Day 136: The Revolution Eats its Children

 

One of the things that I have pointed out previously in this blog is that one of MAGA's guiding principles is that "we don't need no fancy book learnin'" as a 21st-century nation. From a profoundly stupid man as president to a profoundly brain-addled anti-science figure as head of Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, and the rest in between (such as FEMA head David Richardson being unfamiliar with hurricane season), the entirety of Team Trump is built upon the idea that politics is merely a matter of uninformed opinion.

As someone who has formerly studied politics, this attitude offends me in its, well, stupidity.  As any political scientist will confess, political science is less a science than it is a form of meta-science. Whenever one has to deal with something human, the rules aren't made of steel but of plastic because oft irrational human emotion can be as powerful a motive force as hard data. Hence, why we shouldn't call it political science as much as political alchemy.  😁 But to say that is NOT to say that there aren't certain principles that are axiomatic, even if they may manifest themselves differently in different places and times.  

One such principle is the idea that a revolution always eats its children. While the origin is not entirely certain, scholars point out that Pierre Vergniaud, a noted French lawyer and statesman during the French Revolution, quipped that "Revolution, like Saturn, devours its children." When he said that, he was specifically referencing the increasing in-fighting and blood-letting of the French Revolution. However, the general rationale behind those words is that when a political movement breaks all the rules in its wild-eyed quest for utopia, it is inevitable that at some point even the bonds of shared purpose will be broken, leading to the destruction of the very people who made the revolution possible.

I bring this up in light of today's dramatic "bromance" breakup between Donald Trump and Elon Musk.  What began as a disagreement concerning the so-called "Big Beautiful Bill" has now escalated into a meanspirited personal battle being waged on public platforms.  As the New Zork Times relates: 

The unlikely alliance of two mercurial billionaires deteriorated in remarkably swift and public fashion over the course of a few hours on Thursday, as Elon Musk and President Trump sniped at each other from their own social media platforms, escalating their feud with incendiary attacks over matters significant and petty.

What started as simply a fight over Mr. Trump’s domestic policy bill mushroomed into who deserved more credit for Mr. Trump’s election victory, why Mr. Musk did not cover up his black eye with makeup during an Oval Office appearance last week and Mr. Trump’s abrupt drop in support for a Musk associate nominated to lead NASA.

Their sparring swiftly degenerated into threats on social media, as Mr. Trump questioned whether the government should cut its billions of dollars in contracts with Mr. Musk’s companies, and Mr. Musk claimed that there were references to Mr. Trump in government documents about the financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein while also seemingly approving of calls for Mr. Trump to be impeached.

 

This turn of events should not surprise anyone outside of MAGA as we were always going to end up here. Why? Because a revolution always eats its children. 

One of the many things that annoys me about television pundits in the corporate media is how everything is "conservative" if it isn't part of the Bernie Sanders left. I exaggerate a bit, of course, but not by much.  So whenever I heard MAGA being labeled as a conservative movement, I wanted to bang my head on the wall because MAGA is not conservative, and never was. While it is true that MAGA has sprung, like weeds, inside a conservative garden of ideas, Trump and his minions have long since abandoned any pretense of being conservative. Trump himself, in a 2016 radio interview, proclaimed that he was not conservative, and believed conservatives were part of the problem with Washington DC. He even went so far as to say that he didn't want conservatives voting for him! (This was when he was having a devil of the time getting conservatives to vote for him in the 2016 primary.) While Trump has proven himself to be a congenital liar, on this point he was telling the truth.

MAGA is not a conservative movement. Rather, it is a revolutionary one. Conservatives, by definition, seek to "conserve" what is best about society. Born of Edmund Burke's resistance to the depredations of the French Revolution, conservatives reject an unbridled revolutionary spirit that often desires to 'burn it all down" as it tilts at societal windmills. (Interestingly, the American Revolution operated quite differently for reasons that I won't go into here.)  MAGA, on the other hand, has proven itself addicted to revolutionary destruction, something Elon Musk's DOGE has exemplified in spades, particularly in its zeal to shutter crucial government agencies for the crime of being "woke", agencies that have long served the republic for its betterment despite the political fads of the moment.  Of course, Trump's larger MAGA movement is as guilty, from its attacks on bedrock institutions of higher learning, such as the fight between it and Harvard, to Trump shattering international norms with his unprovoked trade war, to his siding with America's traditional enemies while breaking faith with allies, as well as his attack on the American judiciary, and his open desire to be an unconstitutional dictator.  None of this is "conservative." It is all revolutionary, a break from historical American norms of politics and a plunge into an unknown future determined not by codified constitutional principles, but by the mercurial whims of a dictator. There is more Robespierre in Trump than there is Burke. 

And so we come back to Vergniaud's observation. As a revolutionary movement divorced from any clearly defined principles, the MAGA revolution has become a wild, unpredictable beast for those attempting to ride upon its back. Hence, Musk's fall from grace into Trump's maw.  Musk, as a clear political neophyte, didn't understand how these things work. Insulated by wealth and an army of corporate yes-men, Musk believed he was indispensable to the revolution, not understanding that a revolution only values itself.  Which, of course, is also a warning for Trump.  He might be riding the revolutionary beast's back at the moment, but it only takes a slight slip with the reins for Trump to be thrown from his perch, something highlighted by Musk's amplification of calls for Trump's impeachment. 

This is why many successful revolutions often devolve into civil war as revolution becomes a cause in itself, compelling its members to more and more extreme acts of fealty to the revolutionary fervor as a way of proving their usefulness. The Golden Cafe needs its sacrifices, after all. 

So, what happens next with this potential nadir of the MAGA revolution, one a mere 136 days since the start of its second chapter? At a minimum, this could be an election nightmare for the GOP. We have already seen how Musk, like a kid with a pop gun, is not above popping off politically and throwing cash at any race he thinks will advance his vision of the MAGA revolution. What happens if Musk goes rogue and begins funding primary challengers to Republicans who remain loyal to the Trumpian Reign of Terror? Likewise, what happens if Trump unleashes his government stooges who control pivotal points of power, such as the Justice Department, to persecute (prosecute?) those who break with the White House and rally around Musk's flag, as Stephen Miller's wife has done?  Nothing good for the GOP, obviously. This is something Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has learned as his reckless spending bill crumbled to ash in a matter of days because of the Trump-Musk feud. 

I am particularly interested to see how the MAGA faithful will process this. Based on tonight's survey of social media, the MAGA revolutionaries are predictably splitting like a coconut cracked by a machete, which is to say, sharp edges and spilled milk everywhere. If other revolutionary crackups are to go by, this is not going to end well for the movement. We shall see.

Let me conclude with another axiom that I believe applies to these times. It goes, "When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a king. The palace becomes a circus." Such is a White House in the throws of an unprincipled, out-of-control revolution led by the worst of us.