Here Comes Subservistocracy

The goal of the our ruling regime is to make us all subservient to the leader. Every other possible priority is not just secondary, there are no other priorities. None. Lots of smug economics snobs right now are busy saying that He doesn't understand economics. True, he doesn't. But that misses the point in a very misleading and dangerous way. He doesn't care about the state of the economy. Nobody says "He doesn't understand international development or he wouldn't have ended all US international assistance" because we know intuitively that He doesn't care about international development. People who are simply stupid and people who are obsessively focused on only one priority need to be managed in very different ways and we need to be clear on the difference. The only thing He cares about is making as many people and institutions subservient to him personally as quickly as He can. Extremely high tariffs are a very good way to do that.

The US has focused on what economists call "growth" for the last century and a half. Both political parties have agreed that that goal is to "create more wealth" which more precisely just means more money is spent. The more money is spent the higher the growth. Both major parties agree. The Democrats want it to be more evenly distributed, the Republican leadership want it to go to the ultra rich, but the goal is more money in circulation being spent. Most policy makers in the world actively or passively pursue this goal, but there is not universal agreement. For example, there are those who prefer "degrowth" which is how to create a better life, more freedom, happiness, health etc for less money in the economy. But in the US, this is a very niche view.

Every president has worked hard for economic growth without questioning it. We can see the depth of this national consensus by how mystified all educated people are by these extremely high tariffs, and the fact that the percentages don't make sense, and came from a simple and pointless formula of trade surplus divided by exports for each country, even the uninhabited and low income countries. But obsessing about how ill-advised or funny this is conceals their main point. Although terrible for economic growth and the fact that it will cause a recession, these crazy high tariffs will allow him to coerce subservience from those willing to give it. He is doing the same thing with every possible method he can.

He wants subservience. It is not that he wants power for policy or even some specific grand vision. He wants more money and bigger and more luxurious buildings in ever more prestigious addresses because for him they symbolize dominance. And he wants dominance not in a general way but specifically over people, most of all people who he believes have wronged him in some way. Like so many men with fragile egos, he has a pathological fear of being looked down upon, of being held in contempt by people who think they are better than him. He must be the strongest, most powerful, on top. Like all people who suffer in this way, he is very susceptible to flattery which is why the Kremlin has been so successful in keeping him as their asset. But as his responsibility and power increases by virtue of being President and it is impossible to simply ignore him, he gets called out. His goal is to use whatever means he can to force submission upon those who have or could call him out, who behave honorably, or even those who live their lives independent of his dominance. That is the goal of these tariffs.

They will create an endless stream of supplicants, a feature of all royal court throughout history, the more tyrannical and arbitrary the monarch, the more supplicants. Tyrants love subservience and supplicants. An incredible number of businesses, careers and livelihoods will be destroyed by these tariffs. An endless collection of individuals in the US and around the world are frantically at this moment trying to figure out how best to make a quiet approach to seek relief and exemption. His in-group cabal will come up with ever more insidious ways to apply pressure beyond tariffs and federal firings, how to distribute favor to those who obey, and how to fracture those who cooperate against him.

This is a new way to run the US government; we have never been a subservistocracy; but setting it up is dependent on a couple of things. The first is that people who have voted Republican do not now and will not in the future understand what is happening, that they have been sufficiently isolated within their protected silos that they will not become a threat; they will be told who to blame for the suffering they will endure because of this and they will oblige by blaming whichever group or groups are designated.

The second thing thing this world view and way of operating depends on is the bet that they can end democracy soon. If the midterm elections are competitive, they will lose control of Congress. That won't just slow them down or make things complicated, that will most likely put them in jail for the rest of their lives. And they know that. Which is why they are working hard to prevent a threat from the ballot box.

The antidote to this is organizing and cooperating. For example, He is singling out big law firms who have represented plaintiffs against him and making it impossible for them to conduct their business in various ways. The solution would be for law firms to work together not to be subservient, and to punish those who individually try to cut deals. The same goes with universities, all are or will face coercion and some like Columbia University in New York, caved pretty quickly. The solution is for them to unite and organize just like workers unionizing. But just like unions, the other side will work hard to break their discipline and reward those individuals, law firms, universities, companies, or institutions that cave and punish those that try to stay strong. And organizing to prevent submission to these tariffs and the many other methods of coercion that they create daily has many other benefits. For example, it can be turned to voter turnout. And extremely high voter turnout will be the only thing that will save US democracy.

Subservistocracy is so bleak because its method of implementation is division and once implemented, it must expand and grow. Nobody is allowed to be independent from it. It will eventually find and crush everybody, even those who don't want to be political and even eventually its biggest fans. So I don't want to be Mr. Cranky Buzzkill over here. But what worries me about all the Ferris Bueller's Day Off clips about the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and the penguin memes about the tariffs on the uninhabited Heard and McDonald Islands is that people may not understand the actual purpose of these tariffs.

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Thanks. Sorry for all the bleakness. Please comment below if so motivated. I am not much on social media other than Mastodon @mmm@mastodon.sdf.org but some people prefer to comment on other platforms, and no problem if you do, but please post with #Subservistocracy. For each of these posts I write, I will post a relevant hashtag to see if I can follow the conversations wherever you take them. Also I have set up accounts on Ticktock and Instagram, and will post there when I post here. Thank you, particularly to all the people have forwarded and subscribed. I'd say I'm humbled, but I'm not, in fact I don't really know what that means. I'm just happy about it. And when you see people posting or being all "OMG WTF he doesn't understand economics!" Please throw this link at them or this hashtag #subservistocracy.