Trump's 2nd Term & How Power Works

I'm a writer. And a little over 10 years ago I started to become interested in writing political content. Since I wasn't super political at the time, I figured I should actually learn about politics so I'd know what I was talking about first. It is now 10 years later and I have been reading about, watching content about, etc. how power works during that time. And I wanted to talk about it here because I thought it might be informative. It isn't something I understood 10 years ago.

What is power? Power, really at its core, is simply the ability to have other people act in concert to achieve your ends. It's about people's decisions and which ones they make and why.

That's why wealth is power too. Wealth is really a form of societal organization. It allows the people who have it to tell other people what to do and act in concert to accomplish their goals. The more wealth you have, the more people you can have acting towards your goals in an organized way. And, of course, the more you're willing to pay people, the more stuff they're willing to do. Even stuff they wouldn't normally be okay with. Lots of people have a price.

This is backed up by the rest of society. Student loans, mortgages, credit cards, etc. put you into debt. Debt is something that allows people's stuff to be taken, so they feel they have even more to lose. Which enhances the power of money. Because now they're more desperate, and more willing to do more for less.

There are also social ideas on this stuff. If you're unemployed there is a stigma to that. You will often be branded as lazy, a layabout, a waste of space. You'll have a harder time finding dates, one of the first topics a lot of new people ask you is "What do you do for a living?" so you'll have to deal with the awkwardness of that. By contrast success is equated to wealth. And if you're wealthy, you're branded as successful, smart, a go getter, etc. And, remember, humans are a social species. Social rewards and punishments deeply affect us. It is evolutionarily programmed into our minds to care about this.

And because everyone cares about these things, everyone acts in concert in an organized way to do what the wealthy want.

But wealth isn't the only way to get people to do what you want, of course. The threat of force, either physical force or other types, are very effective as well. The reward of fame. There are lots of carrots and sticks. But the point is power is the ability to make people act in concert to achieve your minds. And if enough people are willing to act on your behalf or unwilling or unable to act against it, you have power. The more people willing to act on your behalf, and the fewer willing or able to act against it, the more powerful you are. And the more people willing to act on your behalf and the fewer willing to act against you, the harder it becomes for the remainder to do any different as well.

And institutions work this way as well. As Dylan Burns said recently, and I thought this was a really good way to put it: Institutions are just norms in a trench coat.

Why does the supreme court have power? It has power because everyone has agreed to do what it says and so everyone cares about what it has to say.

So how is this relevant to Trump? Well, we should apply this understanding of what power is to Trump to see how things are going.

Trump has a great deal of power over his followers. Many of them are fanatically loyal and will do what he says. They'll give him money, they'll protest, some of them will even commit terrorist acts because he says so. Some of them have organized themselves as well, into militias with weapons.

Now that Trump has pardoned the January 6ers he has also set a precedent. Which is that he is willing to make sure that those who do what he wants get off scott free.

In other words, he has a carrot to reward them with (his words) and he prevents the other institutions of punishing them with his pardon power.

Then there's the economic elites. Those with the wealth that we talked about earlier. They are now also on his side, as has been clear from the top of them being at his inauguration. They have bent the knee to Trump and are now willing to use their power through wealth on his behalf so they can be rewarded and avoid being punished by him.

The House and the Senate are majority Republican. And for the most part the Republican Party is in Trump's pocket. Not only could Musk fund primaries against them if they defied Trump, but with just his words and endorsing someone else Trump can sink them. Even maybe have them suffer significant harassment or fear for their lives. Which is to say that it has been established in the Republican party that they must act in concert with Trump's wishes. Trump has the carrot and the stick.

Trump with his new executive order also seems ready to purge the U.S. civil service. He will no doubt have his people put in die hard loyalists who are only willing to act on his wishes, and fire those who would resist him. But even among those remaining who aren't die-hard supporters, they'll have the threat of firing over their head. In a capitalist system firing means no money, potentially no food, no house, etc. A huge stick in his possession.

Then there's the media. They wield power too through being able to mobilize people with information and words. As said earlier, the social media elites have already bent the knee for the most part. Tik Tok seems to have been coerced by Trump swooping in to "save" them to act on his will. Zuck has gotten rid of fact checkers. Elon Musk is already on Trump's side. And the traditional media? Fox is basically controlled by Trump as their audience will rebel against them if they don't follow him, and Trump can destroy them with a word. MSNBC is on the decline, and CNN has already made concessions to Trump too. Not to mention Trump seems ready to wield legal challenges against them for things like criticism. Which means the media is more than ever incentivised to act in concert with his wishes. He has carrots and sticks.

The supreme court has 6 Republicans on it, half of which Trump appointed himself. They have already ruled him above the law, basically, so the courts as a stick no longer constrain Trump. And, in fact, since they are the last word on many laws, so long as they agree with Trump everything he does is legal. So long as they act in concert with his will, Trump's power is unbounded by law.

This isn't like the first term. Trump's power is far, far more consolidated this time. I saw a video recently of AOC talking about how Trump has been so much more normalized now. And I think it goes beyond that. It's that a lot of people, unlike the first time, have bent the knee to him. They are now bolstering his power, and that has changed the entire game. Because as I said earlier, the more people are willing to act on your behalf, the harder it is for everyone else to defy you.

There are still sources of power which are not under Trump's command.

The most important are the unions. They are still independent and controlled by workers. The problem is that Trump is almost certainly going to use his NLRB to try to take them apart and reverse the gains made, or at the very least halt them. And America's unions simply are not as powerful as those in countries like France in the first place. A war will be waged on them.

There are still democrats in congress and leading various states who have not bent the knee. They do still have power of their own, even though they're not in the majority. They can still resist, even if some are already faltering, many have not. I think we can say with some certainty that democrats like AOC and Bernie Sanders will not bend the knee to Trump. And considering how many liberals may dislike any Democratic media or politicians bending the knee to Trump, this is a great opportunity for AOC and Bernie to gain more power themselves by getting those liberals on their side through Trump opposition.

The military is partially under Trump's control but not totally. He is the command in chief, but there are still norms that exist among the top brass as some leaks have shown. They would be uncomfortable with certain commands and it is as yet unclear whether they would obey them, particularly because they don't have to obey an illegal order.

That being said, as I went into at length in a different post, the military's norms against involving themselves directly in domestic politics, would likely also prevent them from ever directly opposing Trump so long as Trump remains control over civilian institutions. For example if the supreme court and/or congress decided to give Trump a third term, the military would be unlikely to depose him.

There is still opposition from at least some cultural elites too. They have limited power, but they can still help to highlight certain actions and mobilize public pressure against them. And that's not nothing.

And that's my assessment of how things stand right now.

Trump is not yet a dictator. He does not have absolute power. There are still some things that can check him. But this time around the list of things that can check him has shrunk, and the list of people willing to act on his behalf or unwilling to defy him has grown. Trump has gathered an enormous amount of personal power and while that doesn't guarantee any specific direction for the country, you'd have to be foolish not to worry about that.