Destruction as Ideology

Russell Vought, Elon Musk, and the Politics of Petulance

Usually, the concept of a political ideology is constructive in nature. When you think about political ideologies, there is normally a fairly clearly articulated goal (or set of goals) for the state and society, and a method (or methods) for achieving that goal. Understanding an ideology, then, is simply about understanding the relationship between goals and methods. Causes and effects.

Under communism, even as bad as collectivization was for everyday folks, there was at least a relatively clear attempt to argue and propagandize that the sacrifice was being made to move society forward. To achieve the lofty goals of communism. To make progress.

In the United States under the Trump Administration, we have somehow created a new, reactionary ideology. One that features methods without goals. Processes without purpose. Movement to avoid stillness.

The United States government is, as of January 20th, 2025, being devoured by a wandering plague of locusts. Without any overarching goal, the plague spreads rapidly from agency to agency, guided only by the desire to consume. The locusts do not have some grand plan, some overarching set of principles about how states, societies, economies should function. Like locusts in reality, they have only a method. And that method is destruction.

Scholars (most notably Cas Mudde) have over the years begun to identify populism as a thin ideology. Thin because, unlike the ideologies we are most familiar with, populism has little concrete to say about how the state, society, or government should be run. Populism can be leftist or rightist, as long as the result reflects the general will.

Donald Trump is rhetorically a populist. His speeches, his campaign promises, his policy propositions; they're always couched in a populist language, using an us vs. them, friend/enemy distinction to sell everything from exclusionary trans policies to tax cuts, and everything in between.

Even in this thin conception of ideology, however, populists have a goal: policy and politics should follow the desires of the desires of the majority. 

What has emerged in the United States over the last two weeks defies even this classification. The moves the administration is making are not popular. They have a vanishingly small constituency. Many will disproportionately hurt even the narrow base of 'Real Americans' that support Trump and Co. and which the administration identify as the (not-so) silent majority. 

And it is almost impossible to see some shared societal goal behind the madness. Russell Vought, the architect of Project 2025 and nominee to be head of the Office of Management and Budget, isn't an ideologue in the traditional sense. Project 2025 in-and-of itself is not some grand vision for society. It is a hodgepodge collection of reactionary wet-dreams as far as goals are concerned.

It is, however, a highly detailed plan for the destruction of the American state.

Elon Musk and his DOGE-alytes are on a speed-run, destroying so much of the basic fabric of the American civil service that we may never fully grasp the scope of the damage. But if you try to identify some broad social or political goal behind this, you end up grasping at straws. There is none.

There is, again, only a method. And that method is destruction.

Understanding destruction as the ideology of the Trump administration is important for making sense of our moment. I think one of the reasons many long-time observers of politics feel so disoriented is that we are unused to dealing with political leaders that lack a coherent ideology.

Humans are pattern seekers. We want to understand the 'why' of any given behavior. During Trump's first term, pundits and observers talked themselves in circles trying to build an ideology of 'Trumpism' that could help us parse the incomprehensible methods of the administration.

We never got it right then, and we will not get it right now, until we recognize a simple truth. The people behind the Trump administration have no shared ideology. They do not want the same things. They have no effective vision for the future. Their only point of agreement is that the state must be destroyed. Their unifying message is much like Cato the Elder's: res publica delenda est. The state must be destroyed.

Even the name of their plan reflects this lack of a vision for the future. Project 2025 - Mandate for Leadership. They do not have a plan for 2030, 2040, 2050. They are not imagining a world where they have to think about what happens next. Destruction is their plan. What happens next is really not their concern.

Beyond helping us to understand our own disorientation, coming to terms with an ideology of destruction is essential for planning an effective resistance. 

Democrats in Congress have failed utterly so far on this front. It is hard to pinpoint a singular strategy, which is a failure by itself. Key leaders, like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, seem to be stuck in electioneering mode. They are focused on taking power out of Trump's hands at the next opportunity, a politics of persuasion.

The problem with this approach is that it assumes Trump's administration has a goal of effective governance, of addressing people's wants and needs. At the very least it imagines a world where they intend to stop somewhere, driven by the negative response of someone: constituents, key supporters, allies, the markets.

In other words, it assumes an ideological reasoning for the chaos. But there simply is not one.

The Trump administration is hellbent on destroying the effective means of government. They are pursuing a politics of petulance.

Trump is a 78 year old lame duck who seemingly ran as much for the prospect of vengeance as anything else. No one else in his orbit has an ounce of charisma or a brain for politics or policy. And within hours of getting a hold of power, they took dozens of actions that are blatantly against the letter and spirit of the Constitution. These are not the decisions of those who are thinking about an iterated, repeating game.

These folks know they are never going to get another bite at the apple. Do you really think they have a grand plan?

No. They do not. They are pulling a Lenny (The Simpson, Season 12, Episode 20): they do not like the way the game has been played in the past, so they intend to take the ball, end the game, and go home. They can never agree on what the state should look like, because they are inherently not a party, but a group of aggrieved individuals. And so they will do the only thing they can agree on: take as much for themselves as they can, and destroy the capacity of the state to ever take it back from them.

You cannot fight an ideology of destruction with an emphasis on the next election. Democratic leaders and career civil servants cannot hope to wait out a group which has as its entire goal the destruction of the state.

We cannot go on acting as if we will simply undo the damage at the next election.

The moment calls for a politics of obstruction. A politics of action. And it calls for that from every level of American society. But it has to come first from elected officials. Democratic officials in Congress have to be willing to put their necks on the line, to engage in civil disobedience, to force the Trump administration to face the media and the American public as they try to burn the government down. And it will come with inconveniences, and discomfort, and possibly even danger.

If Democrats in Congress are not up to the moment, they should resign, and let someone who is step up. Because if they keep acting as if their only opportunity to act is after 2028, they are going to find themselves in a position where there is no state left to govern.

**Addendum: Brian Schatz, Andy Kim, and others in the Democratic caucus on February 3rd finally began to obstruct. Chuck Schumer continues to post.