Cultural Revolution ... For Jesus! -- Tom Sullivan

[erronis]

https://digbysblog.net/2025/04/21/cultural-revolution-for-jesus/

Donald Trump is a tool

Speaking of the logic of fear, Paul Krugman offers some observations this morning on where Trumpism means to take us all. What drives our cult-leader president, Krugman writes, is “rage toward people who, he imagines, think they’re smarter or better than him.”

Since Donald Trump is clearly the smartest and best person in every room he enters, anyone who doesn’t abase themselves at his grandeur is a potential target for that rage:

And he and the movement he leads, composed of people possessed by similar rage, are seeking retribution. Retribution against whom? Yes, they hate wokeness. But three months in, it’s obvious that the MAGA types want revenge not just on their political opponents but on everyone they consider elites — a group that, as they see it, doesn’t include billionaires, but does include college professors, scientists and experts of any kind.

A student of 20th-century history knows where that leads. But Trump was never much of a student of anything except “winning” at all costs.

Don’t try to sanewash what’s happening. It’s evil, but it isn’t calculated evil. That is, it’s not a considered political strategy, with a clear end goal. It’s a visceral response from people who, as Thomas Edsall puts it, are addicted to revenge.

If you want a model for what’s happening to America, think of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

[…]

Once you’ve seen the parallel between what MAGA is trying to do and China’s Cultural Revolution, the similarities are everywhere. Maoists sent schoolteachers to do farm labor; Trumpists are talking about putting civil servants to work in factories.

. . .

This is oversimplified, of course. The point is, Trump only thinks he’s in charge. He famously “does whatever the last person in the room tells him to do,” writes Marcy Wheeler. “And often as not, the last person in the room is Stephen Miller.” Think of Miller as Tolkien’s Gríma Wormtongue:

We’ve already seen that the three cabinet secretaries struggling to assert control over their own agencies deferred to Stephen Miller when he told the participants of the famous Signal chat what Trump thought.

That is, it’s not just that Stephen Miller is often the last one in the room with Trump. It’s not just that Stephen Miller’s policy ideas are batshit insane (and that he’s the author of Trump’s most egregious abuses of power). It’s also that Miller often stands in as the Word of DOGE, the Word of Trump.

If Miller is Wormtongue, then Vought is Saruman working a strategy deeper but less visible than Miller’s. Contra Krugman, there are political strategies at work. They are just not Trump’s. He’s a tool, a puppet.

. . .