Trump’s leap into irrationalism?

The cabinet secretary in charge of public health [Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.] is an anti-vaccine crackpot who is implementing billions in cuts for medical research. The defense secretary [Pete Hegseth] is a third-rate television host who, when he’s not receiving injections of Botox, must publicly insist that “I know exactly what I’m doing.”

The Trump administration includes people who openly say that women should be in the home not the workplace…and some who even think that the 19^th Amendment, which guaranteed women the right to vote, was a mistake.

Meanwhile, Trump energy policy doubles down on fossil fuels and nuclear power, while abandoning successful renewable energy investments. Trump’s tariffs are raising consumer prices and hampering domestic firms, while impoverishing swathes of the farm economy.

It all appears to be a leap into irrationalism. Why would the U.S. government destroy the country’s research capability, sabotage its economy, and put crackpots and incompetents in charge of some of its most essential functions? Why does the Trump administration appear to want to turn back the clock to the 1950s, if not the 19^th century? And why would leading corporate, government and university leaders support him?

It’s difficult to address these questions with one overarching explanation unless it’s simply that these are all factors that have historically been associated with right-wing and authoritarian governments. In The Reactionary Mind, political philosopher Corey Robin defines modern-day conservatism composed of “that unlikely alliance of the libertarian, with his vision of the employer’s untrammeled power in the workplace; the traditionalist, with his vision of the father’s rule at home; and the statist, with his vision of a heroic leader pressing his hand upon the face of the earth.”

The corollary of this is the right’s defense of a politics upholding traditional social and economic hierarchies. In the Trump government, echoes of this defense of “tradition” can be found in support for policies to push women out of the workforce and to encourage them to have more babies, to take one example. These “neo-natal” ideas are closely connected to other reactionary ideas like white supremacy and transphobia that fly under the labels of “anti-DEI,” and opposition to “gender ideology.”

In some cases, Trumpist tropes are easy to explain. The fossil fuel industry is a traditional Republican constituency, and the Trump administration is heavily invested in economic and political alliances with petrostates, especially the Gulf monarchies. So, it’s no surprise that the administration is stuffed with climate change deniers and is actively hostile to renewable energy. It appears not to care about the climate crisis’ impact on humans, nor, even from its narrow imperial mindset, its forfeiting to the Chinese state 21^st century supremacy in solar power and electric vehicles.

Another reason for the seeming self-destructive irrationality of the Trump administration is the fact that its 2024 electoral coalition, and the government it created, is something of a Frankenstein’s monster of disparate right-wing elements. Analysts of the administration have described this shotgun marriage in different ways. To liberal Josh Marshall, the “three-headed chimera of Trumpian destruction” is an amalgam of MAGA loyalists, Christian nationalists, and “Tech bro” authoritarians. To socialist Ashley Smith, the Trump regime is a combination of “three factions with totally different political programs—traditional conservatives, neoliberal tech bosses, and MAGA nationalists”.

Smith is closer to the structural components of the Trump regime, while Marshall is more concerned with its ideological composition. But both emphasize, correctly, the unstable nature of the forces undergirding Trump’s government. These disparate elements are mostly pulling in the same direction now because the administration is on the offensive against “enemies” that they share: immigrants, “wokeness,” federal workers and the like. But there are underlying tensions between these groups. And a political payoff to one of them could undermine another. We’ve already seen a foreshadowing of this in the fight between MAGA nationalists and the tech oligarchs on the question of visas for highly skilled migrant workers.

Between 2020 and 2024, Trump was able to expand his electoral coalition with the addition of newly minted constituencies such as RFK Jr’s anti-vax followers that the COVID-19 pandemic supercharged. The MAGA right brought these forces inside the Trump tent. One way to preserve their support was to hand off leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services and the nation’s public health agencies to Kennedy and other prominent opponents of vaccines and COVID-era policies. Trump knows nothing about health or science, as his ramblings about drinking bleach or linking common painkillers to autism, show.

But even as his administration’s policies have caused upheaval in the public health infrastructure, Trump has stood by Kennedy. Surely one might think that business and the tech oligarchs would oppose such anti-science thinking.

We should remember that the likes of the Koch network and the fossil fuel industry—in league with “lumpencapitalist” supplement peddlers (the online snake oil hawkers of the 21^st century)—financed much of the opposition to COVID public health measures. Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda focused on individuals’ health and diet choices aligns with the neoliberalism’s “blame the victim” approach to cutting social spending. Why should the government spend money on health care for those who make poor lifestyle choices, this Social Darwinist approach asks.

Finally, the tech oligarchs think that artificial intelligence (AI), on which they are spending billions, will be able to replace biomedical researchers, to administer social programs, and to usurp skilled health care personnel. They plan to profit from all of these “innovations.” So, from one perspective, the U.S. destroying its biomedical research enterprise makes no sense. But to tech billionaires who plan to use AI to remake that enterprise, it makes perfect sense.

A large proportion of Trump’s mass support—the core of the one-third or so of the electorate that is the “ride or die” MAGA base—hold religious ideas that are highly authoritarian and anti-modern. Trotsky’s observation about Germany in the early 1930s comes to mind: “A hundred million people use electricity and still believe in the magic power of signs and exorcisms. . . . Movie stars go to mediums. Aviators who pilot miraculous mechanisms created by man’s genius wear amulets on their sweaters.”

These are not just people who are susceptible to believing the various conspiracy theories that Trump and MAGA influencers promote, but they are audience for various “culture war” issues the right uses to build support. While the U.S. government has long supported the state of Israel, the Trump administration’s full-on embrace of the Israeli far right coincides with increased influence in the Republican Party of Christian Zionist organizations, who cite Biblical prophecy in support of the Jewish state.

And then there is the biggest wildcard—and source of chaos—in the Trump regime. That is Trump himself. Trump has certain fundamental commitments that he has supported for years, whether or not they make much sense economically or politically. His support for a tariff-driven, mercantilist economic policy, is at the top of this list.

Beyond a handful of commitments, mostly revolving around ways to boost his own power and to line his pockets, Trump is completely mercurial. Perhaps this is part of his projection of a “strongman” image, but it can also produce a situation where, among his minions, “the knives are out for everyone,” as Trump biographer Michael Wolff said.

The fact that so much of what Trump and his administration does makes no rational sense doesn’t make them any less dangerous. And liberals who think that the 2026 midterm election or the end of Trump’s term will bring everyone “back to their senses” are deluding themselves.

U.S. imperial decline, societal rot, and corrupt impunity at the highest reaches have paved the way for the confederacy of dunces and malefactors that have taken over the U.S. government. The people who helped pave that way aren’t going to lead us out of it.