Big Dick Energy

CHAOS & THE MANAGEMENT OF EXPECTATIONS

The same day he rolled back his tariff initiative, Trump signed a presidential memorandum revoking Christopher Krebs’ security clearance, and announcing an investigation into Krebs’ previous time in government. You could be forgiven if your reaction is, Who? It’s pretty much inside baseball. You need to read the tea leaves.

Chris Krebs is a cybersecurity guy. He worked for Homeland Security in the first Trump administration, as director of Protection and Programs, which later became Cybersecurity and Infrastructure - abbreviated CISA. He fell foul of Trump in late 2020, after the election, when Sidney Powell and other Trump allies began promoting election fraud conspiracies, which Krebs called “either unsubstantiated or technically incoherent.” He was fired, of course, for not toeing the party line. Now, they’re coming for their pound of flesh.

You might be wondering, why did it take so long? Or, four years after the fact, why bother? You’re missing the point. This is an alternate universe. We’re essentially living inside Trump’s dementia. It’s worth looking at the tariff clusterfuck, to see what we might make of this. The roll-out was widely derided, with its chart of accounts in primary colors, but chalk that up to hostility. The market reaction, though, was predictable. The really interesting thing wasn’t the Rose Garden presentation, or the major index meltdown, the really interesting thing was how MAGA put themselves through impossibly gymnastic contortions to rationalize what was happening. As performance art, it was jaw-dropping.

The most astonishing argument I heard was that tariff reform was going to restore American masculinity. I had to puzzle this one through, because it doesn’t immediately present, it’s not at all self-explanatory. Here’s how it goes. That job title you’ve got, as a project manager, sitting in front of a computer, isn’t a real job - it’s a sissy job, it’s emasculating. We’re going to get you a job in a factory, making something of real value, like steel. You’re going to bang a hammer, and forge the future. Which sounds a little, to me, like Soviet man, the future Stalin envisioned for the Russian worker. And the corollary, that management - the elite, the educated - are parasites.

And then, when Trump reversed himself, after Treasury securities started to tank, and created genuine panic, in the moneyed class, the rationale got even more tortured. Now, it was the Art of the Deal. The fact that nobody had come to the table, or even reserved a chair, was brushed aside. You’re seriously thinking, What the fuck? Who are these people, and what are they smoking? This guy, who ran a casino into the ground, is a genius negotiator.

Then, a counter-narrative bubbles up out of the zeitgeist. It develops that Trump is actually humiliated by the tariff reversal. It’s been forced on him. He’s in a rage. The enablers at court are terrified. And one of them gets the sudden bright idea that the prospect of vengeance will distract him, and turn his fury into glee. They slip the paper across his desk. Krebs. With all the bullet points. I kid you not.

This is actual content, from the Fact Sheet released by the White House:

A significant bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his government authority

Recruited and coerced major social media platforms

Blinded the public to the Hunter Biden laptop controversy

Censorship of election information, falsely denied the 2020 election was rigged and stolen

COVID-19, attempting to discredit widely shared views

It’s a Greatest Hits. Who wrote this, Mike Lindell? And then they actually put it out, as if it were a statement of agreed standards, like the metric system.

It’s hard not to think of it as giving a baby a rattle. Or a teething ring. You can’t make this stuff up.