Trump, Al Capone and the dogs

Lately, Donald Trump has taken to comparing himself to Al Capone. At the end of last year he began to make comments about it in his disjointed speeches, those chaotic monologues that his faithful admire so much: an incoherent mix of resentment, culture of grievance, demagoguery and clowning. He once said that Al Capone had only been charged once, while he had four; Another time (or perhaps it was the same time) he spoke of the gangster with that admiration of a teenage thug that does not embarrass the leaders of the new international extreme right. “He really was a tough guy, wasn’t he?” He told those worshipers who celebrate any stupidity. “Anyone who looked at him in a bad way, he would shoot him in the head!” Capone, one of the most notorious criminals of the 20th century, famously ended up in prison for the relatively minor crime of tax evasion. Trump, accused of conspiracy to subvert the results of an election, under investigation for illegal manipulation of classified documents and obstruction of justice, has just been convicted of falsifying papers to buy the silence of a porn actress.

I don’t know if we can detect any irony in this matter, but I’m sure someone will point it out in the days to come. In any case, everything in the previous paragraph is absurd and regrettable, and will have terrifying consequences – far beyond an inevitable, but understandable, feeling of Schadenfreude― in the political world of the immediate future. Trump’s conviction for 34 crimes can be commented on in several ways: one can talk, for example, about the seriousness of a criminal being elected president of the United States; or it can speak of the stain of indignity that this grotesque character has forever left on the presidency, a position that had built a protective mythology over more than two centuries; or he can talk about what is coming, a presidential campaign marked by the desire for revenge of a vengeful man who in the past has praised violence, and has even suggested or supported it.

But Trump has compared himself to Al Capone. On his social network he boasted of having more lawyers than “the great gangster Alphonse Capone”; Last year, when he was formally charged with another crime, his campaign used his mugshot to make t-shirts and mugs, thus funding the candidate who most resembled a gangster in American history. This is the Republican Party of 2024: a place where gangsters, thugs, criminals are admired. But anyone who remembers will know that the thing is not new: Trump became president after boasting that he could shoot someone without losing votes. To be precise:

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone, okay, and I wouldn’t lose a single voter, okay?”

There is no one left who would be shocked by such a comment, of course, and those words, which would have ended anyone’s political career 10 years ago (imagine if Obama had said them), have been left behind as one of the things harmless things that have come out of Trump’s mouth. I’m not so sure he was right: If Trump is no longer president, it’s because he lost some of those voters, and Democratic analysts spend their time trying to figure out the reasons for that disaffection. In any case, Trump has more than one voter who would not only forgive him a murder, but who would gladly commit it: several of them were there on January 6, soldiers of his postmodern fascism that stormed the Capitol and ended that ignoble day. with several deaths. Trump has promised to pardon those who have been convicted of the violent excesses at the Capitol, the most savage aggression that North American democracy has suffered in its entire history, and that proposal is immensely popular (beyond the horrifying fact that Trump is forming his own militia for everyone to see). It’s all part of the same syndrome: the degradation of the Republican Party in the Trump era.

Cases worth studying are everywhere, but one of my favorites took place a few weeks ago. Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota, was about to publish one of those books that mix disguised autobiography and ideological propaganda, and that American politicians usually launch into the world when they want to launch themselves: that is, when they want to put themselves in a showcase so they can be seen how they want to be seen. Kristi Noem wanted to be in the showcase of Trump’s vice presidential candidates, to be the name that would accompany him on the ballot, and that is why she published this book. And she thought it was a great idea to tell an anecdote about her dog, Crickets, a 14-month-old pointer who, apparently, had a terrible habit of having fun. Noem had taken her hunting with the intention of training her, but the dog started chasing the birds, scaring them away and ruining the hunt, and then she attacked a neighbor farmer’s chickens. So the owner and governor made the decision that seemed the only possible one: shoot him. She then looked for a goat that smelled bad and that had once chased her children, and she took it to the same place and shot it too. And then she told it all in her book.

What is fascinating about the anecdote, you will agree, is not so much the calm cruelty of the perpetrator, the simple act of putting a 14-month-old pet in the sights of a rifle and pulling the trigger, but the fact of telling it in a book that It wants to be a complimentary self-portrait. It seemed to the governor that the episode was perfect to impress her future readers – that is, that it was going to seduce the electorate. Magician, to the Republican Party and its former presidential candidate―and it is almost moving to imagine his surprise when his vice presidential bid hopelessly imploded before even materializing. As I have too much memory for useless information, I have remembered in recent days the ruthless criticism that the Republican candidate of a few years ago, Mitt Romney, received when it was learned that he had tied one of his dogs to the roof of his car before going for a walk. with the family. And the distance between the two episodes – between the two dogs – seems to me to be a metaphor for something. But of what?

A woman brags about shooting her dog. A man boasts that he can shoot someone without losing votes. This is what is admired in the galaxy Magician: there is in that world an undercurrent of violence or admiration for violence that can come to the surface at any moment, especially when it comes to responding to the call of a leader without too many scruples or too willing to use that violence to get there. to power and defend himself from prison.

I don’t know if it’s too early to worry.

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