Failing Upwards
If you want to understand what happened, you have to imagine this guy as a character in a series of Scorsese movies, each of which chronicles his downfall and ends with his ruin. In the first film, set in the 1970s (think Mean Streets), he is introduced as the talentless son of a New York real estate developer whose fraudulent empire flourishes amid rampant political corruption. He dodges the draft, but a mix of debt, drugs and STDs is shaping up to become "his personal Vietnam." In the second film, set in the 1980s (think Goodfellas), he is still surrounded by some of his old contacts. He has invested his inheritance in his own real estate business, which is soon headed for bankruptcy. Since he is no longer paying any bills, his creditors take him to court, but he hires some shady lawyers to dig up dirt on the court staff and judges. In the third film, set in the 1990s (think Casino), he is still appealing the old cases, but has long stopped paying his lawyers. Instead, he has secured a huge bank loan and taken over a chain of gambling establishments. Again, he is not paying his contractors or employees, starts to make huge losses and stops servicing his loans. But he has befriended a top mafia lawyer who promises to take care of his legal issues by going directly after a few Attorneys General. In the fourth and fifth film, set in the 2000s and 2010s, he is an airline tycoon, then a television host, and the exact same scheme – plus a few instances of sexual assault and a few important political friendships – keeps escalating further and further. He is trapped in a cascade of bankruptcies and has become a major celebrity, most famous for playing a billionaire on national TV and falsifying business records in real life. Today, we are in the sixth or seventh film (which Scorsese never made). To stay out of prison, his only remaining option was to run for President – three times. In the process, he has stolen classified documents, interfered in a federal election, incited a violent insurrection and buried his ex-wife on his own golf course. What had started as an innocent crime spree driven by ignorance and incompetence has spiraled into a highly premeditated nationwide denial-of-service attack on the American judiciary. Most of his lawyers have been disbarred or indicted, and the remaining ones are suing him for legal fees. But by now he owns six justices on the Supreme Court, has pledged to dissolve the FBI, and is ready to completely dismantle the Constitution of the United States. Meanwhile, we are being told that a man without convictions cannot possibly be a convicted fascist, which is certainly true. A man without convictions becomes a fascist by convenience – or, like in this case, by necessity.
This is the story of Donald J. Trump. A recursive chain of falling dominoes that never comes to a halt. A collapsing house of cards that keeps shattering into fractals. The pure force of capitalist deterritorialization, repeatedly applied to itself. A single person blowing the stack of a democracy that was never tail-call optimized, unable to inline or unroll decades' worth of prior crimes. The ultimate hack, no skills required. Loser takes all. This is probably the biggest story of the 21st century, the biggest discovery since General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. The Man Who Showed The World That Actions Have No Consequences And There Is No Such Thing As Justice.