https://archive.md/tMAmC
"President Trump is trying to seize power that he is not entitled to under the
law or the Constitution.
But Mr. Trump will fail in remaking American politics if people and
institutions coordinate against him, which is why his administration is
targeting businesses, nonprofits and the rest of civil society, proposing
corrupting bargains to those who acquiesce and punishing holdouts to terrify
the rest into submission.
This is one part of Mr. Trump’s bigger agenda to remake American politics so
that everyone wants to be his friend and no one dares to be his enemy. If the
administration can reshape politics in such a way, it can create an enduring
advantage for itself, as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary and President
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey have done.
The most recent example: Last week the Trump administration announced that it
was sending an academic “compact” to nine universities. Administration
officials are weaponizing federal funding to make universities more congenial
to Trumpism, saying that those who sign the compact will be at the front of the
line for government money.
The administration is targeting a small group of schools, which it describes as
possible “good actors.” It hopes that if institutions like Brown and the
University of Virginia roll over, others will submit, too.
It wanted to signal strength. Instead, it’s revealing its weakness. The
administration’s need to break the academy is forcing it to make a desperately
risky gamble.
As political theorists like Russell Hardin have explained, power is a
“coordination game,” in which everything depends on what the public believes
and does together. Even the most brutal tyrant does not have enough soldiers
and police officers to compel everyone to obey at gunpoint. Authoritarian
regimes need civil society — the realm of people and organizations outside
government control — to acquiesce to their rule. East Germany’s dictatorship
collapsed when multitudes began to march and organize against it, collapsing
the illusion that everyone accepted tyranny.
The struggle over regime change is about whether the aspiring authoritarians
can subdue civil society. Their strategy is to play divide and conquer,
rewarding friends and brutally punishing opponents. They win when society
cracks, creating a self-enforcing set of expectations, in which everyone shuts
up and complies because everyone expects everyone else to shut up and comply,
too.
Those who oppose authoritarianism have to play a different game, creating
solidarity among an unwieldy coalition, which knows that if everyone holds
together, they will surely succeed. This too can become a self-reinforcing set
of expectations — but only if the coalition’s members resist the threats and
promises of those who are trying to break it."
Original at
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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/opinion/trump-universities-compact-civil-society.html?unlocked_article_code=1.sE8.Q_wI.KbMVUn8BmYJL>
Via Brad Koehn and Muse.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
