I moved to New York in 1989, and was shortly afterwards writing about two completely unrelated characters – John Bolton and Donald Trump. That is why the FBI raid on John Bolton’s house and office ties together three decades of separate threads, at once disturbing and reassuring. One hopes they checked his bathrooms in their alleged search for classified documents, since those were the proven archivists’ choice for President Trump’s own stash. And maybe they should check whether Bolton still has a Signal account left over from his National Security days.
Despite their fervent equation of this with the search at Mar-a-Lago, it is significant that Trump had obfuscated for months about documents he was proven to hold, while no one had requested any such material from former National Security Advisor Bolton.
Shamelessly, much of the stenographic media straight-facedly parroted the administration’s risible claim that this search was to further a legitimate investigation. Only the most gullible of MAGA supporters believe this is anything but a gratuitous display of power. The move is meant to intimidate Bolton and send a warning to anyone in the Trump Clown Tent who is having second thoughts and considering blowing the whistle. Is there an Incitatus (Roman Emperor Caligula’s horse that he appointed as Consul) waiting in the stable of Trump nominees? We should be told.
Equally, only the most short-sighted of MAGA officials could think this will cow Bolton rather than spur him into even more vociferous thoughtcrime. I have interviewed him often over the years – and profoundly disagreed with him about issues from the United Nations to the Middle East – but he does not dissimulate: he is outspoken and free with his opinions.
Even Bolton’s most fervent ideological opponents must recognise that this ham-fisted harassment will only redouble his determination to expose Trump as not sporting the most beautiful suit of gold in the world. Although one has to say that if he were to don such an outfit, it would match the tawdry tinsel that bedecks the Trumped-up Oval Office.
As president of the Foreign Press Association, I’ve hosted several press conferences with Bolton and can attest that he says what he thinks rather than accommodating or pandering to the views of others.
They might as well have put a horse’s head in Bolton’s bed. This is simply a caution against disloyalty, on a par with how, once they seized power, the Bolsheviks began persecuting their own members and former allies for thoughtcrime. It is gratifying that Bernie Sanders is standing up for Bolton on this very particular point.
Indeed, it reinforces my conclusion that the GOP are the real Bolsheviks in American politics. While for decades Democrats have fought over individual spoils of office, the hard right has concentrated on the fruits of victory. They have sought and consolidated power at every level: school boards, state and local officials, and judicial appointments. They had an agenda waiting to be implemented as soon as Trump’s populist genius came into play.
I have written about Trump’s abject business failures and scams since the 1990s, bemused at how the press fawned over him. Almost 30 years ago, he secured the firing of financial analyst Marvin Roffman for showing how shaky Trump’s casino empire was – as was shortly demonstrated when it failed. In what became a familiar pattern, Trump litigated, lost and settled. But the details were buried under the recurrent amnesia of the media under such pressures. Trump has shown few signs of an overarching ideology other than rampant egoism, fuelled by his grab bag of prejudices and pet hates – exactly what we might expect from an underqualified, money-grubbing suburban son of a rich Nazi sympathiser.
But as Mao said about indoctrinating the peasantry, it was a blank sheet on which he could write the most “beautiful characters”. He is surrounded by scribes who are willing to map out a pointillist policy from all his scattered dotty prejudices, drafting executive orders that pander to his meandering megalomania while implementing their own much more structured and sinister programme. One doubts he picked up his love for the Confederacy from neighbours in Queens or even at Manhattan nightclubs, but some in his entourage have obviously persuaded him that it was a chic posture to adopt.
Trump does not follow a traditional conservative plan, nor one that connects the dots into any coherent whole. For decades, in their conservative phase, neoliberals who dominated the world’s financial institutions and governments ruined nations by insisting on the removal of tariff barriers and excluding government intervention from business. Trump’s populism turns that on its head, evoking nationalist, jingoistic and racist fervour to justify trade barriers and tariffs, celebrating the government taking part ownership of Intel and intervening directly on behalf of favoured corporations. Instead of nationalising the media, he co-opted their venal owners; instead of direct state control of institutions like universities, he browbeat compliant boards – which often overlap with his crony corporate world. The new rule is no longer the “too big to fail” principle abandoned in the Reagan-Thatcher years, but rather “too loyal to fail”.
In some ways, this is more worrying than an outright reactionary policy. He is not one for literary references, but two together seem to augur the future in works that epitomise the times even more than ever. Lewis Carroll, in a prescient discussion of the meaning of words, has Humpty Dumpty summarising: “The question is, which is to be master – that’s all.” And the purpose, in Stephen Miller’s convincing avatar of Orwell’s O’Brien in 1984, is clear: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”
Those who come for your immigrant neighbour will come for you – just as they came for Bolton – and they will come for any critical media.
