Drag

In the first season of Mad Men, protagonist Don Draper crashes at the apartment of a would-be girlfriend’s bunch of beatnik associates.  Needless to say, they don’t hit it off.  When asked how he sleeps at night, ad executive Draper replies, “on a bed of money.” 

Nevertheless, they agree on one thing.  They eventually fall asleep after smoking a large quantity of pot.  In the morning, they awaken to a police raid in progress at a neighbor’s apartment. 

Draper, needing to report to work, straightens his tie and tugs on his suit coat to pull out the wrinkles.  As he opens the front door, one of the beatniks anxiously objects, “You can’t go out there!”

Don pauses a beat and says, “No, you can’t,“ and walks out, nodding at the policemen in the hallway as he goes.

I was reminded of this a couple of weeks ago as I boarded a plane for a brief vacation in Mexico.  Walking down the jetway, I passed by a Customs and Border Protection agent.  Suffice it to say, he was playing the part.  Body armor, M-4 carbine slung across his chest, etc.  Briefly looking over at him, he gave me a slight nod.  Reflexively, I nodded back.

A fleeting exchange to be sure, but telling all the same.  Like Don Draper, and unlike many other people, I can pass.  I’m an average-looking middle-aged white male who presents conventionally.  In a sense, I’m above suspicion.  I’m just grateful no one can detain me for my thoughts.  Yet.

At least the CBP agents were clearly identifiable. The news of late tells of law enforcement officials unidentifiable by agency or uniform rounding up migrants and student activists.  Are they or aren’t they actual cops? 

The second coming of Donald Trump has provoked a resurgence in militaristic cosplay.  I first noticed the trend the first time around during the lockdown phases of the pandemic.  We were shown the spectacle of white men donning tactical gear and brandishing weapons at urban civil rights protests and setting up unauthorized roadblocks in rural locales asserting authority they did not possess.  The January 6^th insurrection appeared to be the climax of this nonsense which would simmer down with the absence of Trump and his minions from Washington.

Wishful thinking.  Shortly after the election, I was at the airport waiting at the baggage carousel when I noticed a young man milling amongst us.  He was white, with a beard of course.  Otherwise dressed in civilian attire, he was sporting a tactical vest.  He walked slowly, with a serious expression, thumbs hooked at the top of his vest.  I had no idea who the hell he was or why he was there aside from being an arriving passenger, and I asked myself if anyone else was even noticing this.  No one seemed to.  It is common enough lately that such sights scarcely raise an eyebrow.

Much as they had during Trump 1.0, the real authorities have gotten in the act.  News and phone footage showing what seemed to be ICE agents abducting individuals in public are disturbingly frequent.  The agents are generally clad in black or in casual wear, their faces obscured with balaclavas or masks, and they are not displaying badges or other markings identifying which agency they represent.  Homeland Security officials defend the practice as protecting law enforcement personnel from being doxed.   

Maybe, but probably not.  The intended effect is performative intimidation made more ominous by ambiguity.  It also looks cool, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem is the poster girl for posturing as substitute for public safety.  We see her in tactical gear joining Border Patrol agents on a raid.  We watch her posing in front of a packed cell of deportees at El Salvador’s supermax CECOT, sporting a $50,000 Rolex no less.  She parries a question from U.S. Senator Alex Padilla at a press conference on the wholly unnecessary federal intervention in the civil unrest in Los Angeles by siccing the Secret Service on him.

The optics are lost on her.  Appearing before a congressional committee recently, Rep. Bennie Thompson greeted her by thanking her for her time amidst her busy schedule “of photo ops and costume changes.”  Noem scarcely batted an eyelash.   

As to be expected, bad actors are getting in on the act.  You, too, can buy ICE merch online.  Young white males have taken to stationing themselves in Home Depot parking lots wearing ICE jackets to scare off day laborers looking for jobs.  Even more troubling are reports of midnight “raids” on immigrant households by people claiming to be government agents.  In one instance, a family was told to hand over their phones and any cash in their possession.  Contacting ICE and Homeland Security offices afterward, the agencies denied knowledge.

The Trump administration’s methods of ensuring law and order have encouraged vigilantism and enabled common criminals to prey upon vulnerable people.  You could reason that this is an intended consequence.  In the first category, we have a small group of MAGA diehards who believe Trump possesses extralegal authority and that anything they do on his behalf is justified.  (I call this the deputization defense; several J6 rioters believed Trump had “deputized” them to stop certification of the 2020 election results.)  In the second category are opportunistic crooks and garden variety assholes exploiting people who can’t go to the police.

Authoritarians are drawn to military and police regalia.  Perhaps even more so when the individual never served in the military or law enforcement.  (Consider Trump’s fixation on parades.)  At a certain point, fantasy and reality blur.  At a certain point, the biggest Walter Mitty losers can delude themselves into believing they’re the good guys simply by cultivating a look. Provoked by the violent rhetoric emanating from Trump and his allies or internalizing a belief that white men with guns are sheepdogs protecting home and hearth, and you have a recipe for tragedy. 

Policing in a stable democracy must operate in the open.  Law enforcement should be clearly identifiable to the public they serve.  If you’re acting legally, there is no reason to hide who you are.  Otherwise, you erode public trust.  When legitimate law enforcement is indistinguishable from the LARPers you don’t believe your eyes anymore. 

Perhaps this moment will stimulate reform.  We can set guidelines for law enforcement agencies at the federal, state, and local levels relating to how they present themselves to the public they serve.  Place limitations on the sale and possession of certain items such as body armor and certain kinds of lethal and non-lethal weapons (though this probably wouldn’t pass constitutional muster in some cases).  Introduce stronger sanctions against impersonating law enforcement and military personnel.  Any of these would be a good start.

What we may not be able to fix is a cultural toxicity that long predated Trump and MAGA.  They are a symptom or the latest permutation of that ugliness.  The only road to improvement is through individual hearts and minds.  And that is a task fit for Sisyphus.

 

 

© 2025 The Unassuming Scholar

Vanity

Tomorrow’s the big celebration.

President Trump is finally getting the parade he’s been after for years.  On his birthday, no less.

There will be several thousand soldiers marching through the national capital.  There will be Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and self-propelled howitzers rolling down the streets, and a swarm of helicopters in the city’s skies.

But wait, there’s more.  There will be fireworks, musical performances, and appearances by astronauts and NFL players.  In other words, the parade looks as if it will be the sort of cheesy corporate spectacle[1] that has characterized any number of “patriotic” celebrations of the last twenty years or so.

I don’t plan to watch.  I dislike these kinds of overblown displays as a general rule, and the fact that the administration has misappropriated the United States Army’s 250^th anniversary to serve the Narcissist-in-Chief’s unbounded vanity is a bitter pill.

But, you’re probably thinking, the president is making a heartfelt gesture celebrating soldiers past and present.  How could anyone object to that?

Well, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be awfully pleasant for the soldiers marching past the reviewing stand.  According to the Army’s public affairs office, the soldiers will sleep on folding cots in vacant federal buildings.  Rather than providing them with at least two hot meals a day, something easily achieved with mobile kitchen trailers, the soldiers will enjoy two MREs and one catered hot meal daily during their stay.  (Each will also receive partial per diem which will undoubtedly go far given the cost of takeout and fast-food meals these days.) Some news sources report that personal hygiene opportunities are being rationed, with field showers operating on rigid schedules.

Now that’s what I call military leadership, screwing the troops you profess to care about.

What’s most concerning are the optics.  There’s the frequently voiced objection that such displays are worthy of Russia, China, and North Korea.  That’s bad enough, because it’s true.  The mindboggling cost of the parade, not to mention the street damage which will inevitably result from numerous tracked vehicles passing over them, provokes wonder at the administration’s priorities.

However, the widespread perception across the political spectrum that this event was planned solely as Trump’s “birthday parade” is what I find most galling.   On the right, Saturday’s quick-time lollapalooza will be yet more justification for the MAGA revolution.  For the left, the association with Trump serves as further proof of our military’s supposed evilness.

Neither camp appreciates the planning and logistics involved.  It’s been known for a very long time that the Army’s sestercentennial was coming up, and you don’t just throw together a large-scale public display at the last minute.  In other words, there would most likely have been a public commemoration even if Kamala Harris had won the election.  With less bombast, perhaps, but a military parade nonetheless.  The emerging details of the logistical clusterfuck housing and feeding 6,600 people suggest the original plans had been more modest before blowing up at the last minute.

Context dismissed, the Big Parade will be always remembered as Trump’s celebration of Trump.  Before the media hype conflated the Army’s 150^th anniversary commemoration with the president’s autocratic fantasy of one-upping Putin, Xi, and Kim, I had privately looked upon the milestone with quiet satisfaction.  It was a satisfaction borne from the longevity of an institution which had played a part in shaping me as a person.  It was satisfaction that I had played a part in its story.  A trivial, momentary part, but I had been there for it all the same.

I don’t feel that now.  It’s as if something special of mine has been sullied.  I am also concerned by the MAGA influence on the military.  President Trump’s address to troops at Fort Liberty Bragg this week reflects this.  The speech was the usual word salad complaining about political correctness and how Joe Biden, Gavin Newsom, and Karen Bass ruined America.  The soldiers’ laughter, cheering, and boos were disturbing.  Subsequent reports said these soldiers were prescreened volunteers attending what was for all purposes a political rally.  While it’s reassuring that the audience were self-selected MAGA-heads who are not (we hope) representative of all Fort Bragg’s soldiers, an important norm is eroding.

That norm is the traditionally apolitical military.  Servicemembers are expected to keep their political opinions to themselves while on duty or any other occasion they are in uniform.  That custom is fading into the past.  The unprofessional conduct of the soldiers at the president’s speech, gratifying as it may have been to Trump, is a bad sign.

The public is noticing, and their conclusions do not augur well for the military’s reputation and its societal role.  You cannot turn the military into a political instrument in a democracy and have it remain a democracy.  This is what is at stake.  The question now is whether there is any turning back.

 

© 2025 The Unassuming Scholar

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[1] The Army reports that “more than 20” confirmed sponsors are (partially) funding the festivities.

Flooded Zone

The tipping point for this post was a required online training for work.  It was a refresher on Title IX and the Clery Act.  Two things stood out from last time I took the training.  The first was an advisory to clear my browsing history afterward.  The second was the “safety exit” button present on every page.

I suspect these warnings were meant for my colleagues on their work computers.  (I took the training on my personal laptop.)  The company administering the class is a contractor which probably operates in states other than my own.  What this tells me is that we are now at a point where workers have to be warned to cover their tracks after receiving DEI training.

The last ten weeks have been surreal.  I originally meant to write about Signalgate, then the deportations to hellhole prisons in El Salvador, then the economic whipsaw of the tariffs.  Now I’m left trying to take it all in.

Like millions of people, I have seen a good portion of my net worth vanish into the ether over the past two weeks.  After a lifetime following the conventional financial wisdom of saving for retirement by investing in equities, it’s likely that none of us will fully recoup our losses.  I’m rethinking my summer travels over concerns over being able to leave the country or return to it.  More than before, I am self-censoring.

One thing I’ve noticed is the lessened prominence of rank-and-file MAGA in media coverage.  Sure, you still see plenty of red trucker hats in the wild, but you see more reporting about Elon and RFK Jr.’s antics or the obsequiousness of public officials and media when appearing in public with the president.  (On the other hand, a student told me about an incident she saw at one of last weekend’s “Hands Off” demonstrations.  She related that a man driving a pickup truck with the obligatory Trump flag flying from the bed came to a sudden halt.  He then got out and punched the first protestor he came to before getting back in and speeding off.)

I think I can say with certainty that the “flooding the zone” approach is working.  Meanwhile, the apologists look at the pointless chaos and tell us to “trust the plan,” and that Trump is playing 4-D chess. (Honestly, I think tiddlywinks would be too complicated for him.)  They don’t notice or acknowledge that real people are being hurt, some of whom voted for Trump last November. 

I think back on the last ten years as unimaginable at their onset.  I grapple with how to explain this moment when it’s my job to do just that.  And I ponder what the world after will look like.

 

© 2025 The Unassuming Scholar

Calamities

I’ve spent the past weeks wondering which outrageous act would prompt me to write about Trump 2.0.  Keeping up with the firehose gush of ratfuckery emanating from Washington is exhausting and demoralizing.

Today’s televised White House meeting between Trump, J. D. Vance, and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was the tipping point.  The meeting degenerated into a shouting match where Trump and Vance scolded Zelensky for being insufficiently grateful to Trump.

It should go without mention that Trump and Vance’s conduct was beneath the dignity of the American presidency.  But so has so much of what has transpired since January 20^th.  Elon Musk’s gang of teenaged incel tech-bros hiding behind an imaginary government agency randomly wrecking actual government agencies is probably the worst of them.  The dismantling of USAID alone will diminish our standing in the global community.  Our holding NATO at arm’s length will do the same.  Cuts to Medicaid will imperil the health of millions of economically vulnerable Americans.

Just as troubling is Trump’s slavish sucking up to Vladimir Putin.  Putin was undoubtedly the target audience for this morning’s public dressing down of President Zelensky.  This, coming on the heels of Trump’s repeated assertions that Ukraine was the aggressor in its war of with Russia, was a perverse form of virtue signaling to ingratiate himself with Putin. 

Then there are the more mundane policy proposals, particularly tariffs.  In the fantasies of the MAGA-verse, these will be a “Take that!” to our imagined rivals.  In reality, they will drive up the price of imported everyday commodities.  Tariffs will also provoke retaliatory tariffs, dampening the market for U.S.-made goods.  Then again, few in the base will believe that rising prices will be the fault not of tariffs but of—take your pick—Biden, congressional Democrats, irresponsible blue-state governors, DEI, ad nauseum.

The media are falling eerily in line this time around.  Not that they have a choice.  First, the Associated Press was banished from the White House press pool over the AP’s insistence in calling the Gulf of Mexico…the Gulf of Mexico.  Then, the White House press office wrested selection of the reporters in the press pool from the White House Correspondents’ Association.  The confrontational, occasionally belligerent demeanor of MAGA Barbie press secretary Karoline Leavitt does little to ease media relations.

The squeezing out of mainstream news services is accelerating.  Fox News Channel has long been the most-watched of the cable news nets.  Fox and the popularity of alt-right outlets appear to be incrementally taking control of the national narrative.  Really, the dominant message taking hold is little more than a string of tropes.  Here is the right’s narrative reduced to a few words: A mob of trans drag queens, along with the illegals, will descend upon Real Americans to take their Bibles and guns while grooming their kids in woke ideology.

Or maybe it is more than making the world scary for the base.  While inflation is slowing, prices are sticky.  The received wisdom since November 5^th is that voters were attracted to Trump because the Democrats had not done enough to make daily life affordable.  Sounds true.  Probably true. 

In closing, I have just one question for those non-MAGA voters who went with Trump last November.

Still worried about the cost of eggs?

 

 

© 2025 The Unassuming Scholar

Day Zero

It begins all over again tomorrow.  It seems almost a sacrilege that this inauguration day happened to fall on Martin Luther King Day.

The silver lining is that due to the mourning period for President Carter, the flags will be at half-staff.