Thus far much of the commentary about Trump’s cabinet and staff picks alternates between “He values loyalty above all else” and “He wants to generate chaos and break the federal government.” There’s significant truth in both statements.
However, a more fundamental psycho-social program appears to be at work in Trump’s nomination of people like Matt Gaetz for Attorney General and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services—as with the dictatorial impulses we’re already starting to see, including demands that the Senate appoint these probably unconfirmable sycophants and chaos-agents during recess.
It’s the very same principle used by CIA interrogators and schoolyard bullies: confront people with threats of retaliation that are clearly outside of all customary and (often) legal boundaries, and dare them to stand up to you. The first violations might be small. But once you compromise on your morality, your sworn oaths, and your own dignity you make yourself a hostage to your own actions.
The technical term is learned helplessness.
It is true that when it comes to things like vote counting and building bi-partisan support for policy—or for that matter, knowing how the machinery of government, viruses, or, say, nuclear weapons, actually work—Donald Trump is incompetent. But he is a competent bully. He learned from one of the best, character assassin Roy Cohn.
Of course, nominating people like accused sex trafficker Matt Gaetz or science denier Robert F. Kennedy isn’t just about loyalty and chaos. Nor is it only about sticking a finger in the eye of the political, cultural, and intellectual establishment (though Stephen Bannon’s “Suck on that,” reaction to Gaetz’s nomination speaks volumes). No, the deeper point is to identify the objectors—conscientious or otherwise—for retaliation, and to deepen the regime’s hold on those willing to compromise against institutional dignity, the Constitution, and reality itself.
It’s classic authoritarianism. The wannabe dictator pushes people to do things they know they ought not to do—and probably wouldn’t if secret ballot were an option. Evidence the vote for Senate Majority Leader. In a secret ballot the Senate preferred John Thune, who opposed Trump’s attempt to overturn the results in 2020, over the MAGA enthusiast Rick Scott. It’s not so clear what they would have done in a roll call vote. And once a person compromises with what they know is wrong, it sets them up for further compromise—a systematic corrosion of character and self-regard, replacing their own will with that of the autocratic leader. It’s not unlike the character in a mafia movie who, owing a favor to the big boss, essentially becomes indentured.
The second point that follows is that Kennedy at HHS or Gaetz at DOJ (or for that matter, perhaps even more profoundly, Hegseth at the Defense Department) won’t simply act as contrarian chaos agents. They will force the same type of ethical death-by-compromise program on the vast agencies they’ve been tasked to lead, resulting in a governmental culture of submission without limits. Forget the Nuremberg Principle—that anyone who commits a crime, regardless of whether it was ordered or condoned by higher authority, is liable. Most will take refuge in Milgramesque obedience—while a few resist or resign and find themselves on McCarthyite blacklists.
Certainly, the targets that Trump and his proxies have named—the undocumented immigrants who are being warned to “self deport,” the Palestinian solidarity activists being threatened with absurd charges of terrorism, and the civil servants who are being traumatized by threats to their jobs—are in the firing line in the first hundred hours of the new regime.
But the purging of the “deep state,” the subduing of Congress, and the identification of internal enemies to crush will be important milestones. I hope that in the first test of accepting or refusing to confirm Trump’s most odious candidates during recess that the Senate surprises me and refuses, setting the stage for intra-governmental and intra-party strife. I have my doubts.
