A Lot of Work

As somebody who has helped plan coups d'etat -- not here, but, you know, other places -- it takes a lot of work. And that's not what he did. It was just stumbling around from one idea to another. John Bolton, CNN, July 12 2022

In comments on the Jan 6 hearings today Bolton applied his expertise on planning coups to argue against the idea that Trump had engaged in such planning, that he had attempted to overthrow the US government. He contends such planning is beyond his former boss's ability and that he is solely focused on reactive responses to threats to his personal fortunes. Point taken. But, as with anything from Bolton's mouth, we can assume it's wrong and that, when examined, can reveal more than intended about the imperial power that he has always served. 

Bolton was a late and unenthusiastic recruit. He, no doubt, perceived Trump as an unqualified and suspect ascendant to the throne. Which he was. Right up to his election in 2016 he possessed no more qualification for the office than his façade as a boss. Enough, together with the revenant faithful of the GOP, to elect him that year. To his own surprise.

That event did not change Trump. But it did open a political closet that is usually closed, at least when genteel company has been invited. Trump's father would have had no objection to its contents. And he likely passed on a sense of how to maintain a minimum of legal decorum regarding it in public. When we are told that plates are thrown and obscenities hurled we can assume that a disciplined distinction between public and private has been breached in ways that used to be covered by the payroll and non-disclosure agreements. 

What Bolton is misrepresenting is that, yes, Trump's personal interests are never overlooked, but that his personal interests now went beyond his teetering fortune and were entwined with the doninionist sainthood that had been conferred on him with his election. No longer just a real estate mogul he was now a savior to his devotees. And among those were everyone who believes that the democratically determined needs of the whole country as expressed in the last, or any, election could not be allowed to undo their salvation.

Trump's only defense against the charge of sedition is that he failed. He never objected and doesn't still. His plans were quite serious but did not gain the adherence of a single official, nothing more than a handful of the most deluded members of Congress, a few lackeys, and some very minor capitalists. He then twice stepped back from the precipice, trembling to expose himself irrevocably. He declined to appoint Jeffrey Clark as AG and he sent his legions across the Rubicon to the Capitol while he threw a tantrum and remained behind. Ultimately, more a Caligula than a Caesar.

But Bolton has more wool he would pull over us. He seemed to think that he has been a clever TV guest by confessing to something we all know was his job and then declining to go into details. However, his mouth is open for everyone to see. He takes for granted there is a distinction between planning a coup in the far provinces and political revolution in the heart of the empire but he has placed them side by side nevertheless. And, in this world, where we all live, the one is intimately connected to the other.