The Wizard

What Dems Don't Understand About Power (And Trump Does)

I’ve just read a stunning book. It’s a novel, just barely, called The Wizard of the Kremlin. It is written by an Italian—a former political advisor—named Giuliano da Empoli, who has become something of a sensation in Europe and is about to land here with a bang.

The Wizard is a media advisor to Vladimir Putin (based, apparently, on Vladislav Surkov) and I don’t know how much of it would be considered “true.” But it doesn’t really matter. The insights—brilliant, subtle insights into the way Putin’s mind works—seem fresh and right and terrifying. Putin slides into power, courtesy of Boris Yeltsin, and immediately understands that Job One is to establish order. A rebellion in Chechnya is embarrassing the Russian Army. Putin goes to the front, meets with the troops—and raises a dinner toast, which he refuses to drink. Too many horrible things are happening; this is not a time to be celebrating, he tells them. Victory first, then vodka. The troops love it. He thus laminates himself to the military, the one source of potential power in a crippled and pathetic Russia. The moment, of course, broadcast throughout the country. It is an immediate show of strength, of dignity, of Russian pride. His popularity zooms.

Putin goes on to teach The Wizard—who is, of course, a former reality TV producer—the brutal essentials of autocratic rule. He purges the oligarchs who’ve taken the opportunity of the Soviet Union’s collapse to make piles of money. He arrests some oligarchs; others, well, die. The violent street mafias of the 1990s are squashed or coopted; they become the core of the private militias that lead the assault on Ukraine. The message is sent—and The Wizard’s skill is using mass media, including social media, to create the public atmosphere that creates the illusion, and then the reality, that the new Tsar is invincible. There are bread and circuses, like the Sochi Winter Olympics. Putin loves ceremonies. There is the ascendance of hackers, of disinformation; borders are crossed. There is the fomenting of chaos among various extremists, left and right, in the west. Chaos can only exist in an atmosphere of weakness; weakness is all that Putin hopes to foment. There is a purpose to everything.

And the purpose is power. Putin goes by his real name in the book, as do others. He is especially sensitive to an actual press conference Boris Yeltsin had with Bill Clinton in the 1990s. Yeltsin is stupid drunk; Clinton is laughing at him, in public. Putin is obsessed by the humiliation. That sort of thing will never happen on his watch.

The novel ends before Donald Trump arrives on the scene, but his presence—and his way of thinking—is anticipated. Boris Berezovsky, a real life oligarch, tells The Wizard a story about the African dictator Mobutu, who changed the name of his country from Congo to Zaire…only to learn that Zaire was a Portuguese word, a colonist’s word. So what does he do? He plasters Zaire on everything, on the currency, the national oil company, on everything. Does this penchant for renaming sound familiar? (Berezovsky eventually “commits suicide.”)

Putin is far more intelligent and disciplined than Trump. He has an easier country to dominate, a country that has historically seen itself as a repository of great strength and great passivity. America is nothing like that—it is too wild and diverse, too complicated economically, too perpetually excited by the next big thing to be controlled by any autocrat for very long. At least, I hope so.

But we are teetering. Trump has exploited the preternatural weakness—-the sensitivity, the civility, the endless psychobabble—of his opponents. The Democrats seem to be doing everything possible to empower him, from the current government shutdown to the socialist and transsexual fads. The Democrats may “win” the shutdown, but the government will be weaker—and that is a Trump goal. The National Guard may be unnecessary in Portland but Antifa—the dilettante children of the professional class— are their useful idiots. Eventually someone will get hurt. If it is someone wearing a uniform, that too will empower Trump. The public doesn’t “like” the ICE raids, but it is threatened even more by illegal immigrants. And meanwhile, idiot groups like Democratic Socialists of America are doing Trump’s scutwork. Not to put too fine a point on it, but there is nothing more inimical to the American spirit of freedom and enterprise and informality than the dull strictures, the imposed mediocrity, of socialism.

There is only one way out of this, one way back to normal. Trump’s opponents—the Democrats, for now, and probably in perpetuity—have to figure out how to project strength. They have to associate themselves with the flag and the military. Among the greatest of American blessings was on display when Hegseth summoned the generals to Virginia last week: the brass, inured in a deep and powerful culture of political neutrality, seemed uncomfortable, annoyed to be used as props. This is a magnificent cultural feat, rare in history: the creation of an apolitical officer corps. Their independence should be celebrated by Democrats—but, in my experience, most Dems disdain the military. They don’t know the difference between a battalion and a brigade; they don’t understand that Pete Hegseth’s cult of physical fitness is not at all controversial among the men and women of the armed forces. They don’t understand the vital difference between a military built for Defense and one built for War. And therefore they remain clueless as to what Trump and his nihilist corrosion are all about.

There have been several polls published lately, about Democrats and strength. One was in Politico today:

The battleground-district survey from Global Strategy Group — commissioned by gun-safety advocacy group Giffords and House Majority Forward, a nonprofit aligned with House Democratic leadership — offers a bleak assessment of Democrats’ starting point: 89 percent of the 1,200 likely voters surveyed want their Congress member to take steps to keep them safe, but only 38 percent trust Democrats over Republicans with that task. [Emphasis very much mine].

This is the central issue of the moment, not health care or any of the other mirages that liberals try to invoke. Safety is the issue, stability is the issue and Trump—who is his own media wizard—is trying desperately to promote the illusion of instability, of an enemy within. Democracy can only thrive in a context of order. Democrats, with their skepticism about the military and the police, and their endless promotion of “rights” over “responsibilities,” and their endless law suits gumming up our ability to accomplish just about anything, simply have no idea how far from reality they’ve descended. The government shutdown will ultimately resolve itself, perpetuating the inertia; health care will eventually be paid for, one way or another. But the depletion of democracy will proceed in dribs and drabs, enabled by the Democrats’ congenital weakness.

If you think these things need to be said, please consider becoming a subscriber. You can get Sanity Clause for free, but paying for it would help me to hire a non-AI researcher (with AI skills, of course). Please consider chipping in, but stay a part of our community even if you can’t.