Anticipatory Obedience

 Yesterday, Amazon appeared briefly to consider being transparent with the American people, and attaching a line item to each bill going forward that would show the added costs from Trump's tariffs. The White House then predictably lashed out at them, as soon as this news broke. 

What was weird, though, is that the administration's response didn't even offer a pretext as to why their objection was in the public interest. They seemingly forgot that they are supposed to at least pretend to care about the American people, rather than their own naked political self-interest. But this time, they left that part out. 

This can't be a good look for the administration. I mean, what is the constituency of voters out there that doesn't even want to know how much the tariffs are costing them? 

The administration, of course, wants its corporate cronies to help them mislead the American people. And now they are saying so in public. Which is predictable behavior on their part, I suppose—but a bit unsubtle, even by their standards. Aren't they at least supposed to offer a fig leaf of cover that they are motivated by something more noble than this? 

But of course, Amazon predictably caved after the White House's tongue-lashing anyway. Trump appears to have called up Bezos directly and bullied him into submission, in his usual overtly corrupt manner. 

But as always—what's most infuriating about this anticipatory obedience on the part of big companies is that: it's not even clear what leverage Trump actually has. What could he even do? Why are people so afraid of him? 

This is what has bothered me most about this whole pattern of major institutions "bending the knee" to Trump's lawless threats. He's fundamentally such an absurd person to be afraid of. 

I mean, he certainly is erratic, I'll give people that. But he also gives in and reverses course at the first sign of real opposition. He ends up taking the side of whichever person he spoke to last. He reverses course on his own core policies at the first sign that someone might actually be willing to push back. 

Viz. the recent reporting from the Wall Street Journal that Trump essentially aborted his own "reciprocal tariffs" policy a few weeks ago—just because Bessent and Lutnick cornered him on the matter, and Peter Navarro was no longer in the room to argue the opposing side. 

Plainly, then: Trump is, as William Hazlitt once wrote of Cobbett, "a Big Ben in politics, who will fall upon others and crush them by his weight, but is not prepared for resistance, and is soon staggered by a few smart blows." 

Experience has proved time and again, then, that if people are willing to make the slightest effort to fight back against Trump—they can win every time. He is a paper tiger. "No matter how big you make yourself/ With all your death and thundering," as Heine once wrote—there's really nothing there. 

Every country he sought to bully into submission with his tariffs, for instance, now has the upper hand over him—because the American people expect him to swiftly make deals, and will punish him mercilessly on the stock market if he doesn't pull this off. 

Every law firm he's targeted that's actually willing to resist him seems to win a swift victory from the federal courts—and so on. 

Why, then, is there all this "anticipatory obedience" to Trump? 

Archibald MacLeish explained it best. In his short parable, "The Fall of the City," he depicts a nation rushing to submit to a new all-powerful conqueror who announces himself. But, when the conquering tyrant eventually strides into the city, he is revealed to be: nothing more than an empty suit of armor. 

It's almost like the people wanted to be conquered. If they hadn't given in so easily—if they had put up the least resistance—they could have easily saved their freedom. They could have knocked over the hollow, clanking, empty suit of armor with the slightest gust of air. 

"The people invent their oppressors: they wish to believe in them," writes MacLeish. "They wish to be free of their freedom: released from their liberty." 

"But Trump is all-powerful," people reply. "He survived an assassin's bullet by divine intervention!" Seriously, people like Ross Douthat have actually been saying stuff like this. Ezra Klein quoted a line from a Douthat column on a recent podcast that caused the latter to squirm with a bit of embarrassment: Trump, Douthat had written last summer, is "a figure touched by the gods of fortune."

Douthat here sounds just like the fools in MacLeish's parable, who hail the empty suit of armor and declare him to be a conqueror before he has even done anything: "There's no holding it!" they cry; "Let the conqueror have it! It's his! The age is his! It's his century!"

So too, the people of our city—our nation—gave in to Trump as soon as he appeared. They said: he is a man of destiny! A great man of history! We must submit to him! 

No one noticed in the process that the armor had no man inside. No one observed that he could have been knocked down with a feather, if anyone had bothered to lift one. 

I'm reminded of D.H. Lawrence's image of the bourgeoisie of England as a kind of forest mushroom—seemingly sturdy-looking on the outside, but all soft and mushy and hollow within. If anyone bothers to kick a toadstool down in the woods, after all—they quickly discover that it topples over at the slightest touch. 

And even so, he’s stale, he’s been there too long, as Lawrence writes.

Touch him, and you’ll find he’s all gone inside

just like an old mushroom, all wormy inside, and hollow

under a smooth skin and an upright appearance.

So it is with Trump. He's all gone inside. There is no man inside the suit of armor. There is no conqueror; no "great man of destiny"; no "gods of fortune." 

Just give him a good kick (metaphorically, of course), and you will see him topple over helplessly, just like an old toadstool. He'll "melt back," as Lawrence put in, into the dirt from which he came.