From TPM Reader ES …

I totally agree with your last post’s insights. Trump’s theater of subservience is here to affirm and habituate people to the politics of authoritarianism.

I’d add two things: maybe you’ve read it back in the day, but one of the founding texts on the topic is La Boëtie’s “Discourse on Voluntary Servitude.” It’s from like 1570. He avoided it being published while he was alive because case in point. It’s short and marvelous and very tranchant. In it he notes that tyrants can only survive with the consent of those they rule over. As such they often try to coopt the elites into their courtiers, both to prevent challenges and to give the spectacle of adhesion to the populace. This was written under absolute monarchy. It’s still current. 

From TPM Reader EA …

You are totally correct that Trump’s style of dominance politics demands that everyone around him surrender their dignity. But it’s wrong to call him a strongman, because his demand is really a sign of his utter weakness. I have never seen a more psychically fragile, pathetic U.S. President, and doubt if there was ever a weaker one.

We talk a lot, rightly, about how Democrats are often instinctively cautious about going on the political attack. I just got a mass-email press release from the Biden campaign that is part of their “felon” push and the jousting in the lead up to the debate. I don’t have anything particular to add beside, jeez, this is intense stuff, by which I mean not “intense” in the slangish mean of “good” but intense. Like totally going off. One needs to do this with a full spectrum approach, in press conferences, ads, surrogates etc. But if this press release is any measure, they’re not holding back.

Text after the jump … (links are the ones that came embedded in the email).

A quick update on our weekend site upgrade (see posts below). We’ve got the new system up and running. Thank you so much for your indulgence over the weekend. We really appreciate it. We’re still working to get the comments widget on the story pages back up and running. That should be up soon. Otherwise, on the reader end, everything should be back to the way it was and, under the hood, much better than it was.

Thanks again for your patience.

Just a reminder that we are currently doing a major site upgrade, specifically tied to our membership system, and no one can currently log in to the site. If you’re a member there’s an email about this in your inbox that you should have received yesterday. And you can see the post two posts down in the Editors’ Blog. This is a weekend long project. As noted below, we apologize for the inconvenience. But I assure you it’s both necessary and worthwhile. You don’t need to change your password. There’s no technical issue with the log in. It’s just not available through most of this weekend.

In politics and in our personal lives we are often spinning ourselves in circles searching for explanations of the inexplicable when a bit of comparative analysis would do us wonders. For Democrats an abiding question of the Biden presidency, especially in 2024, is this: why hasn’t Joe Biden gotten more credit for the roaring 20s economy? Growth is steady, unemployment is at historic lows, inflation has fallen dramatically, wages are rising. Each rosy data point purports to have a context which shows it isn’t all its cracked up to be. And some of those contexts bear consideration. But the G-7 summit in Italy this last week is perhaps the most clarifying context.

A slew of headlines greeted Donald Trump’s return to Capitol Hill yesterday. “Triumphant return” in the words of AP and others, Trump’s “flex” in the words of Axios. Others less generously, including TPM, heralded Trump’s “return to the scene of the crime.” And with Trump, characteristically, there are many crimes to choose from, not just January 6th, his greatest crime, but the fact that this was his first big get together since being convicted of 34 felonies and earning his new first name: “Convicted Felon.” What all seemed to agree on is that it was a “Unity Rally.” But I think there was both more and less to it than that.

First, it was some mix of surprisng and revealing how little of the first round of press coverage noted the very Pyongyang-on-Capitol Hill vibe of these events, right down to the set piece press opportunities with grown men and women from the Senate manically clapping like seals as Trump walks into the room, interviews where they express their hopes that Trump will come and lead them again. Our friend Aaron Rupar really seemed to have his eyes open for this, and he captured it in this video.