On his first day in office, President Trump signed twenty executive orders — more than any other president in history. He has since issued countless more, overwhelming Americans across the country with shock and confusion.
The majority of Trump’s executive actions are best described as blatant executive overreach. He attempted, for instance, to revoke the birthright citizenship of undocumented children, and he recently ordered a widespread freezing of federal grants. Neither of these moves have any legal or constitutional precedent.
Trump’s executive actions have already been met with fierce opposition. Federal Judge John Coughenour almost immediately blocked Trump’s citizenship order, referencing the Fourteenth Amendment’s explicit protection of birthright citizenship. His order regarding federal spending is likely to meet the same fate.
The question must be asked: What does Donald Trump seek to gain by enacting these doomed policies? The answer, unfortunately, may be that he is getting exactly what he wants: outrage.
Donald Trump’s entire political career has been marked by inflammatory rhetoric and deliberate provocation. He invokes loathing from opponents just as much as he invokes fanaticism from supporters. It’s obvious why a politician would want to be loved; seeking admiration from supporters is a self-explanatory strategy; Hatred, however, is a more complicated issue. The dominant strategy in democratic politics is not, after all, “get as many people to hate you as possible”. And yet, the most hated figure in modern politics is currently sitting in the White House. Why? How could being hated possibly lead to political success?
In order to answer, let’s return to the issue of Trump’s overreaching executive orders. From a policy perspective, they are mostly complete failures. Take the citizenship order, for example. The probability that it will be upheld is about zero. However, just because it was a policy failure does not necessarily mean it was a failure for Trump. After all, it made headlines.
From Trump’s point of view, the entire situation may well look like this: the media is wasting their time causing panic over a piece of legislation that was never going to have any effect. This is where Trump’s political moves start to appear insidious. He has an uncanny ability to weaponize hate and use it as a distraction. And a closer look into Trump’s actions in his first week reveal that his absurd executive orders were not simply distractions, but successful ones, concealing the genuinely dangerous things he has already done. He never announced on Twitter that he was giving ICE agents license to operate in schools, churches, and other sanctuaries. He never bragged about the fact that he was sending thousands of troops to the border. Yet it is these actions, not his “red herring” executive orders, that truly endanger American lives.
Tyranny thrives in conflict, ignorance, and confusion. It is an unstable system, built on intrigue and deceit. It wears a mask for the people while making its real moves in the dark. The classic dictator has always been the wolf in sheep’s clothing, the populist, who promises wealth and prosperity for all, while in the shadows he secretly strips the people of their rights. Donald Trump has evolved. His mask isn’t one of love. He knows what the left fears most is a fascist authoritarian, and so that is the mask he wears. He is throwing so much fear in our direction that it is becoming difficult to discern what his true threats are.
The most important principle to abide by when keeping authority in check is to not give it what it wants. We need to keep our eyes open, not for the bait he throws in our direction, but for the movements he tries to slip beneath our gaze. We need to shine light where he wants there to be darkness, because it is in the shadows that the true threat to our democracy lies.