The “shock and awe” of Donald Trump’s first week of his retribution presidency has been overfilled with brash pronouncements that are pushing the law to its limits and putting emotional teeth on all sides of our divides on edge.
But, after numbing days of hearing the boastful bite of Trumpism tantrum, a lot of the substance to back it all up so far seems less than its bark. Whether because there is just too much coming out at once or that it precedes the ability to carry it out, we have felt the week more as Disdain and Chaos than shocking awe, with strong doses of cruel threats, misogyny, and racial and identity overtones thrown in.
If the intent has been to blitz us to accept more or most of his programs, the early Trump days seem to promise more conflict and challenge. The flood of Trump announcements arrives in a herky-jerky fashion, without priority, sufficient explanation or support, and they are thudding in a MAGA-inspired din without time to decide whether they make sense or are strictly political.
We have valued haste over thoroughness even in the areas most central to the Trump agenda, like rewriting January 6, 2021, or immigration, resulting in surprising unpopularity for some his least explained announcements. That hastiness was typified by Mexico’s move to block airspace clearance to the first three “mass deportation” raids because no one had made the appropriate arrangements.
Opposition is limited so far to an ineffective Democratic congressional minority, groups like the ACLU and issue-advocates, and the lawsuits being filed in court. Announcements seem baffling overseas as well as domestically, and the constant refrain is either capitulation, a shrug or make-believe regal flattery to avoid the worst effects.
What comes across is Trump petulance and pandering, and actions that sometimes cut against what he says he wants to achieve.
Some of it is petty, like pulling down a portrait of General Mark Milley at the Pentagon, some of it tone-deaf, like the pardons, some heartless, and some of it just jumbled and hard to follow. One example: Through an under-qualified nominee for defense secretary, Trump says he wants a military focused on lethality and readiness, free of diversity efforts. But firing generals and admirals and sending active-duty troops into border issues hardly strengthens our aggressive military defense.
Beyond lies about history, Trump simply makes up more convenient “facts” to describe numbers or events that are recorded. The numbers of targeted criminal migrants change by the day. His alternative facts in videoed speech to world business and government leaders in Davos seemed to earn him ridicule, which he will turn into weaponized tariff orders.
Trump is either deaf to incoming information about reality or unaware that even drastic measures will not mean that established systems can turn on a dime. He is resorting to orders to have employees tattle on colleagues who may seek to sneak in a DEI attitude into a policy or hire, and firing people who look for government waste. Trump has ordered a hiring freeze exactly as he asks agencies to change directions in multiple ways. He is his own opposition.
The chaos we are seeing in immigration will come to education, health, housing and economics.
The Themes
A week into the presidency, there seem to be several themes worth note:
- Trump is still looking backward, not forward, seeking through his pardons and executive orders to address past perceived wrongs, from election denial, Jan. 6, climate, rewrites of Covid history, and vaccine mandates and immigration. Since Trump only does not seek to persuade, he is winning no converts, though some immigration goals are drawing fearful Democratic votes.
- Separating whether one agrees with the goals, Trump is promising much more than he is delivering. His deportation plans and immigration changes, quick and decisive congressional domination, announced investments and spending changes prove to be immediately impractical or illegal. The Reagan-appointed federal judge who stopped ordered elimination of birthright citizenship called it blatantly unconstitutional. With people not yet in place, it seems that Trump is more focused on delivering what looks like policy rather than doing the hard work of making it so.
- Despite claims for a “mandate” from his narrow election win, we’re already seeing fraying for his self-described populism as people see even hints of how it all is supposed to work. Police unions, veterans, Republicans were not pleased by release of violent January 6 convicts, announced tariffs are drawing stiff objections over the real economic effects, and his appointees are being seen at best as “yes men” who who have no qualifications for the jobs they’re tasked with.
His first week is one of constant personal pique at any word that is not supportive, and measurable disgust that he would turn disagreement into reprisals.
Contempt for Law
Trump’s “golden age” for America is built on a sneer at the very democracy that makes it the country it is. Trump is taking his ideas way beyond election denial and into church sermons, questions asked by reporters, and even the reality of videos.
Trump’s disdain for laws, protocols and discovery of truth even in finding solutions to problems he finds significant is brimming. Burning down the system towards is chaotic. It took a day for the first freed Jan. 6 convict to be re-arrested on a weapons charge; he wants to turn the page on Jan. 6 but has pushed the House into creating yet another investigatory committee to spend months or more disputing the last one, guaranteeing months more of the same arguments.
Americans are simply turning away, feeling it useless to listen to Trump, or to huddle before threats; they are not using their time to create the innovative future that Trump says he wants to inculcate. Local officials, businesses, financial institutions are working around Trump rather than building for the new prosperity.
We get singular, oversimplified answers from Trump without the structure to make it work. The question is whether after all the bombast, Trumpism itself is a cruel sham that benefits him, not us.
At the end of the day, ordering DEI offices in the national agencies, declaring that the government recognizes two genders, changing the names of the Gulf and the highest peak in Alaska, shutting down immigration apps and threatening Panama do nothing to lower everyday costs or much about making us substantially “safer.” Sending 1,500 active-duty troops to 2,000 miles of border with instructions only to border agents hardly will change migration patterns, which already are at a four-year low.
Look at Trump withdrawing a 1965 policy prohibiting discriminatory practices in hiring and employment in government contracting: Are we instantly better for doing so? Has this made us a sudden merit-based society with no lingering history of racism? Or consider how Trump fulfilled a promise for Libertarian votes by pardoning a dark-net drug dealer convicted after six overdose deaths even as he railed against migrants for bringing fentanyl into the country: Has it made our lives better or safer?
Simultaneously, Trump waived any need for background checks for selected, six-month security clearances and withdrew clearances from a list of political enemies: Other than putting unqualified people in charge of our intelligence services, how are we better off? We see Trump is using an order to remove weaponization of government on political grounds by ordering investigations of those who probed election denialism and wonder if it is some cosmic joke.
We are watching Trump interfering in Justice against all protocols to tell the agency to drop cases he doesn’t like and to reassign those who served a search warrant at his resort home: It helps his feelings but guarantees to us that he will be less prepared to deal with a counterterrorism issue having lost personnel who understand the issues.
Meanwhile, what is Trump not talking about? Trump is talking about Manifest Destiny rather than any orderly plan for the devastation from fires in Southern California, about America First when we have the negotiated responsibility to keep the ceasefire alive in the Middle East, isolationism when we are obliged to protect Ukraine, Taiwan and our alliances. He declines to see the mountainous increase in debt that making permanent tax cuts for the rich and corporations will cause or a need to smooth the excesses of anti-abortion legislation on maternal health, and the growing income divide. The list of what isn’t on the to-do list far exceeds what is reflected in the lengthy list of priorities.
The price of eggs is going up, not coming down.
Overturning Democrats, civil libertarians, critics of any sort seems the goal. The Trump program refuses to distinguish the important from the petty, and so a simple message for mercy in policy decisions from an Episcopalian bishop drew a jeering Trump slap in the face at the same volume as any suggestion from Canadian officials that, no, they don’t choose to be taken over this week.
Trump will get organized soon. But what we’re getting from shock and awe is a lot closer to disdainful chaos without a sign of goldenness in sight.
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