Trump understands our very worst human instincts

In Donald Trump’s world, they’re calling it “lawfare”, a coy yet smug portmanteau that sounds as innocuous as it is ultimately glib. 

It means using the law as a weapon against one’s political opponents, yet it’s increasingly deployed as an abstraction, shifting the focus away from the letter of the law. 

“Let’s not get into the weeds of justice,” they might as well whisper. 

What they mean is don’t look at business records or listen to the testimony of witnesses in all matters to do with Trump. And let’s not get into the icky business of a married guy sleeping with a porn star…

And, yes, Republicans did once care about morality, but that was back when the sexual predator was called Clinton. Now it’s their guy and, to quote Samuel L. Perry, a sociologist of religion who recently spoke to Politico: “Trump is representative of a kind of masculinity that is so masculine that his sexual appetites cannot be contained. That’s almost a good sign. […] Trump is power personified. He is a warrior. And with that comes all of the temptations of being a warrior”.

One can understand how this could sound convincing, so long as you could set aside so much hypocrisy it could also be home to a Trump brand casino and leisure resort. As his lawyers have discovered during the ongoing Manhattan trial, when there is no defence you can offer, you have to offer up something else: whether that’s objections about the judge, his daughter, the demographics of New York, the temperature of the courtroom, or simply the process. Or, failing that, wave your arms wildly and scream “lawfare”.

Say it enough times and it will begin to stick, which is essentially the Trump campaign strategy at this point.

One can also see it working. It certainly stuck with Oliver Stone, that perennial bad judge of everything political. He recently spoke about Trump’s legal woes, telling Variety: “[I]t’s a new form of warfare. It’s called lawfare […] And that’s what they’re using against Trump”.

No doubt the words were delivered from beneath that perennial Stone scowl, itself a terrifying thing to witness which might almost be enough to convince you that what he’s saying isn’t completely bonkers. But Stone has form and has always been a useful measure of a certain kind of American stupidity which is revealing about America’s ongoing fascination with The Donald.

 “Corruption is a way of life,” he continued to rationalise. “It goes back to the Greeks, the Romans, and before that the Babylonians, there’s corruption all through history, so let’s not be Pollyannas about it and think we’re ‘America the clean’ and we’re better than anybody else. That’s such bullsh*t.”

If only we knew which bit of American history he thinks we think is “clean”. Watergate? The Civil War? Andrew Jackson’s ethnic cleansing? Stone’s entire career has been spent wallowing in America’s perceived and actual crimes. Few directors have spent so long looking at the dark side of the American psyche: El Salvador, Vietnam, and Iraq. This is from the man who didn’t see one gunman in the Book Depository but saw “the military and industrial complex” crouched on the grassy knoll; the man who reduced capitalism to the phrase “greed is good”, as if that fully explained such a deeply complex and often contradictory drive. This is the director who made a hero of Edward Snowden, tried to humanise Putin with his weak-ass questions, and now looks at real corruption and shrugs his shoulders. He doesn’t see crimes. He sees “lawfare”.

As Stephen Marche, writing for Esquire, so perceptively said of Stone: “His movies reflect the worst instincts of his generation: intellectual laziness leavened with narcissism and easy entitlement integrated with casual irresponsibility […] His flaws are our flaws. His stupidity is the stupidity all around us. And there is a decent chance he’s finally lost his mind.”

What Marche said about Stone could equally be said about the former president, so it’s no surprise to see him singing from one of Donald Trump’s hallway printouts. Stone has always been seduced by the dark side of power, as well as the warrior class (from the heavily Nietzschean Conan the Barbarian he co-wrote with John Milius to his movie Nixon). Trump personifies the American will that seems to fascinate Stone, and, in that, a kind of confirmation of the man who has risen above mere politics.

Scratch his orange veneer and Trump would gleam with a residual and ancient blue. Say it quietly but he’s still a New York Democrat at heart, shaped by the hedonistic culture of New York of the 70s and 80s. But he’s also a businessman who follows the dollar and knows that, for him, the only dollars lie to the right of the political centre. A second Trump term would certainly follow those dollars. Just last week, he asked oil executives for a cool billion for his presidential campaign and in exchange promised to roll back environmental rules. 

A shame we don’t have a fun portmanteau for that too.

Donorruption…

Bribevestment…

But we do have “lawfare”, a convenient way to keep separating the man from his crimes. What the trial has exposed even further is that beneath Trumpism is an understanding of the very worst of human instincts: fear, hate, desire… This is the media age, and more accurately, the marketing age. Huge efforts have been made over many decades to understand the modern individual. We are creatures of obvious buttons. Companies like Apple press them every year. They wow us with the thinness of brushed aluminium. We are in love with the tactile click of buttons. We are ASMR creatures of sound and feeling.

And in the case of Donald Trump: he recognises our capacity to fear and to hate. 

“The judge hates Donald Trump,” said Donald Trump emerging from the courtroom on Tuesday. “Just take a look. Take a look at him. Take a look at where he comes from.”

Typical of Trump, not saying the explicit part explicitly: that Judge Merchan is an immigrant (born in Bogotá, Colombia). He knows enough people will hear what he intended them to hear and reach into that place where hate dwells. It’s a poison that many find very attractive. Effective too, as we saw in the rain in Downing Street on Wednesday.

Both elections, in the US and now finally called here in the UK, should be fought under large headlines: Economics, Health, Law and Order, Public Services, and, perhaps too, Humanity and Kindness.

But that might be too on the nose here in the UK. It would be deemed “factfare” by the government’s defenders who might object to using facts to condemn the past fourteen years. Rishi Sunak standing in the rain did not sound all that different to Donald Trump complaining outside the courtroom. The former President speaks of America as a failed nation that will only regain its greatness the exact moment he retakes the White House. Sunak speaks of a great nation that will descend into chaos the moment the Conservatives lose power. 

Let fear be your distraction, both say. Don’t look at what you know. Look over here. Hate what we make you think you can see…

@DavidWaywell

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