Donald Trump’s plans to remake American society is not incremental or gradual. Trump, his advisors and agents are attempting to impose a revolutionary project on the whole of American life that will, in various ways, likely impact every person in the country.
Trump, however, is not a political ideologue. He is obsessed with expanding the realm of his own self-interest and getting and exercising more corrupt power; “politics,” however defined and understood, is just a means to an end for Trump. By comparison, the people (and organizations) in Trump’s closest orbit such as JD Vance, Stephen Miller, the Heritage Foundation and the many White Christian nationalists and gangster capitalists (to the degree they are distinct from one another) are actual ideologues who possess a coherent theory of society (and human nature) and how to advance and achieve their desired outcomes. Because they fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the threat and struggle, the combination of these forces will be very difficult if not impossible for the “institutionalists” and mainstream members of the political class, news media and other elites to stop.
