The Return of the Tower of Babel, Chapter Six, Saturnalia, Part 1
Rogue Software
Chapter Six
Saturnalia
1. ROGUE SOFTWARE
Trying to get a bead on Donald Trump’s behavior requires multiple levels of interpretation. Anyone’s behavior does, but here we are dealing with a highly functional multiple personality and its expression, performance, and self-parody through not only its own intentional and unconscious psychodynamics but the disguises and masks by which it imposes its needs and desires. On top of that is his ability to create egregores and then continually shift his relationship to them.
I won’t try to sort all that out, though psychologists, sociologists, and homeopaths have made a cottage industry of diagnosing at a distance: acute narcissism, borderline personality, sociopathology, germophobia, syphilitic miasm, Fluoric Acid, wounded child—an individual so highly traumatized that he cannot distinguish between pain and pleasure in himself, so he has zero capacity to feel empathy for others. In addition, his lying is so instinctive and endemic that journalists counted over 30,000 of them during his time in office, meaning multiple untruths per day. The deeply symptomatic nature of this trait means that he periodically loses the ability to tell the difference between a lie and reality, again Fluoric Acid.
New York Times journalist Carlos Lozada describes fellow Times journalist Maggie Haberman, a rare Trump whisperer among non-MAGA writers, putting him on her “couch”:
[She] recalls an interview with Trump in which he muses that talking to her is like talking to his psychiatrist. Haberman, a New York Times reporter, dismisses the line as a “meaningless” attempt at flattery. “He treats everyone like they are his psychiatrist,” she writes. Even so, “Confidence Man” constitutes a study of Trump’s “personality and character traits,” as Haberman affirms. She writes of his stunted emotional development, of the loneliness “that always seemed to be stalking him,” of the “emotional balm” that campaign rallies provide for him, of how he displays “both the thickest and thinnest skin” of any public figure she has covered, of his tendency to live in the moment yet inhabit an “eternal past” full of unquenchable grievance and of his “irrepressible self-destructive streak.” Haberman concludes that her subject is “a narcissistic drama seeker who covered a fragile ego with a bullying impulse.”1
But nearly half the population of the United States and a fair portion of the rest of the world didn’t just fall for a miasmatic madman and mental patient. He was an effective businessman (or marketer and promoter, depending on your definition), an extraordinary politician, instinctive authoritarian, and, despite a lack of nuanced knowledge, intellectual depth, or belief in anything other than his own accomplishments, executed much of the agenda of the evangelical Right, conservative Wall Street, and disenfranchised mid-America such that they saw not a sociopath or borderline personality but a warrior able to overcome his own flaws and defects to deliver the sorts of results that none of his more sophisticated Republican colleagues could come close to. Anyone is lovable to those who love him and, to his admirers and supporters, Trump was a lovable magician. You can diagnose him till those proverbial cows come home, but you will end up with the flatland version, lacking dimensionality. Add his own sense of irony and strategic self-satire, and you have a black swan. All this needs to be taken into account, as well as my own lampoon in Chapter One. The trouble with caricatures is that they only get smaller and smaller, while their target expands and dimensonalizes.
Despite polling to the contrary, POTUS 45 was confident of a second Electoral College victory and term. The polls tended to be light on his loyal base, for he was an occult, neo-Rosicrucian presence. Much as he didn’t plan to win in 2016 and made none of the usual preparations for moving into the White House and carrying out campaign promises on Day One, he didn’t have a backup plan for losing and departing in 2020, certainly not with an opponent like Sleepy Joe. In the closing days of the campaign, he could feel the energy building again on his behalf, particularly in swing states like Ohio and Florida. Inwardly he was gloating, preparing a new clip of jibes for the pollsters, liberals, and Never Trumpers who had underestimated him again. He was probably plotting exquisite Machiavellian and Sadian vengeance on his enemies. All election night he led. His base was partying like it was 2016, or 1984. He was ascending in his glory, an incarnate Washington, a modern Alexander the Great.
Then came “The Steal”: “hacked” voting machines, zombie ballots, rogue software, stealth crews, purloined cartons, bamboo fibers, Biden bundles, Smartmatic swarms, Dominion dumps, Chinese hacks, grabby Nest thermostats, Italian and Deep State space satellites, malware bankrolled by a late Venezuelan dictator, an Olympian supercloud dubbed “The Hammer,” and Scorecard software that switched “Trump” electrons into “Biden” positrons and then triple-punched them.
It was an immaculate deception—systemic fraud at unprecedented scale.
It was more truly a response to Trump himself as well as a quirk of pandemic voting habits. Republicans, especially his MAGA branch, preferred to vote in person on Election Day like attending church. Democrats favored absentee ballots: separation of church and state. Trump was warned by advisors not to declare victory under a Red Mirage, but he was hellbent, and not just on November 3rd. He had planned months earlier to declare victory on election night regardless of the count, possession being nine-tenths of the law or of something. Mere ballots didn’t faze him; they were the sideshow. It was always political theater more than politics. In fact, he didn’t understand politics as opposed to performance and personality, internationally either. That’s why he was convinced later that he could get Putin to stop his war in Ukraine in 24 hours. He could stop the performance and personality, do a theatrical conciliation and handover (as with the Taliban) and then fake the tanks and missiles.
So, control over announced results were the whole game. It didn’t matter how many clicks were made on whoever’s behalf; a single click was all that counted—the last. You could declare whatever number you wanted and challenge anyone else’s. The arena was egregores, not votes.
“What people need to understand,” said his niece Mary Trump in an MSNBC interview, “is that Donald doesn’t believe he should be denied anything he wants.”2
That was a mistake on his part. Declaring a strategy ahead of time makes it harder to use effectively afterward. Of course, the Election was “fixed”; either Trump won legitimately, or he would call it on his own behalf.
In the wards of Trump City, nuances were overlooked. The election was rigged on Joe Biden’s behalf—no doubt, no dispute. “There are more ballots that are bogus ballots out there than you can shake a stick at,” declared a Maine Republican state senator.3
"Those machines are like Swiss cheese,” added ubiquitoid Rudy Giuliani. “You can invade them. You can get in them. You can change the vote."
True in principle perhaps. But it was just as true in 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016. Everyone knew the hackability of motherboards. Palware downloads were suspected by both parties. Some Republicans still believe that Barack Obama prevailed in 2012 only because his geek squad defeated a rival one of Mitt Romney. They hacked last.
In 2004, Anonymous, a group previously claiming hacks of the Justice Department, Motion Picture Association of America, and Church of Scientology announced that they had reversed hacks by Karl Rove’s team in Butler, Claremont, and Warren Counties and suburban Cincinnati in swing-state Ohio as well as overrides from a Republican failsafe SMARTech link in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which had vaulted George W. Bush into the lead over John Kerry. The counter-hack was presented in manifesto-like decrees. Few noticed, and it didn’t finally succeed. Yet the notion that election software can be overridden by tech nerds cancelling tens of thousands of votes with a computer key was put in play.
Then before the 2008 election, a black-robed figure in a Guy Fawkes mask released a suicide-bomber-style video:
We know that you will attempt to attempt to rig the election of Mitt Romney to your favor. We will watch as your merry band of conspirators try to achieve this overthrow of the United States government. . . . We are watching and monitoring all your servers. . . . We want you to know that we are waiting for you to make this mistake of thinking you can rig this election to your favor. . . . If we catch you we will turn over all of this data to the appropriate officials in the hopes that you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.4
Overthrow of democracy by computer and confusion had been in the air since Bush-Gore 2000: hanging chits and butterfly ballots.
After Obama’s historic victory, Anonymous posted a triumphant yawp:
We began following the digital traffic of one Karl Rove. . . . After a rather short time, we identified the digital structure of Karl’s operation and even that of his ORCA. This was an easy task in that barn doors were left open and the wind swept us inside.5
Fabulist mythology or true detective back-story?
The shoe may have been on the other foot then, and an Obama egregore overshadowed software but, to switch metaphors again, the flower was ripe for plucking. It remained unplucked for a while, unspoken except for whispers. Till Trump, no one dared. The Donald only dared; it was his m.o. He had been watching the flower bloom for at least five years. He plucked it and opened the floodgates: a stolen, hacked election! Why accept a life-altering verdict when it could be reversed with a gimme putt?
From POTUS’s parochial view, while he was busy MAGA-ing, making great things even greater (or whatever), some very bad people stole his Presidency and were poised to undo his crowning achievement. There had to be epidemic fraud; how could Hulk Hogan lose to Listless Joe? It was irony, fabrication, tactic, and also, paradoxically, conviction. The myth outweighed the game on the field. Performance over politics.
The Divine Right of Kings was so deep in Trump’s aura and nervous system that he drifted into assuming that he had been enthroned rather than elected. Authoritarianism came so naturally to him that he also took for granted that everyone else accepted it too, that they not only tacitly shared his realpolitik but secretly idolized dictators as much as he did. He forgot because he never understood what the original Tea Party was about, and he either didn’t watch Hamilton or power-dreamed through it.
His oversoul had never lived in a constitutional democracy before, so it was hard for his ego to fake. Creatively misinterpreting the Constitution, he expected to be made Emperor for Life like his buddies Putin and Xi. He figured that he had earned it as much as they had and, like them, he wanted permanent control over land and populations. He was resentful he had to hide his mojo under legal challenges and threats—a royal bore.
Trump’s escalating tantrum proved contagious. It stirred marches, demonstrations, lawsuits, a “truthing” sect, and a cast of millions, including conspiracist attorneys, loyal or scared pols, and zealot broadcasters. For more than half the Republican electorate and eighty percent of Trump voters, the “steal” was obvious, incontrovertible. The only question was whether outing it would wake the populace, remove pretender Biden, and restore Donald’s monarchy.
Coached by a team of obedient, flaky attorneys, Trump presumed that a few key states could invalidate their authorized elector slates and send in replacements ex post facto. That’s authoritarianism—when you believe you can be reinstalled in the People’s House like a zipless fuck.
It was the way that Trump had conducted business his whole life, by trickery, stalling, and bullying while pretending to charm. In a New York Times article, Haberman quoted Alan Marcus, a consultant who worked for the Trump Organization in the 1990s.
“Trump views the judicial system as he sees everything else: corrupt, ‘fixable’ and usable as a bullying tactic. . . . Mr. Marcus recalled Mr. Trump calling lawyers who had filed suit against him to try to convince them that “it was a waste of time and money,” then ultimately trying to get the case in front of a judge he perceived to be friendly.6
Autocrats Putin, Orbán, and Xi changed their constitutions to extend their presidencies. Orbán was democratically elected the first time, just like POTUS 45. Then from the powers of office, he proceeded to rig the electoral machinery and strip the media so effectively that the playing field tilted his way. No other candidate could roll a ball sufficiently uphill to dislodge him; it would take a landslide to blast him out of office. The next step in Budapest will be Soviet-style dictatorship, electoral setups that guarantee that he can’t lose because, if he does, the results will be “corrected” before they are announced.
That’s what Trump tried to accomplish in a single sweep. It proved a bridge too far. Using the pretext of a stolen election, he and his Republican enablers put in place initial steps to end democracy in the future and institute pseudo-Christian authoritarianism: redrawn districts, electoral monitors, and mechanisms for endless recounts until the counters get it right.
The U.S. Constitution, though regarded on in evangelical circles as a commandment of God, is surprisingly malleable. It is only as strong as the belief systems and egregores sustaining it; for instance, it can be rewritten by pastors and Supreme Court justices to serve Christian law. That’s where un-separation of church and state inevitably leads, legacy aside. Those who didn’t understand why the founders separated Congresspeople from preachers revert unwittingly to the same theocratic impulse that drove their ancestors out of Eyre, Scotland, and England.
Democracies don’t necessarily die under gendarmes and tanks. They fade away under chicanery and gerrymander.
It didn’t matter to Trump whether he actually won; it was more important to ride the appearance of victory and, if necessary, find alternate quasi-Constitutional paths to certification. He didn’t respect plebiscites anyway; they were, to his mind, weak as well as janky, unworthy of a strongman. He wanted to dominate the landscape by force of personality and brand, the way he had done his whole life.
The effect of Donald Trump on America and the planet exceeded the capacity of one man. He reminds me of the 2009 US Airways flight from New York to Charlotte that encountered a flock of Canadian geese that got sucked into its engines reducing them to broken rotors, scrap metal, and spare parts. If democracy was the plane, Trump was the Canadian geese. His impact was existential and exponential. Yet I think that democracy was more like free-flying, unaware geese, and Trump was the plane suddenly rising into their midst.
The Stop-the-Steal egregore grew so powerful that it made off-the-wall measures appear self-evident. FBI-certified Russian mole Michael Flynn wanted the President to declare martial law, temporarily suspend the Constitution, seize some Swing State voting machines, and have the military supervise a do-over. That would have been a heyoka dance for the ages!
Donald was corrupt and brain-fogged enough to imagine that this sort of stuff could slide by, either by popular acclimation or intimidation. He thought that if the Republicans won Congress in 2022, they could even decertify the 2020 results, remove Biden, and restore him to his rightful office. He would demand, he griped, six full years as payback, enough time to prepare Donnie, Jr. for succession. That cult then took over much of the Republican Party.
As Trump lost clearance between the Reality show and reality, Mark Miley and the Joint Chiefs worried that the guy might go full banana-republic. Those closest to 45 recalled that he detonated in a blind fury whenever anyone doubted the Steal or tried to reason with him. By then, either he was under the influence of his own egregore or he was trying to flood the field with fuckery. Attorney General Bill Barr noted that when he talked to Trump, “there was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were. . . . He’s become detached from reality.”7
Did Barr just notice it then? What he is calling “reality” never interested Trump as much as intrigue. Arrested development and a rage or terror of not being able to impose his will wherever he wanted was the wound either of a poor little rich boy or a past-life trauma.
In bipolar-like swings of near-psychotic anxiety and omnipotent grandiosity, he reeled from one conspiracy theory to another—suitcases, thermostats, voting machines, Venezuelans, British, Chinese. As each conspiracy was refuted by one of his advisors, he acknowledged their verdict and moved to the next, ultimately settling on conservative philosopher Dinesh D’Souza’s manipulated mathematical charade in his 2022 film called 2000 Mules because it had a GED-match-like patina of satellite surveillance and digital footprints “proving” mass ballot-harvesting.
He was also under the daze of his inebriated (or over-pepsied) attorney Rudy Giuliani whose fifteen minutes of fame were more than two decades ago. Rudy reminded Trump what the Donald had taught him in their halcyon days: claim victory and then shove it down everyone’s throat.
Back in the spring when Trump mentioned 1960s race riots to justify the possible use of troops to restore order, Milley set him straight, throwing cold water on the idea, part of a larger discussion that resulted in the President cursing out his top military advisors. Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker detailed the dialogue in I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year:
"Mr. President, it doesn't compare anywhere to the summer of sixty-eight," Milley said, according to the book. "It's not even close."
After senior advisor Stephen Miller chimed in to declare the protests as "an insurrection," Milley pointed to a portrait of former President Abraham Lincoln, who led the country through the American Civil War.
"Mr. President, that guy had an insurrection," Milley said. . . . "You don't have an insurrection. When guys show up in gray and start bombing Fort Sumter, you'll have an insurrection."8
Note the irony of “Mr. President”—like Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday” onstage to John F. Kennedy without acknowledging their love nest. With every tongue-in-cheek use, the honorific becomes more of a self-parody.
Endnotes
1. Carlos Lozada, “How the House of Trump Was Built,” The New York Times Opinion section, January 1, 2023, p. 10.
2. Mary Papenfuss, “Trump 'Handed Down Death Sentence To Mike Pence' To Stay In Power: Mary Trump,” Huffington Post, June 19, 2022.
3. Peter LaVerdiere of Oxford, Maine quoted in “Maine presidential electors cast votes in divided outcome,” Associated Press, December 14, 2020.
4. Sam Sacks and Thomas Hartmann, “Anonymous, Karl Rove and 2012 Election Fix?” The Daily Take, November 19, 2012.
5. Sam Sacks and Thom Hartmann, “Anonymous, Karl Rove and 2012 Election Fix?” The Daily Take, November 19, 2012.
6. Maggie Haberman, “Trump’s Well-Worn Legal Playbook Starts to Look Frayed,” The New York Times, January 31, 2023.
7. David Klepper, “Jan. 6 witnesses push Trump stalwarts back to rabbit hole,” Yahoo/Associated Press, June 18, 2022.
8. John L. Dorman, “'You're all f---ed up': Trump exploded after his officials warned against using military troops to end George Floyd protests, book says,” Yahoo Business Insider, July 31, 2021.
Comments
John Swaney, college classmate:
"Immaculate deception" Clever. I love it.
