Theater of the Absurd in DC: Team Trump, Birthday Candles and Fist Bumps
By Carl Davidson
LeftLinks Weekly, June 14, 2024
Trump returned to DC this week to visit the GOP's team in Congress. To say 'times have changed' would win us an Albert Camus award as masters of understatement. For those who haven't read Camus’s classic, 'The Stranger,' it opens with a bleak sentence, 'Mother died today.' The French author was a master of this minimalist wording throughout his works.
There's another reason to bring up Camus this week. He was noteworthy for a brand of existentialism tagged as the ‘philosophy of the absurd.’ In a nutshell: Our lives have no intrinsic meaning. And when we face that bare concept, a door opens. We can give our lives meaning through engagement and commitment to values we can choose to cherish, especially solidarity and resistance to injustice. We can do so authentically or not; the choice is ours, but we are responsible for it.
Trump's appearance 'somewhere near' the Capitol was itself a bit absurd. It seems he wanted to get near the scene of the crimes of Jan.6, 2021, but still keep a safe distance. Perhaps he worried about what the Capitol police might do in a more authentic return.
In any case, the day’s best display of absurdity and inauthenticity came from the GOP's Senators and Representatives holding a party for ‘The Donald.’ From some in attendance, we got the message that all was forgiven. From others, what crimes? There was nothing to forgive. Only praise was in order. Even Mitch McConnell who had accused Trump of plotting insurrection and being unfit for the Presidency, was all smiles and delivering a fist bump. Only two GOPers failed to show up, Sens. Susan Collins (ME) and Lisa Murkowski (AL). They had 'previous schedule conflicts,' which matches the Camus understatement test, if not one for authenticity.
The celebratory meeting also featured a spirited group singing of 'Happy Birthday' to the mob-boss-in-chief (we're not kidding). A cake with vanilla icing (we're told) appeared with a '45' candle. But at just the right moment, a MAGA hand entered and plunked a '47' candle down next to it. The boss grinned and beamed. Everyone cheered. Maybe half of those cheering had been running for their lives during the Jan. 6 violence. And maybe another half left too, but they were in cahoots on the day's plot and were likely only worried about fallout from its impending failure.
But we shouldn't take this theater of the absurd lightly. Trump was engaged in the serious business required to unite a fascist bloc, in this case implementing the Führerprinzip, or leadership principle. Its core is the medieval concept of fealty, a pledge of loyalty to an exalted person, not to any constitution or platform. It was often demonstrated by 'kissing the ring' of the one to whom fealty is pledged. For Hitler, a ring was unlikely. A Seig Heil, Mein Führer! would do. For Trump, we get fist bumps, vanilla icing, and birthday candles.
The reason for this now? To wage his next round of battle between this week and November, Trump needed assurances that there were no hidden Liz Cheneys he needed to worry about. The one not hidden was trouble enough. Trump grew his power, first, by hardening the core and purging anyone with a spine to oppose him.
Trump had a second task to accomplish, but this one was more secretive.
During his visit to D.C., Trump also paid a visit to the Business Roundtable, an elite corporate and finance capital group whose members include top oligarchs like Tim Cook of Apple and Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase. Here the roles were not quite the same. Trump was not likely to convince this crew to kiss any ring or anything else. While he would welcome their support, their neutrality would be acceptable. After all, his tax cuts in his earlier round had made them all much more wealthy.
Here's the dilemma for both the Business Roundtable crew and us: For them, will the implementation of Trump's 'Project 2025' fascism cause more opposition, instability, insurgency, and revolt than it seeks to outlaw and suppress? Will some of them, as operatives of the 'Deep State,' be targeted too? They should think deeply. For us, do we have a hard enough and wise enough core to block Trump's fascist plan and then build and defend our left bloc, the Justice Dems plus Bernie, at the same time? Can we effectively press Biden to get or impose a ceasefire in Gaza? Can we fire up all the middle forces to deepen their organizations and do the right thing in November? The questions are existential, and they require both engagement and commitment from us to deliver authentic answers.