Sometimes politics resembles one of the strangest branches of modern physics or a fantastic version of biology. Time may seem to run back; Solid things are insufficient; Black holes swallow the light; The dead can walk on the ground, the ghouls crawling off the split rocks, the Véloiraptors reappear not only, but learn to speak and, alarming, at the doors open.
This is how American politics feels now. On the whole, however, Newtonian physics and traditional biology always apply, and this deserves to be recalled while we look at the circus of transgression, the justification of the Trump administration and sometimes simple madness .
Like most administrations, including those of generally more calm general directors, that of the 47th president decided to interpret his mandate too much. The raw facts remain: Donald Trump received a plurality of votes (although a decisive majority in the electoral college); The Republican Party clings to the House of Representatives by a hair and has a thin majority in the Senate. Administration can hate civil servants and seek to undermine their employment safety, but it will find out that it needs it to fly safely, the operation of the financial system, drugs for use and suitable food to consumption.
Gravity still works, if not a little fun. Politicians who have too interpreted narrow victories in a divided country are brought back to earth, generally halfway. But not only that – the federal government system gives a lot of power to the States, and although the Congress has become anemic and irresponsible, most of the governments of the States did not do so. And therefore the Governor of Florida refused to appoint the president’s daughter-in-law to a siege in the vacant Senate, and the Governor of Ohio transmitted one of the president’s most awkward technological billionaires for another. These are small but interesting indications of gravity reintegration.
Lawyers, by the thousand, in and outside the governments of the States, create their own gravitational field. The poorly paid lawyers of the Ministry of Justice can only continue so many things, and the Supreme Court will prove to be – as did during the previous Trump administration – a reliable Trumpist that the President would not wish. (The most pro-Trump judges are Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, two of the conservatives he did not name.) Even the appalling pardons of rioters and insurrectionists on January 6 have their limits. If one of these people are trying to violence in Maryland or Virginia or elsewhere outside of DC, they will discover that assaults and other crimes are judged in the state and non -federal courts. And the Pardon Presidential Power does not reach state prisons, which means that some ghouls will return to their slit rocks if they go out in search of revenge.
Newtonian physics also wants for each action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Precisely thus. Forgive all the criminals who have done a police tour and the police unions will not be amused. Imposing high prices and working class voters will meet higher prices and possibly unemployment. Sauté the national debt to reduce taxes, and sooner or later the markets will react. Make room for vaccination skepticism and epidemics will burst. Turn the intelligence community and the soldiers upside down by purging women and other undesirable, and will produce you not only with great embarrassing and consecutive failures, but also the decline of these large populations, their families and politicians who care still national defense.
And then there are reprisals. Political physics extends over the words composed by Johnny Cash: “This old wheel / will roll once again / when it will / it will even increase the score.” Or, as Shakespeare said Shylock, “the wickedness you teach me, I’m going to execute, and it will go hard but I will improve the instruction.”
The reckless and agitated mass pardons of the violence of the January 6 insurrectionists were proof of the Trumpian anarchy. The orders to end the security authorizations of the dozens of former senior intelligence officials who criticized Trump, and the amazing decision to remove the protection of the security of John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and Brian Hook – Three former senior officials of the First Trump administration – were pure pure wicked staff. The suspension of authorizations was intended for humiliation and a blow in portfolios (many targeted persons are used for boards of directors where clearances are a prerequisite), and reduce the protection of security against Iranian death threats was even worse.
But the names of Trump, who will perform this and other recovery acts, should consider that before a long time, they will also be out of government. They too will want to keep their clearances. And they too can incur the anger of state enemies and non -state who want to kill them. They will wish to consider how inevitably they will be exposed, once their triumph, like all the others, will pass in memory. If decency and compliance with standards do not motivate them in the right direction, fear may have to serve in place.
Biology will also have a say. Drunk – with power and success, in this case – invariably leads to the hangover, whatever the family remedies or the magic healing, we imagine. This usually strikes in the middle, like the administrations of Obama and George W. Bush discovered it to the hard. More specifically, certain biological realities, including the age and its physical and mental decline that accompanies it, will work in the 80s of Trump. The Flunkies and the toads that surround the president will seek to deny this basic reality – the Biden team was obvious in this regard – but sooner or later it will also take root.
Primatology, in this case, offers a useful guide. In most troops of baboons, an alpha male dominates all the others, who have a behavior subjected if they know what is good for them. Domination can be so pronounced that all that the male alpha has to make is bare his fangs and to growl to obtain the behavior he wants. But the baboons age, and although he does not notice it, the muscles of the alpha male will catch, his fangs will fall. He can continue to scold, but the youngest male baboons will notice and will start to feel the possibility of a succession crisis. And then they jump.
So too, here. Donald Trump is already a lame duck. It is, at any other, old level, which is one of the many reasons that comparisons with Hitler or the youngest of contemporary European authorities such as Viktor Orbán are moved. He will be an equal duck in two years, when the troupe of republican politicians will begin to fight for the estate. Former friends – Donald Trump Jr. and JD Vance, for example – can fall, and the coalition of different subclans can fight more openly. Republican unity in several years is very unlikely.
It’s a bad time in American politics, of course. But we must remember that natural laws always apply, and things could improve so one piece of fantastic biology should be true: a great class of political invertebrates should cultivate thorns.