“The enemy is not conservatism. The enemy is not liberalism. The enemy is bullshit.” — Lars Erik Nelson.

George Orwell, having written his famous dystopian novel around 1948 about a near-total authoritarian society, reportedly transposed the last two numbers to title it 1984. Thirty-six years later, it seemed like a scenario that could play out under the most ‘liberal’ democracy. And here we are, 36 years twice removed.

Transposing numbers seems somehow quaint this time around. Americans find themselves in a context-light society, not unlike Oceania, but obsessed with the torturous crawl of events tracked microscopically, like the second hand of the clock, where the language of mainstream public discourse has been largely reduced to tweets, countertweets, and retweets. Despite President Trump’s daily bilge, often covered as news or perhaps governance, he has held on to his 40% base of loyal fans and lunatic fringe. But expansion seems unlikely. And the campaign has lurched to a grinding start. What follows are some of the choices that ‘winning’ in 2020 might dictate:

1. Run an honest campaign focused on the issues

o (Choice: lose in a landslide vs devise alternative campaign theme)

2. Alternative campaign theme: focus on character, trust

o (Choice: lose in a landslide vs devise another alternative campaign theme)

3. Another alternative campaign theme: Sow fear, division, anger, revenge

o (Choice: lose in a closer race vs add positive element)

4. Positive element: Keep America Great—the sequel to ‘MAGA’

o (Choice: lose in a closer race—it doesn’t budge beyond the uncritical faithful [see bullet 2] vs cheating)

5. Cheating. But what kind? Choices abound:

1. Tech support: the Russians (duh), Saudis, UAEmirates, Israelis – vote hacking, fake news accounts, the Mercer Family …
2. Social media clusterf**k (‘I don’t even know what an algorithm is [who knew it could be so complicated???], but it is very terrific for me and for wiii-nning-guh, and it’s done by very very tough guys. That I can tell you.’)
3. Attack the treasonous liberal, socialist bastards hell bent on destroying the white suburban housewife’s peace. Politicize every event, every critic, and attack them mercilessly with misspelled and incoherent tweets that so-called regular people (carrying AR-15s and confederate flags) can relate to.
4. The SCOTUS effect: We already had one election—in 2000—decided by a 5-4 Bush v Gore vote.
5. Keep the base fed on a steady and exclusive diet of Fox News and other hyperpartisan media affiliates (hardens the epistemic bubble and increases suspicion of ‘fake news’). Rely on rest of (‘fake’) news media to cover the daily swill of side shows in such excruciating detail that it numbs the average news consumer to a buffet-style menu of destruction, lies, bullshit, absurdity, and peril to large swaths of humanity.
6. Lie—Mark Twain said that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes (and that was before social media).
7. Saturation of noise—this is the ‘social proof’, even for media, that the world revolves around Trump’s oversized ego (which by necessity, alas, cannibalized a substantial volume of brain).
8. The Disrup-tor—Change is always good, even when it involves a sociopathic, pathologically lying narcissist, commander-in-chief of the world’s most powerful government and military, stirring the toxic geopolitical melting pot with his spare putter. As Trump said, even climate change ‘could be good’ (‘could be bad …. but it could be good!’). And it’s getting cooler soon—as soon as the pandemic disappears, one presumes.
9. Scare the elderly (especially in Florida) with dire warnings of retiree community-destroying radical liberals, like 77 year-old Joe Biden.
10. Cultivate the personality cult. Mission accomplished. This base will eagerly follow Trump off the Cliffs of Insanity. Or into an indoor arena Covid-19 superspreader event.
11. Control the flow of information—communicate only through tweets and hit-and-run questions on the way to Air Force One. Keep the Enemy of the People on their heels. Make the daily press briefing an annual event, by invitation only. Claim executive privilege over all information requests and slow things down until the headline act—SCOTUS Majority—takes the stage, bought and paid for by Mitch McConnell and the Nuclear Option (talk about a warm-up act ...).
12. Economic policies—Keep gas prices low, keep family employed (Jared and Ivanka, that is), use bully pulpit to poison stock value of companies you don’t like or who don’t like you (but I repeat myself), make tax cuts permanent, blame Mexicans and immigrants of color for radical antifa riots (i.e., street demonstrations over systemic racism), crime, division and violence, promote Trump properties, keep tax returns private (see persecution complex, bullet 10), etc.
13. Foreign policies—promote existing Trump properties and use high office to plan future business ventures, especially in countries with dictatorships, poor record-keeping and heavy-handed press intimidation; build a wall so Mexico can force Americans fleeing the North to apply for asylum in a quixotic effort to escape all this Greatness (a new twist on Montezuma’s revenge); war—real if need be, threatened otherwise, or imagined. Possible targets include: Iran, North Korea, France, Canada, Mexico, and California. Trump must have realized that attacking Iran would raise gas prices at precisely the wrong time (but that 'soft tone' was yesterday). Publicly invite dictator friends to provide ‘dirt’ on possible 2020 opponents (or more accurately, sell the farm so to speak in return for promise of said dirt), categorically deny it the next day. Also, re-define human rights to bring far right hate speech and xenophobic acts into the fold, criminalize immigration, hamstring global women’s health with abortion ban on agencies using US dollars, etc. The principle should be pretty clear: domestic policy—Trump’s business interests, re-election, avoiding criminal prosecution—is the tail wagging the foreign policy dog (a cross between a Giuliani terrier and a Pompeo pointer).
14. Continue to blatantly and with otherwise admirable chutzpah blur the lines between campaigning and governing (for those who have yet to grasp how little actual governing occurs in a Trump WH).
15. Characterize ‘cheating’ as ‘fighting back.’

This is of course a woefully inadequate list, testament to a White House where ethics are for suckers, and the only rats willing to stay on this ship of state are arsonists of democracy. Plunder and pillage, undertaken by parasites and predators, only counts as populism in a society where millions live in fear, anxiety, and economic insecurity, yet somehow, insulated by commercial and social media and access to credit, possess a tenuous grip on harsh material realities, susceptible to propaganda so crude it resembles mass psychological abuse. To which cliff is Trump sending his flock?

Said Francois La Rochefoucauld, “Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.”

In Orwellian doublespeak, such is the state of 'statecraft.'

Bill Grigsby, PhD | Eastern Oregon University

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