Jennifer Rubin used a phrase in a recent Substack piece that really puts the entire Trump political brand into a great frame. “In other words, coherent policy is impossible without an accurate understanding.” Trump reflexively makes coherent policy impossible by erasing the possibility of understanding with constant lies over mass media, threatening, bragging and bringing about the “complete and total obliteration” of fact for a large swath of Americans. 

The reason MAGA gets away with doing all these objectively incoherent things (take from the nation’s poor and elderly, while creating American carnage, to give more to Koch, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Thiel, Musk, $Trump et al) is because they “totally and completely obliterate”  any grounds for accurate understanding of the forces involved by indignantly insisting on their right to be incoherent (see, for example, Lisa Murkowski). 

Trump claims that the US “totally and completely obliterated” Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program with its illegal bombing of three sites after Israel disabled Iran’s air defenses. No discussion of war crimes or Trump’s flagrant violation of the War Powers Act because… complete and total victory! Pam Bondi answers questions, under oath, about her department’s shady, partisan, unethical behavior by bellowing about Biden’s supposedly weaponized DOJ, Benghazi, trans athletes, whatever other Fox talking point comes to mind.  I forgot until the other day that she was one of Trump’s lawyers during his second impeachment; it makes perfect sense when you hear her yelling at senators and accusing them of being partisan commie hacks.  Incoherence is MAGA’s brand, coherent policy is not a consideration, enforcing their collective will is their only priority. 

Incoherence is professional conman Trump’s natural milieu, stoking confusion, lying and attacking, while strutting in a childish display of “strength” as he threatens violence he knows the more unhinged of his cult will eagerly carry out, when the moment is right.  His constant dance of rage destroys the possibility of any productive discussion, let alone one based on an accurate understanding of discernible facts — the facts are his deadly enemy, like anyone who honestly reports them.

This is what tyrannical personalities always do.  Control the discourse by framing the terms and, in the case of a Hitler or Trump, making the frame as incoherent, chaotic, threatening, distracting, terrifying and enraging as possible.   Instead of Trump on the spot, the news cycle focused on the president forced to defend himself to Congress for his blatant violation of the War Powers Act and his war crime bomber attack on Iran, he strikes poses on TV, bragging, threatening and twisting arms to get all media attention on his arbitrary deadline for his Big, Beautiful “let’s make the poor so desperate we can provoke them to violence and have the police state we all want” bill to his Resolute desk so he can claim another big win, another 51-50 mandate. 

Tanking the economy for working people and increasing general fear and anxiety are necessary ingredients for the completion of the determined lurch toward American fascism that has been Charles Koch’s well-funded project since at least 1980. Without economic despair in Germany, no Hitler. Without similar conditions here, no American fascism. Turn up the heat enough on poor Americans, let enough of them go hungry, force them to care for elderly, sick parents at home, die of treatable diseases, use enough heavy handed Gestapo-like tactics against innocent immigrants and political opponents, openly weaponize the Department of Justice, and people will eventually begin to freak out. Time to bring in the troops, led by Mr. Insurrection Act, General Mike “Lock Her Up” Flynn.

Trump’s claim after Mueller laid out ten prosecutable instances of obstruction of justice was also “complete and total exoneration.”   The overemphasis is always a tell that he’s lying, as Jen Rubin points out, although his mouth moving is another tell.   Of course, like obliteration, there’s only one kind of exoneration, it means — beyond being found not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt — you were deemed innocent of the charges because evidence ruled out your guilt or the guilty party was found, tried and convicted of the crime you were accused of.  That we are in the hands of an insane, perpetually enraged and emotionally needy two year-old, does not speak well of our culture.

On our culture, I recommend Gabor Mate’s The Myth of Normal.  The book really lays out the toxic nature of our kind of normal. 

Trump’s perfectly normal, in this upside down world that normalizes people like him.  Hannah Arendt described Eichmann’s behavior during the Third Reich and pointed out that everything he did was perfectly normal, in Nazi Germany where an insane megalomaniac’s every spoken word was, literally, the law.   

One of the psychiatrists who examined Eichmann before the trial was asked by the court if Eichmann was sane for purposes of standing trial.  “Saner than I am, at any rate, after talking to him for two hours,” the shrink said.  Eichmann’s inability to think for himself (reflected by his inability to express himself, beyond cliches), to consider anything beyond what was “normal” at the time, is what marked him as the perfect Nazi bureaucrat.  

Here’s another perfect Nazi bureaucrat, a violent rioter tasked with helping to weaponize the government against all enemies of the Leader. You can’t make this stuff up…