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Wednesday
What happens when the grubby tactics you use to come to power take on a life on their own and start calling the shots? Trump, who pedaled the Obama birther lie and who was propelled to the White House (in part) by QAnon believers accusing Democrats of running pedophile rings, is suddenly getting hammered for not sharing what the FBI and Department of Justice have learned about the notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Political science blogger Lindsay Bayerstein explains why Epstein is so important to these people:
The base expects the Epstein files to fulfill prophecies broadcast on rightwing radio in the 1990s and elaborated through Pizzagate and QAnon. It was foretold that Bill and Hillary Clinton and all the Satanic Democrats would one day be exposed for their crimes against God and man.
Because of this deep faith, the base feels betrayed when Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi, with all the resources of the FBI at their disposal, claim that (to borrow from Gertrude Stein) there is no there there:
The Epstein case is a particularly effective wedge because Trump’s conspiracist base feels humiliated. They were played for suckers and they know it. As historian Richard Hofstadter observed in his famous essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” status anxiety is an accelerant for conspiratorial thinking. People gravitate towards conspiracy theories when they feel insecure. It’s a special affront, then, to be treated with contempt by the very people who were supposed to salve their egos.
Thanks to a recent article in Crime Reads, I’ve been rereading Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest, which captures such a situation in the early pages. The Trump figure in the novel is Elihu Willsson, who for forty years
had owned Personville, heart, soul, skin and guts. He was president and majority stockholder of the Personville Mining Corporation, ditto of the First National Bank, owner of the Morning Herald, and Evening Herald, the city’s only newspapers, and at least part owner of nearly every other enterprise of any importance. Along with these pieces of property he owned a United States senator, a couple of representatives, the governor, the mayor, and most of the state legislature. Elihu Willsson was Personville, and he was almost the whole state.
Willsson does not control the International Workers of the World, however, who have organized his miners. When there’s a downturn in the economy, however, he sees his opportunity to break the union:
In 1921 it came. Business was rotten. Old Elihu didn’t care whether he shut down for a while or not. He tore up the agreements he had made with his men and began kicking them back into their pre-war circumstances.
Elihu resorts to gunmen, strike-breakers, national guardsmen and even parts of the regular army to put down the subsequent strike. But although he is successful, we are told that he has unleashed forces that—like Trump with his crazy supporters—he can no longer control:
He won the strike, but he lost his hold on the city and the state. To beat the miners he had to let his hired thugs run wild. When the fight was over he couldn’t get rid of them. He had given his city to them and he wasn’t strong enough to take it away from them. Personville looked good to them and they took it over. They had won his strike for him and they took the city for their spoils. He couldn’t openly break with them. They had too much on him. He was responsible for all they had done during the strike.
I’ve been wondering if something similar will happen with the masked ICE agents that Trump is sending into Latino communities. Now that, thanks to the GOP’s Big Beautiful Bill, ICE will be supercharged with billions of dollars, will we start seeing ICE become a paramilitary organization operating independently?
Once I finish Red Harvest, I’ll report back on any further insights it offers into our situation. I’ll just note today that I’m not surprised that a writer who pioneered the noir crime novel, with its aura of existential dread, would suddenly seem particularly relevant.
