May "Destroy My Enemies" Be All of Our Law

the ugly honesty in Trumpism

Edit: Comments were accidentally left off thanks to Substack’s wandering radial button problem. They've been turned on.

Trump has been indicted. There is joy in the land. And, once again, people who chanted “defund the police” a few years ago discover uses for the police after all.

There are, no doubt, those who will immediately insist that this comparison is faulty and that it’s totally possible to be a radical police and prison abolitionist and support this prosecution and the prosecution and imprisonment of various white-collar criminals…. And there’s also no doubt that these arguments would fall apart under absolutely minimal pushback and questioning. They always do. I published this piece awhile back. The challenge stands: I am waiting for someone to tell me what the radical left approach to law and order adds up to, these days, other than an injunction against ever calling the cops for anything and people screaming on Twitter that it’s fine if you smoke meth in a crowded elevator. No one has taken me up on the offer to explain how any of this works. Because none of it works, and it’s not clear if it was ever intended to work as an actionable set of proposals. It’s all pose, all fashion. Three years after “defund the police” became a ubiquitous slogan in left spaces, nobody knows what it means, nobody feels any pressure to figure that out, but everyone is still sure that if you expect any enforcement of basic order at all, you’re a fascist. Not ideal.

The example of Trump is interesting. I’m not sure who first said it, but it’s been observed that Trump’s fundamental political proposition is not really populism, or foreign policy isolationism, or economic protectionism. Trump’s political pitch is, simply, “I will destroy your enemies.” Which is part of what makes him a monster, his zeal for attacking his targets and the targets he picks. But when I see people who favor police and prison abolition exactly up until the police and prisons become useful tools to them, it convinces me even more that “I will destroy your enemies” is all that politics is. When you scrape the surface even a little bit, that’s all that you find, the will to destroy the other side.