-hearted community of unconditional tolerance, inclusion, and acceptance was disrupted, if not entirely shattered.
Pre-Trump, progressives had a fairly solid lock on the branding of “We are the people who care and have a heart. We accept all; solidarity and love is the way.”
The ascendancy of Trump triggered a trauma response for many Democrats, and even Republicans. Remember swaths of journalists making Hitler comparisons, as well as the activist motto of: “It’s ok to punch a Nazi” (with Trump voters being designated as fascist white supremacists). Hatred for Trump and his supporters became the social signal for being one of the “good guys”.
Gestures of deep empathy and kindheartedness were no longer given freely by the group that built its reputation on Inclusion. Instead, they were redirected towards only those whom agreed with the group’s core beliefs and to those whom the group members deemed as having less privilege than themselves. In other words, disgust for Trump and the deplorables who would vote for him became a defining association for the political left during that cycle.
There has been an acceleration of Marxist class consciousness.
Consider the increased fervor (and also panic) around the promulgation of philosophies like Critical Race Theory throughout the education system as well as corporate policy.
Early steps to Marxist class consciousness involve:
Being aware that you are a member of a “class”.
Internalizing that the Lower Class is oppressed by the Upper Class.
Accepting that these dynamics are not present in merely a subset of the human experience, but rather that they encompass all systems, and, really, constitute the System itself, in its most holistic formulation.
Embracing a standpoint epistemology, where “truth” is irreparably restricted to one’s own class perspective, without the possibility of individuals transcending class designation and conversing on equal ground.
How much more often, and with how much more intensity, do you hear these viewpoints espoused today compared to before Trump?
The average person now sees the extent of Machiavellianism, double-mindedness, and insincerity plaguing the political game.
Both Trump and his opponents openly embraced a mindset of Persuasion First (over precise and comprehensive truth), with frequent displays of rash judgment, calumny, and duplicity. Before Trump, such persuasion was done more “under the radar” through influence by omission and innuendo. Post-Trump, these tactics and political maneuvers became more explicit and crude, such that anyone could see the tricks (at least insofar as to how their own preferred candidate would be mistreated. . . The blindness as to how one’s own “tribe” utilizes these methods continues to plague the politically engaged across the entire spectrum of ideology).
Most intensely, we saw Democrats consistently push the narrative that Trump wasn’t elected legitimately (#NotMyPresident) via the suspect Russian Collusion investigation, while they also embraced an eagerness for impeachment with Trump’s Ukraine interactions (being content to avoid any interest in Biden or Clinton dealings). At the same time, Trump countered with similar rhetorical force when he vigorously promoted the Election Fraud narrative, essentially promising his followers that he would prove the purported corruption (while avoiding any real initiative in addressing concrete things like ballot harvesting in the months leading up to the 2020 election).
We also saw this notably when it came to support and resistance to Trump’s policies, particularly during COVID. It seemed like Democrats were willing to oppose legitimate ideas that could benefit citizens, primarily because they originated from Trump. And likewise, there seemed to be Republicans who would blindly support questionable ideas of Trump, with secondary concern for whether they would actually benefit their constituents.
With respect to COVID, we saw a global spike in some of society’s expressed appetite for totalitarianism (as driven by a fear of contaminants, whether material or ideological, since a strong, centralized hand could more effectively keep one safe from these).
Some of these elements transcend left-right dynamics, but it’s my observation that we experienced a significant overreach (whether cultural, legislative, or otherwise) relative to what was previously acceptable with respect to:
Disgust in associating with those who didn’t elect to receive the COVID vaccine (the dirty, anti-health, “unvaccinated”).
Eagerness to shutdown and almost indefinitely expand the welfare state (i.e. to monetarily incentivize people to remain jobless, for their “safety”)
Implicit promotion of a secularist, naturalist view, where quantity of lives was deemed as inarguably supreme to quality of livelihood. And when quality would be acknowledged, such acknowledgement would be accompanied with a disregard for the intangible elements of human, social existence and interpersonal flourishing (i.e. “You don’t need to spend in-person time with family and friends. It’s not that important for children to see other people’s faces. What you want to choose for your body and whom you want to be around is secondary to requirements of public health.” etc.)
This list above represents just some of the notable changes that have occurred in our culture since 2016. These aren’t all bad nor necessarily related to some Trump butterfly effect. However, it’s easy to see how, from an anti-establishment, “Rebellion” perspective, these observations could be described as having manifested from “Empire” overreach, as provoked by the shocking tactic of electing Trump.
If you’re a voter who leans Republican (or at least leans away from the modern-day vision of Democrats) and identifies with this archetype of “Rebellion”, what do you view as the next step for the movement? Whom do you realistically see as being suited to lead the next phase? Do you consider the paradigm of rebellion to be helpful or is there some alternative frame of mind that can provide more utility?
In sum, I’m not going to tell you that we’re living under an “Empire” that needs to overthrown by a “Rebellion”. However, I couldn’t help but notice the memetic parallel between this Star Wars scene and the apparent reason that Trump was elected in 2016. Perhaps we could say that he successfully accomplished his purpose for those who backed him then.
Eyes will soon be set to 2024, however, and I encourage would-be voters to ask themselves:
What is the purpose of Trump for 2024? Is further provocation the goal? If not, does Trump have the ability and willingness to don (😏) another role, other than provocateur?