The Principle of the Bag

 That familiar Trump administration feeling is back: I have become anxious and avoidant about the news again. I end almost every day with a quick scan through the headlines of the major news outlets: but I have increasingly started to dread doing so. Why? Because I know that, several times a week at least, I will see something about Trump that infuriates me, and which I will want to avoid thinking about, but which will somehow also be perfectly keyed to seem to require some response from me. I won't want to acknowledge it; but I will feel I have no choice. With a sense of exhaustion, I say to myself: well, there goes tomorrow morning... Another blog post will have to be on the way. And it won't be on something fun that I'd actually like to talk about. 

I couldn't tell you if Trump manages to accomplish this by a sort of second nature, or by conscious premeditation—but whatever its source, the dynamic is familiar to us all by now. Trump will say something outrageous; but it somehow manages never to be something that we can simply write off as "another offensive comment from Trump...." It won't just be more of the same; for if it were, we would all have become inured to it by now, and the comment would have no effect. No, Trump is aware that he must somehow find a way to give another turn to the screw. So whatever he says will be appalling in some slightly new way, some slightly more disturbing way, such that we are forced to talk about it again. 

And yet, the comment will somehow be just ambiguous enough to allow Trump (or his defenders and campaign officials) to claim some lingering shred of deniability, and thereby to gaslight the rest of us with talk of "Trump derangement syndrome." Trump, whatever else he is, is a master of the incremental escalation. Whatever the next attention-grabbing thing he says or does may be, we can be sure that it will be worse than whatever has gone before; but we can be equally sure that it will be only marginally worse. It will be one half-step up the scale. It will be just small enough a change that his campaign officials can still pretend that nothing has changed, and the rest of us are overreacting. 

That is why the metaphor of medieval torture instruments still seems most appropriate: Trump is giving the screw a quarter-turn at a time—just enough to ensure we yelp in agony, but never enough to finish us off entirely. 

A rather silly Politico article from last week is the perfect illustration of this dynamic. In response to a survey of voters conducted by the Daily Mail, which found that voters identified Trump's goals for a hypothetical second term as "dictatorship," "corruption," and "revenge," Trump apparently shared a word cloud image on his social media that featured these and similar words, with no additional comment. I instantly and predictably flew into a rage and felt the need to blog about it. "See! Look at that!" I cried inwardly: "He's admitting it! He's not even bothering to deny it anymore! He's trying to normalize the idea of becoming a dictator so we all get used to the idea!" 

Trump's word cloud was therefore an effective provocation and escalation: it builds on his recent series of hints that he is open to the idea of becoming a dictator and abusing his power, while seeming to confirm the core fear of his opponents with a new degree of frankness. It's out in the open now! How could we not respond? And yet, once emotions had cooled, one could see that actually—nothing was clearer now than before. Trump had still left himself plenty of plausible deniability. One could write the responses from his campaign officials for them: "It's just a word cloud!" "He was just making fun of the idea of him becoming a dictator; he was showing how ludicrous the notion was!" 

All of which Trump himself will never say, of course—that would be too comforting and would lessen the power of the provocation. Every time he is asked about this directly, therefore, he pointedly leaves the question of whether he would try to become a dictator unanswered. But he allows his campaign officials and media supporters to make up defenses for him. He leaves just enough room for a clever and dishonest politician to find a way to normalize his remarks (think of J.D. Vance recently trying to recast Trump's characterization of immigrants as "poison" by saying he was simply making a point about fentanyl). 

What is Trump's goal in all of this? What is the actual point? Most of all, it is probably just to get attention. And for this, it is a remarkably effective strategy. Trump gives us just enough to talk about and argue over each time—a purpose that would be foiled if he either stabilized in his opinions or expressed his positions more clearly. That's why we get this perpetual dynamic (whether consciously formulated or arrived at by malevolent instinct) whereby Trump constantly escalates his comments, but also refuses to ever clarify them directly. One side must always be able to say: "there! do you see? Now you can't deny how bad he is"; and the other side will have just space enough to counter: "See what? There's nothing to see here!"

But the darker interpretation of what Trump is achieving by all this (again, whether consciously or otherwise) is that it is also a technique for habituating us to the slow dismantling of our democratic norms. After all, if Trump had just come right out in 2016 and said "make me a dictator!" he would have been laughed off the stage. But he didn't say that. Instead, he attacked immigrants of Mexican ancestry. He promised to "ban" a disfavored religious minority from the country. It was outrageous—it was disgusting—it was a violation of fundamental norms—to many of us, that is; but it was also just enough of an escalation from more conventional right-wing attack lines and talking points that many other Americans could downplay or ignore the change. 

Since then, Trump has been steadily contributing to this same process of erosion. For a while, his supporters said: "but he'll never deny the outcome of the election!" And then he did that. They said: "he'll never try to stay in office past his term!" Then he did that. They said: "But he'll never try to persecute his opponents and become a dictator." But now he's saying he will do that. He could never have carried them all along with him each step of this infernal journey if he aimed straight for the ultimate destination at the outset. It would not have worked to have said in 2015: "hi all, let's stage a coup." Rather, he had to gradually acclimate people to the idea of a Trump dictatorship. 

That seems to be what the "word cloud" post is actually about. It's taking something that started as a warning from his adversaries—"Trump is trying to become a dictator!"—and somehow both denying and embracing it at the same time. He waits for his defenders and campaign officials to mock the warning: "how absurd to think Trump could become a dictator," they say. "Biden is the real dictator! This is just more Trump derangement syndrome!" And then, once we've all gotten used to that idea, Trump can spring the next phase on us: "actually," he says—always half-jokingly (by means of a word cloud, for instance)—"maybe I am thinking about becoming a dictator. Would that be so bad?" 

And then his supporters start to get used to that notion in turn. Pretty soon they will be saying: "of course he's a dictator; we need a dictator! Who ever said dictators are bad? That's just Trump Derangement Syndrome!"

This process of incrementally normalizing something that ought to have been unthinkable is often described by the metaphor of the "boiling frog." But the related image that comes to mind for me is that of the "second bag." This idea—the "principle of the second bag," comes from Ryszard Kapuscinski's great book on the Ethiopian regime of Haile Selassie— The Emperor (a work which may be compromised as history, but which makes for outstanding political satire and social commentary on any authoritarian order). The "principle" in question states that people will not notice or object to a certain level of exploitation or oppression that has already become familiar to them, because they regard it as normal.

The art of authoritarian rule, then, according to this principle, is that of determining just how much incremental further suffering one can load onto people's backs at a time, such that they do not notice and revolt. If you try to throw a whole "second bag" of oppression onto someone's back at once, while they are still groaning under the first, they will reject it and fight back. ("[T]he people never revolt just because they have to carry a heavy load," his Majesty explains; rather, they "will revolt only when, in a single movement, [the government tries] to throw a second burden, a second heavy bag[.]")  To avoid this, the trick is to add "little bags" onto people's backs—"bit by bit"—such that they scarcely notice what is happening. (Brand and Mroczkowsca-Brand translation throughout). 

Such is plainly Trump's method as well: in taking us on the journey toward authoritarianism and the downfall of our elective institutions, his strategy is to ensure that we have just enough time before each incremental step on that journey to get used to the last one. We need to acclimatize ourselves to each new "little bag," before the next one comes along. 

"Okay," we thought in 2016. "I guess we don't live in a society anymore where politicians at least pay nominal lip-service to the idea of respecting all religious groups and minority populations in the country. But—everything else is still normal. I guess we can live with this."A few years later, another bag is added: "Okay," we think, "I guess we don't live in a society anymore where politicians respect the outcome of elections and the peaceful transfer of power. Oh well! We're still here; we're still alive. I guess we can live with this too." 

The strategy of adding "little bags" is so effective for Trump because of the deep-rooted human desire for things to be normal and predictable. Few of us, if any, actually want to spend our time "revolting." For God's sake, I was a professional activist for the entire duration of the Trump administration, and even I didn't want to have to bother protesting and advocating, at least not by the end of it. We all want things to go "back to normal." We all want to be given permission to cease struggling. It is too exhausting and debilitating to keep up the strain of constant opposition to the culture around one. It costs us, as Roland Barthes once wrote—"too many scruples, too many rebellions, too many battles, and too much solitude." (Howard trans.) 

No one likes the buzzkill who is forever running around saying: "we're doomed! This is the end!" We all want that person to shut up. And so, it is easiest to accept things as they are. Of course, this becomes impossible if a second heavy bag is loaded onto our backs in one go. Then, as Kapuscinski's book tells us, people have no choice but to try to throw it off, even if they don't want to. To simply remove our democracy and substitute a dictatorship in one swoop would surely elicit a reaction from us, however grudging. A person in his situation "will rise because he feels that, in throwing the second burden onto his back suddenly and stealthily," the government has "tried to cheat him," as the book tells us.  

But, if the new burdens are added steadily and incrementally, in "little bags" over many years, then we manage to forget what life was like before any of them were added. We have just enough time to get used to each new bag, such that the person still complaining about them seems like a whiner. Then, when the next bag is added, we kick against that for a time as well. But we eventually get used to it too. We even start to resent the person still protesting against the bags more than we do the person who placed them on our backs in the first place. 

Even I do this—yes, even I, who have spent the last eight years doing little but protesting against Trump—I still find myself wanting to normalize his actions. An outrage will occur; I will protest for a time. But then, as the weeks go by, I will find myself wanting to pretend everything will work out for the best regardless, and that I was probably overreacting. Why? It's simply too much of an emotional burden to live in a constant state of dread. So I find a way to convince myself: "Oh, Trump's not really going to become a dictator. He doesn't really mean it. We're probably all overreacting." I too—even I—want in my heart to believe in the narrative of "Trump Derangement Syndrome." The alternative is simply too exhausting. 

But Trump always ensures that another "little bag" is coming, just when I have gotten used to the last. So I protest again. I complain again. I blog again. Then I cool off and try to inwardly normalize what has happened—I try to convince myself that I still live in a normal world and nothing really frightening has actually happened. Then the next bag comes along. And the next. And eventually, we will be groaning under a vast weight of new oppression and injustice that we would never have tolerated for an instant if it were presented to us in one great heap at the outset. 

This tendency is so deeply rooted in human nature that it can even start to make the worst crimes seem normal. As Brecht once wrote in a poem: "The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread." (Willett trans.)  So it is with Trump: the first time he said, "ban the Muslims!" everyone was aghast. But we are so many "little bags" past that by now, that it seems hard for most people to recapture that emotion. Now, we can joke about Trump becoming a dictator—indeed, the question of whether or not he will become a dictator is a mainstream topic of conversation—and scarcely anyone notices.

The principle of the bag—of the incremental escalation of oppression—has prevailed.