The Empty City

For the last few weeks those of us outside of Minnesota have had glimpses via social media of the street violence and other thuggery of federal government agents.

As this blog has said before, it is as if we are Christopher Isherwood observing the violence and other thuggery in the streets of early 1930s Berlin. There is what we could see – but there was also what that indicated about what we could not see, and about what may happen next.

As it happens, two gross incidents were actually caught on camera and footage quickly circulated on social media: the summary executions of Renée Good and Alex Pretti.

The shared footage showed both killings to be murders, notwithstanding the lies immediately asserted by federal government figures and their supporters.

Federal government figures and their supporters wanted people to disbelieve what they could see, and to believe what they were told instead.

It was a sheer test of reality: you had to choose between the horrific obvious truth or the comforting official untruth.

And it was not obvious that many would pass this test.

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The lies told by federal government figures and their supporters about the murders of Good and Pretti had certain features.

One feature was the confidence that the lies would be adopted by others, even if not believed – that the lies would be sufficient for subservient mainstream media outlets to “both sides” the issue.

To its disgrace, the British Broadcasting Corporation even led with “analysis” slop about “sharply contradicted narratives”.

(Source)

The federal government figures and their supporters promoting these lies had every reason to believe this tactic would work, for it has worked so many times before.

But this time the lies did not work

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One reason the lies did not work was because of another feature of those lies.

The lies come from a certain type of superficial politics.

For example, federal government figures and their supporters talk about “free speech” whilst using the law in various ways to silence and punish unwanted speech; they talk about “non-intervention” but clap and cheer at casual use of lethal force abroad; they talk about “free trade” and “free enterprise” while nodding along with erratic tariff setting; and so on.

Fine-sounding words and phrases which appear to be about first principles are in fact meaningless slogans.

These people simply do not think-through what they are saying – or they don’t care about what they are saying, which is much the same.

And this is where they here came a cropper, to use a British term.

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One immediate impulse of federal government figures and their supporters in respect of the killing of Alex Pretti was to blame the fact he had a legally possessed gun.

How they must have been so happy at coming up with this line, to combat the concerns of those horrified at the murder.

But so eager were they to “own the libs” they forgot about those who own the guns.

Their snap response was a contradiction of the rights which many in the United States believe to be protected by the second amendment – often small-c conservatives and Republican party supporters.

The witless federal government figures and their supporters did not realise the import of what they were saying in the rush to defend the federal agents who murdered Alex Pretti.

Often federal government figures and their supporters get away with a superficial approach to political principles – but here they tripped up very badly in the eyes of their natural supporters.

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The lies could not hold.

News reports began to mount of Republican politicians who would not be satisfied with what they were being told to believe.

The camera footage was plain; the lies made no sense.

Something seemed to snap.

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One theme of this blog and my posts elsewhere is that policing a large population is not easy.

I was brought up in the 1970s and 1980s Birmingham of the notorious West Midlands Serious Crime Squad:

And also during the Troubles, where the Royal Ulster Constabulary and other organs of the British state had little or no legitimacy or support with a significant portion of the people of the north of Ireland/Northern Ireland.

Policing and law enforcement generally requires the consent or at least the forbearance/acquiescence of the community.

Even the hateful and cruel Gestapo and the Stasi derived part of their power from the support – even enthusiasm – of many in their respective communities.

But one thing police or law enforcement agents should avoid is actively alienating the policed.

Casual and provocative brutality at scale is not a sustainable model for any police force or law enforcement agency.

It prompts counter networks of opposition and a loss of legitimacy among neutrals and the usually deferent.

And as in the north of Ireland/Northern Ireland, policing simply breaks down for significant portions of the local population.

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There now seems to be de-escalation in Minnesota.

The local head of the border force has been demoted and moved elsewhere.

The president’s spokesperson is making conciliatory noises.

The tide seems to have turned, leaving various fools and knaves exposed on the beach.

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If there is de-escalation then that will be a significant set back for the president and his adviser Stephen Miller in seeking to contrive a pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act.

As I set out here this is their obvious objective – but they also need to have a sound enough basis to survive legal challenge.

It would seem that they thought that fomenting disorder by heavy-handed use of the National Guard and now ICE/Border Patrol would create the circumstances where they could plausibly invoke the Insurrection Act.

But the thing about disorder is that it is, well, disorderly.

By definition, disorder does not go to plan.

And the disorder fomented in Minnesota has resulted in it being now harder for Miller and others to invoke the Insurrection Act: dishonesty has been exposed, natural supporters upset.

The cause of disorder is seen widely as the government itself, and not supposed “insurrectionists”.

Wise politicians avoid instability, as it rarely works out as instigators of instability intend.

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Just as this eventful month of January has seen something seemingly snap in international affairs, with how Trump was forced to climb down over Greenland and the prime minister of Canada setting out a coherent alternative vision to being bullied by the United States, something seems to have snapped internally in the United States too.

Ruptures inside, and out.

Of course, federal government figures and their supporters are still there, and they can find new ways to misuse and abuse power.

They will still seek to swagger and to intimidate.

Indeed, things may even get worse.

But both at home and abroad there has been a loss of deference to their aggression and dishonesty.

And that deference will be difficult for federal government figures and their supporters to regain easily.

Federal government figures and their supporters should remember that hubris is often followed by some nemesis or other.

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20th January 2026

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“…neither rhyme nor reason.”

– Comedy of Errors, William Shakespeare

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What, if anything, is Trumpism?

There is not really any rhyme: there is no consistency or predictability in what he does. His actions in situation [A] will tell you little or nothing about what he may do in situation [B].

There are, at a general level, certain themes: he is indifferent to norms, he is cunning, he likes leverage, he will renege on deals, he has a sense for ratings, he will often back down. But these are tactics and improvisations: they say little or nothing about which subjects he will engage with next.

And nor is there is much reason: little or nothing he does makes sense, at least for the reasons he gives – or for the reasons his partisan supporters come up with to justify his actions and inactions.

It would be fair to say there is neither rhyme nor reason.

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From time to time, some opponents come up with a grand theory.

“Watch the money!” and “his billionaire pals!” for example – but often Trump and the super-wealthy would financially benefit more from other courses of action. His erratic antics with tariffs make no sense from the perspective of capitalistic self interest.

“Distraction from the Epstein Files!” is now falling flat while Trump and his circle are confident that they can simply ignore explicit legislation. Those documents are not easily going to be released against the will of Trump, whatever the huffing and puffing.

Perhaps his desire to keep out of courts and prison may be his primal motivating factor, but when he was out of office between his presidencies he was deftly able to avoid any incarceration even when he was found criminally liable.

The only thing really which he wants is that most basic of all political objects: power.

But other than that fundamental political desire, there is no underlying theory, still less an ideology.

As Anne Applebaum wrote yesterday (broken up into smaller paragraphs):

For the past year, American allies around the world have tried very hard to find a theory that explains Trump’s behavior.

Isolationism, neo-imperialism, and patrimonialism are all words that have been thrown around.

But in the end, the president himself defeats all attempts to describe a “Trump doctrine.”

He is locked into a world of his own, determined to “win” every encounter, whether in an imaginary competition for the Nobel Peace Prize or a protest from the mother of small children objecting to his masked, armed paramilitary in Minneapolis.

These contests matter more to him than any long-term strategy.

And of course, the need to appear victorious matters much more than Americans’ prosperity and well-being.

We maybe need to look elsewhere than political theory to understand what is going on here: perhaps psychology or anthropology, perhaps proverbs and fables, perhaps cautionary fairy tales.

We maybe need to look at the various ways our species have dealt with understanding those situations where a ruler is mad and bad.

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“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

– Hamlet, William Shakespeare

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Law and constitutionalism has little chance in the face of this ongoing irrationalism.

Pointing to the articles of the constitution of the United States, or of the charter of the United Nations, is nothing more other than quaint.

One may as well hold up a blank piece of paper and announce that this will stop him.

There is no formal solution to this problem: no text, codified or otherwise.

This will only stop if – if – those individuals who have any residual power step in and impose their wills against his.

And that still seems unlikely.

Those around him appear to be in a trance that has affected the whole of his “court” – a spell as deadly as any devised by any fairy tale witch upon any group of courtiers.

A spell which seems to be absolutely unbreakable.

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And now Trump has destroyed – or at least seems to have destroyed – Atlanticism and the NATO alliance.

Perhaps both will recover: that this is only some severe but not permanent jolt.

But when overnight Trump posts things like the following:

Or sends official diplomatic letters such as:

…we are not in situation from which we can speedily recover.

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“We are indeed drifting into the arena of the unwell.

Making an enemy of our own future.”

– Withnail and I

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One day, perhaps, all this will be in the past.

One day we may know how this story ends.

Indeed, what happens next will be deemed by a certain type of historian as somehow inevitable – even though nobody at this moment can predict it with any certainty.

But as it stands: we are currently in a situation where there is neither rhyme nor reason – where precedents and norms and laws and rules and theories offer no assistance.

We are trapped in a story where there is nothing to tell us how this story ends.

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“I have supped full with horrors.”

– Macbeth, William Shakespeare.

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Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome, or if they risk derailing the discussion.

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The Berlin novels and notebooks of Christopher Isherwood from the early 1930s contain fascinating characters – even though the apparent real-life inspirations for the likes of Sally Bowles (Jean Ross) and Arthur Norris (Gerald Hamilton) were somewhat different from their fictional counterparts.

But the most fascinating – and complex – creations in those works were the narrators – sometimes “Christopher Isherwood” (in inverted commas), sometimes William Bradshaw.

Do not be taken in by the deft misdirections of the narrator:

“I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.”

The narrator is not any passive camera, though he wants you to think so.

(For, as always, Isherwood is very charming.)

He is instead skilfully writing about difficult subjects – including the visible slide to Nazism and barbarity all around him – while making you feel you are working these things out for yourself from the details he provides.

He says he is recording, not thinking – but he is very much making you think.

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Like Isherwood – or “Isherwood” – walking the Berlin streets or looking down from his apartment window, we all – via social media and mobile phone footage – can now have glimpses of an ever-worsening situation in the United States (and also elsewhere).

And again like those reading his narrative, we can put two and two together and realise what is going on in what we don’t glimpse – which is not reported on social (or mainstream) media or recorded on mobile devices.

What happened yesterday to a woman in Minnesota was horrific – and yet we know that it cannot be unique. One can tell that the distinctive quality of this incident is that it was caught on camera when many others are not. There is no reason to believe it was a one-off.

As such anyone watching can tell what is happening off-camera – but, as with Isherwood and others in the early 1930s, there is very little which we can do (especially from the other side of the Atlantic).

(And, which is a fair point, the well-documented record of the United Kingdom state in killing and torturing people in Northern Ireland, Kenya, Iraq and Afghanistan confers on us no moral superiority.)

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No slide towards barbarity and Fascism is inevitable: even in the 1930s some countries were able to steer their polities in a different direction. Little or nothing is bound to happen in human affairs. Things can change for better, and sometimes do.

But nonetheless the sense of dread and doom that must have been a feature of the early 1930s is sometimes inescapable.

The evidence from our virtual apartment window does not point in an encouraging direction.

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Comments Policy

This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.

Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome, or if they risk derailing the discussion.

More on the comments policy is here.