The absurdities of the Trump administration and its hangers-on could be written off as a distraction if the stakes weren’t so high. People might be used to banal trolling on social media platforms, but the global hegemon has forced this petulance onto hundreds of millions of people who are worried about their future and the future of the world. That makes the trolling something worse than distracting.
The White House’s online personality is at once extremely disconcerting and extremely juvenile. It’s easy to be stunned by the scale and brazenness of it. During a trade dispute with Canada, and feeling insulted by the premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, the president of the United States decides to rename Lake Ontario Lake America, and then proceeds to share memes showcasing the renamed body of water – which remains Lake Ontario outside US borders (and inside it, for some states, such as New York). Not to be outdone, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, posted an attack against a Canadian cadet and her instructor, mocking them and the Canadian armed forces.
This month, an exasperated Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, implored the administration to stop “doing memes” and “throwing shade”, and to get serious about trade talks. That was a reasonable request – to which an unreasonable Trump responded by complaining that Canada was the “worst country to deal with”, while also claiming that its leaders are “dying to make a deal”. The inconsistency, as obvious as it is daft, betrays that for all the administration’s bluster, the Trump team wants – and needs – a deal, even if its negotiation tactics are beyond baffling.
There are signs that Trump’s stunts, which tend to play well with his base, are trying the patience of some clowns within the Republican circus tent. Podcaster Joe Rogan, typically a rightwing darling, said that renaming the lake doesn’t make any sense, and is a move meant to distract Americans “from the fact that we’re in a war that we can’t win in Iran”. The same critique applies, surely, to the strait of Hormuz and New Mexico, which are on notice for a potential name change too.
But Rogan might be giving Trump and company too much credit, as if the stupidity of the regime were strategic rather than a base expression of the id, a primal urge expressed without reflection by a group of people who neither expect nor fear consequences for their actions. The stupidity is the point, except for when it’s meant to underwrite cruelty.
The sadism plays on two levels: the brutality of bullying itself, and that of opportunity costs. While Trump was posting, the UN announced that the world has frittered away our best chance of avoiding the worst effects of climate change. We are now thoroughly in mitigation-of-the-worst territory.
Maybe the Trump years will be an aberration, and we’ll see a natural return to the mean at some point down the line, but it’s getting harder and harder to believe that. When the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, goes on a quest to “make America healthy again” while talking of his high-protein breakfast of “a cheeseburger and three eggs,” you have good reason to want to throw in the towel. When the Food and Drug Administration is recalling food as fast as under-regulated companies can poison it with salmonella, you have good reason to want to curl up into a ball and eat tainted blueberries until the lights go out.
Don’t.
The net effects of the endless absurdities and depravities is disorientation and despair. The worst-case outcome is complacency. It’s overly generous to attribute strategic intent to the Trump administration when it rolls out stupidity at scale, though it’s possible a few of them might have a plan worked out. Either way, it doesn’t matter. The counter-plan, from those of us who want to resist, demands that we focus on the consequences of the Trump administration’s stupidity, and seek to build a broad coalition of those dedicated to addressing this challenge with serious, aggressive and sustained action.
The news that Canada and the European Union are considering an “associate status” for the decidedly not European country suggests that efforts at moving beyond US hegemony are under way. Whether such an arrangement would benefit Canada, the EU, both or neither is separate from the directional soundness of the effort: trying to leave the US behind, or at least minimising contact with it, is a good idea.
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Trump responded to the news by declaring that the US would consider a new Canada-EU relationship a “hostile act” and threatened to cut off trade with Europe. This reaction is a masterclass in proving the wrong point – and another instance of foolish tactics. By protesting too much, Trump betrays that he does care a great deal. Unwise. Unsound. Pathetic.
We can’t ignore the stupidity of the Trump administration and its true believers, but nor should we assume it’s a new, inevitable normal. Ultimately, there are more people who want a return to a saner world than there are those who wish to live in idiocy; we should band together and do the work to get ourselves there. Thankfully, that work has already begun.
