I saw a picture this week. It’s of a scene in Washington, D.C., taken a few days ago.
In the background, you see the Department of Labor building. Hanging on its right side is a large American flag; hanging to its left is a huge banner of President Trump with the phrase “American Workers FIRST.” It is the president’s official portrait, supposedly inspired by his mug shot. He’s glowering, less a servant of the public than a stern, unforgiving father. He seems to demand respect and obedience without promising anything in return.
In the foreground of the photo are soldiers, their backs turned away from the camera, walking toward the Labor Department building. Because of how it was taken, most likely with a telephoto lens, the main elements of the photo are compressed together; there is at least a city block’s worth of space between the soldiers and the building, but they appear next to each other, Trump staring down at the men just below him.
The photo is clearly meant to evoke the imagery we associate with authoritarianism, or to be a little more precise, show the ways the administration has chosen to associate itself with that visual language. The White House wants you to see its kitschy displays of the president and its militarization of the nation’s capital and conclude that the game is over and that they have already won.
But as much as the situation might feel that way, it isn’t true. The president and his allies have made real strides toward authoritarian power in some areas — using broad executive discretion over immigration enforcement to turn ICE into a personal goon squad, for example — and suffered real setbacks in others. The president must also contend with his steady unpopularity and the real possibility that no amount of cultivated chaos from the White House will prevent a wipeout at the ballot box next year.
The administration-produced imagery in Washington is, then, a projection of sorts — a representation of what the president wants reality to be, drawn from its idea of what authoritarianism looks like. The banners and the troops — not to mention the strangely sycophantic cabinet meetings and news conferences — are a secondhand reproduction of the strongman aesthetic of other strongman states. It is as if the administration is building a simulacra of authoritarianism, albeit one meant to bring the real thing into being. No, the United States is not a totalitarian state led by a sovereign Donald Trump — a continental Trump Organization backed by the world’s largest nuclear arsenal — but his favored imagery reflects his desire to live in this fantasy.
“The spectacle that falsifies reality is nevertheless a real product of that reality, while lived reality is materially invaded by the contemplation of the spectacle and ends up absorbing it and aligning itself with it,” the French social theorist Guy Debord wrote in his 1967 treatise “The Society of the Spectacle,” a work that feels especially relevant in an age in which mass politics is as much a contest to construct meaning as it is to decide the distribution of material goods.
If you follow the president on Truth Social or spend any amount of time on Elon Musk’s X, you’ll see endless amounts of far-right A.I. slop — computer-generated creations pulled together from the nearly infinite detritus of the internet and meant to give form to the bugbears, obsessions, wishes and desires of the reactionary imagination.
I think the military occupation of Washington, along with much of the Trump administration’s imagery about itself, serves the same semiotic purpose as that slop. It represents the world as Trump wants it to be. You could say it is a reality, but it is not yet our reality. We still have the capacity — and more important, we still have the time — to turn ourselves away from this particular vision of the real.
What I Wrote
For the last month, I have been struck by the way Trump claims ownership over the nation’s public spaces. I wrote about it this week, with some closing thoughts on what it looks like to push back against the president’s autocratic aspirations:
This is wrongheaded. Trump’s pretense to ownership of public goods and public spaces isn’t some quirk to be ignored or waited out — “There goes our Donald!” — but a direct expression of his autocratic ambitions and despotic cast of mind. We can almost see him as he sees himself, not as president of a republic — and subject to external constraints — but as an American Bonaparte (albeit more Louis Napoleon than the original) sitting astride the nation itself. Less a caretaker bound to the rhythms of constitutional time than a sovereign ruler of limitless authority.
Now Reading
Ed Pilkington on Chief Justice John Roberts, for The Guardian.
Steve Randy Waldman on polling and democracy, for his blog Interfluidity. I liked this passage in particular:
If the true public will existed as a thing that could just be measured and correctly known, we’d have no need for democracy, at least not for anything like electoral democracy. “Consultative democracy,” in which experts simply measure the true will of the public and acted correctly on its behalf, would be the obviously superior system. But the true public will does not exist. We have to construct, to constitute, one of many possible versions of it ourselves. How we constitute it will determine who we collectively are, how we will collectively understand ourselves going forward, how we act, whether we will live well or poorly or outright destroy ourselves.
Jennifer Zacharia on Israel’s war on journalists, for Boston Review.
Melinda Cooper on Trump’s “antisocial state,” for Dissent magazine.
I also found myself reading Cicero’s “On Friendship” this week. I was struck by this observation about the kind of person who cannot build meaningful relationships with others:
For who, in heaven’s name, would choose a life of the greatest wealth and abundance on condition of neither loving or being beloved by any creature? That is the sort of life tyrants endure. They, of course, can count on no fidelity, no affection, no security for the good will of any one. For them all is suspicion and anxiety; for them there is no possibility of friendship.
Photo of the Week
Another photo from my recent trip to Boston.
Now Eating: Pasta e Ceci (Italian Pasta and Chickpea Stew)
Another pasta recipe! As you can probably tell, I’m very much trying to clean out my pantry and refrigerator. With this dish, I managed to finish the last of some tomato paste and anchovies, as well as a jar of strained tomatoes and a few cans of chickpeas. As always, you can follow the recipe (from New York Times Cooking) as written, but feel free to make additions or changes as necessary. For instance, I added the tomato paste and mashed anchovies with the garlic and rosemary. I also subbed in spinach, which I already had on hand, for the escarole. And while you can’t see it in the picture, I also finished the pasta with some lemon juice, a spritz of lemon zest, and when I realized I was a little hungrier than I thought, a bit of nice tinned tuna.
Ingredients
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3 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for drizzling
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1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
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3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
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2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary
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½ teaspoon red-pepper flakes
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Kosher salt and black pepper
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1 packed cup canned whole tomatoes, drained
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1 (15-ounce) can chickpeas, rinsed
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1 cup ditalini
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4 cups roughly chopped escarole, Tuscan kale or radicchio
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Grated pecorino, for serving
Directions
Heat the oil in a large stockpot or Dutch oven over medium. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened but not taking on any color, 4 to 5 minutes. Add the garlic, rosemary and red-pepper flakes, and cook 1 minute more. Season well with salt and pepper.
Stir in the tomatoes and the chickpeas, breaking up the tomatoes with the back of a spoon or spatula and smashing about ½ cup of the beans.
Add 3 cups water and bring to a boil over high. Add the pasta and simmer, stirring often to make sure nothing sticks to the bottom of the pan, until the pasta is al dente, about 10 minutes. The water will mostly be absorbed by the pasta, but if you prefer it brothier, you can add ½ to 1 cup water and simmer until warmed through, 1 minute more. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Add the escarole and stir until wilted. Taste and adjust seasonings accordingly. Ladle into bowls and top with grated cheese and a drizzle of olive oil.
Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va.
The post The Visual Language of Trump’s Authoritarianism appeared first on New York Times.
