I had a friend years ago, a pot dealer, who was one of the most ambitious, self-centered, hard-driving teenagers I’ve ever known. Recognizing he might not have the intellectual capabilities of many of his classmates in law school, he took to memorizing every case he read, studying twice as hard. He became a sometimes unethical lawyer before making his fortune buying and renting real estate and shrewdly investing. He was socially insufferable with his constant self-aggrandizing patter. I commented to a mutual friend that his then-wife seemed like a bright woman. “How bright can she be? She married Jack,” he said, very sensibly.

I think of Melania Trump, who may well be very bright (she speaks a number of languages, apparently, and has negotiated, and renegotiated, lucrative deals with her famously unfaithful husband), and her announced anti-bullying campaign when she first became First Lady. The anti-bullying campaign never happened, she was probably bullied out of it. Or perhaps her fashion statement spoke for her true feelings, when she put on the “I really don’t care, do you?” jacket.

Robert Reich really put his finger on what we are up against as a society, as a culture, in this perilous moment in human history. The entire game, the supreme struggle of our time, is brutality and exploitation versus empathy and cooperation. His whole short piece is well worth reading, the link is below. It ends this way, with a series of epigrams that could be carved in stone as eternal truths:

The central struggle of civilization has always been to stop brutality.  Unless we prevent the stronger from attacking or exploiting the weaker, none of us is safe.

A civil society is the opposite of what Trump seeks.   A civil society doesn’t allow the strong to brutalize the weak. It moves as far as possible away from brutality.

Every time the stronger brutalize the weaker — whether it’s Trump and his flunkies bullying immigrants and the state of California, white supremacists bullying Black and Latino people, giant corporations bullying customers with high prices, the wealthy bullying the public to get giant tax cuts, Elon Musk bullying poor people by cutting programs they depend on, police bullying poor Black people, powerful men bullying women through sexual harassment, politicians building their power by bullying racial or ethnic minorities, Netanyahu wiping out Palestinians in Gaza, Putin trying to take over Ukraine — it’s fundamentally the same playbook: 

Stoke fear.  Exploit desperation.  Suspend the rule of law.   Fan brutality.

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Deliberately crash the economy, increase pressure, precarity and pain on working and poor people, instill fear on Wall Street and Main Street. Irrationally blame your predecessor for the results of your own destructive policies. Make people on both sides of a nation you continue to divide as angry as possible all the time.

Once everyone is feeling desperate, exploit this desperation for your own/billionaires transactional ends.

Because of this created mass desperation declare a national emergency and invoke emergency powers under some vague and semi-rational rationale. Anything should be good enough as long as you get the troops on the streets and actual violence finally breaks out.

Blame society’s most vulnerable for this situation and sic the angriest and most violent armed-to-the-teeth Americans against them. Institute mandatory Roman salute for all citizens and make gristly examples of anyone who makes Hitler comparisons, employs sarcasm, irony or the f-word, or is in any way disloyal to America Made Great Again.