The current US president portrays few qualities many human beings would find appealing, and yet so many find in him a leader of incredible ability: a leader they can get behind, that speaks freely and truly on the issues that really matter. What the wider ‘we’ find so unsettling about his presidency is less the actions he takes, (though many are vile or ridiculous), but rather the type of discourse and politics he put forward. His politics are that of ruthless conflict, where victory is the annihilation of the adversary rather than reconciliation, overturning an order of structured competition. This is an altogether more unsettling phenomenon, one that underpins a wider turn in conservative thinking across the West in recent years. For liberals and those on the left, Trump is an important event to look at when trying to apprehend a path forward in these unstable times.
What we find so repulsive is his ironic disregard for the conflictual element of politics. Indeed, the conflictual element of life embodies politics, from which good political discourse is nourished. One might find this odd, given his near constant attacks on the media, his verbal wars with almost anyone who tries to cross him, the gutter-talk rhetoric used for his opponents, and his love of unrestrained violence in foreign theatres of war. Yet it is this manner of conflict, the way in which he approaches fights conceptually, that makes him so unappealing and dangerous to lasting institutions of peace or solidarity. To explore this, we need to dig further into how Trump and ‘The Political’ are essentially constituted.
Trump’s reading of the world is, on first principles, haphazardly correct. Life is a struggle, you are what you make of that struggle, and you ought to never give in. How he understands these truths, however, is inimical to their actual function in a social system. Understanding such tensions, struggles, and differences serve to bridge the gap between ‘us’ and ‘them’, a rift that has time and again served to divide states and peoples in brutal war. Trump understands these struggles in life as things to be beaten; as if struggle itself were something that could be won or lost, rather than a condition of the political. This dangerously misunderstands the limits of any one person or regime of power, seeing political opponents as something to be conquered rather than contested, and undermining faith in the idea of political respect. Trump’s opponents become the embodiment of those standing in the way of his following and its manifest destiny, rather than opponents with whom he can compete and win legitimate glory in taking victory. The entire ancient Greek dynamic of democratic competition is lost when actors like Trump believe they can beat, rather than wield, the system.
Ofcourse, many liberals and those on the left find The Donald appalling for all manner of legitimate reasons. However, the ‘us’ I refer to in the title is apolitical; what makes this more general ‘us’ afraid of him is this disregard for collaboration, dissent, or compromise. His style undermines faith in the fundamentals of the political, and support for this manner of government is not only short sighted but inherently self-defeating. It attacks the foundations of the very order he claims to be draining of its ‘swamp-like’ poison, and paves the road to an uncontested, authoritarian method of governance.
The entire point of the democratic political process, in its truest form, is to allow the conflictual elements of political life to be exercised in a non-violent manner. The debate over consensual versus conflictual politics – what theorists call deliberative and agonistic democracy – has raged for some time in political theory. However, only with the financial crisis of 2008 was the deliberative order opened up to criticisms, and the agonistic order considered valuable for political discussion. What Trump cuts through is the central political claim that both theories try to accomodate for- the space of respectful disagreement, where those who have deep divisions over key issues experience conflict in a rule-bound process over who should govern. There are some ground rules that these conflicting parties must agree to in order for the contest to prove fruitful. They must share a common vision for a described space, territory, and people, and thus engage in a respectful process of disagreement. It is not enough to humiliate the loser, because that undermines the duality of the contest. To make your own victory legitimate, and to be able to fight another contest in the future, one must necessarily respect their opponent, even if they disagree strongly with what they have to say. This is where Trump falls foul of his own agenda, as he fails to give ground to opponents even when they have well founded criticisms of his positions. His frail sense of self-confidence sees him open fire on any threat to his security, employing his former advisor Roger Stone’s ‘attack, attack, attack’ method; admitting nothing, denying everything, and never defending.
It is this style that makes those on the centre and left highly critical of his attacks on the ‘mainstream media’, even when those same figures have been clamouring for years about the corrupt and biased rightwing Murdoch empire press that he now takes aim at. He quite often (and I say this reluctantly) picks the right targets, and then approaches them in a manner totally opposed to the strategies that would solve the root cause. Rather than his actions per se, the manner in which he executes his strategies is reprehensible in of itself, and grounds to contest his suitability for office.
