I see the story about Trump directing the government to use Federal money to buy nakedly political ads, lightly disguised as Public Service Announcements.
asserted
Trump → see → Announcements
You see those stories too, of course.
asserted
You → see → course
Like me you’re outraged and shocked at the corruption.
asserted
you → ’re → corruption
Like me you fret over who, if anyone, is going to put a stop to it.
asserted
who → fret → it
But when I see it, there’s something else: déjà vu.
asserted
I → see → it
My mind casts back to Venezuela 25 years ago—when our democracy was beginning to totter—and looks for parallels.
asserted
democracy → cast → parallels
I remember the cadenas—when Hugo Chávez started commandeering air time on private broadcasters for nakedly political harangues.
asserted
Chávez → remember → harangues
The Venezuelan governments had always reserved the right to issue all-channel broadcasts, mostly invoked in case of natural disasters.
asserted
governments → reserve → disasters
Just like the U.S. government has always run PSAs, for legitimate purposes.
asserted
government → run → purposes
The move, in both cases, is the same: manhandle some power that has always been in the books and turn it nakedly political, disfiguring it in the process.
asserted
that → manhandle → process
Look, I realize that Hugo Chávez, the socialist revolutionary, has exactly nothing in common ideologically with Donald Trump, the hard right reactionary.
asserted
Chávez → look → Trump
But then, why is watching American news such a minefield for the Venezuelan exile memory?
asserted
minefield → watch → memory
Because, I think, what Chávez and Trump share matters much more.
asserted
share → think → what
They share a visceral sense of power—what it is, and what it means to wield it.
asserted
it → share → it
For Trump, like for Chávez, the only kind of power worth having is untrammeled power.
asserted
kind → have → power
Power with an asterisk holds no appeal to him.
asserted
Power → hold → him
Power within-agreed-bounds, power that must account for itself, power that is divided or circumscribed or in any way hemmed in by what anybody else thinks, is no power at all.
asserted
anybody → agree → what
The layers and layers of constraints that constitutionalists and scholars and lawyers always want to wrap power in are, to them, the negation of power.
asserted
constitutionalists → want → power
In Spanish, we have a word for the man who wields power in this way: caudillo.
asserted
who → have → way
Limply glossed as “strongman,” a caudillo is so much more: a messianic figure locked in a strange, quasi-mystical transaction with his followers.
asserted
caudillo → gloss → followers
In a famous column, Carlos Alberto Montaner described it as an “abdication” of people’s sovereignty: “the people, exhausted by the failure of the system … find an illuminated man and deposit in him all the power needed to fix the problems that stubbornly refused to be fixed by other means.”
asserted
that → describe → means
What people like Trump, and Chávez before him, grasp is the atavistic thirst that people have for a caudillo.
asserted
people → grasp → caudillo
That some people want to be led this way, that they simply don’t buy the story that limited power can solve their problems.
asserted
power → want → problems
Those people are not simply there to be exploited.
asserted
people → exploit → ?
The caudillo shares their view of the problem and makes his pitch: only I can fix it.
asserted
I → share → it
The caudillo and his followers share a transcendent goal: to establish untrammeled power, first, in order to put all downstream objectives within reach.
asserted
caudillo → share → reach
Which is why Trump, like Chávez before him, seems to spend so much time on symbolic fights about who is allowed to say “no” to him.
asserted
who → seem → him
Otherwise inexplicable controversies fall into focus when you see them in this light.
asserted
you → fall → light
The decision to bulldoze the White House East Wing, and threaten to do the same to the Kennedy Center, seem like strange side-quests in a normal political frame.
asserted
decision → bulldoze → frame
But the caudillo’s frame is not normal, and he finds establishing that no-one is allowed to stand in his way infinitely more important than the minutiae of governing.
asserted
one → find → governing
The bizarre fight over the naming of the Kennedy Center is not, then, a sideshow: it’s the center of Trump’s program, a determined push to establish power fully unconstrained by law, or precedent, or common sense.
asserted
it → ’ → law
These types of symbolic fights were constant in the early years of chavismo, and they served the same goal.
asserted
they → serve → goal
At one point, Chávez decided he was going to change the Venezuelan Coat of Arms because his elementary-school-aged child told him to, and he did it: the stupid little horse now runs towards the glorious revolutionary left, rather than towards the right, like it used to.
asserted
it → decide → right
Which might sound like an insane little Venezuelan culture war detail, except it wasn’t a detail: the caudillo must exercise power idiosyncratically just to make it plain to everyone that it is his personal will that’s being enacted, and not anyone else’s.
uncertain
that → sound → everyone
Seeing the stable democracy you grew up in sputter and fall apart does things to a person.
asserted
you → see → person
I don’t follow Venezuelan politics closely anymore, but Venezuelan politics follow me.
asserted
politics → follow → me
The loss stalks me every time I open the news.
asserted
I → stalk → news
And look, I know.
asserted
I → look → ?
Believe me, I understand that projecting my own lived trauma onto the very different reality of 21st century America is foolish and intellectually indefensible.
asserted
projecting → believe → America
I seldom voice the parallels as I notice them, because I don’t want to come across as arrogant, or dismissive, or Cassandraish.
asserted
I → voice → them
…and 26 more, not listed.
The Aporia
