In the Cards

The highway billboard account account of the first months of Donald Trump’s second term in office would require only five short words: his proclamation to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “You don’t have the cards.”

Americans should picture themselves in Zelenskyy’s seat, because that’s Trump’s message to all of us: He has the power, we do not, and he will do with us as he pleases.

If you think you have the cards, be honest with yourself: What cards do you actually have? The truth is that most of us, no matter how hardworking or bright we might be (or think we are), do not actually have any cards. At most, we’re holding a Jack and a 9 at the blackjack table and asking Trump to hit us.

Oh, he’ll hit us alright. And then he’ll take the pot. The guy’s had 21 practically from birth, the perfect mix of means, enablers, and ruthlessness. 

We grow up thinking that we either have the cards or that we’ll make them for ourselves. But this is a misinterpretation of the American dream—which proposes that if we work hard, we will find a valued and reasonably rewarded place in a just society built on institutions that protect our freedom and, within certain broad parameters of mutual respect and responsibility, self-determination. The American dream is not the promise of total unfettered license to trample everyone around you in pursuit of your goals. Moreover, the American dream becomes almost impossible in the absence of the institutions of trust, competence, and confidence—built over decades and centuries—that structure and protect American liberty. In the absence of these institutions, and of the values behind them, life—as Hobbes said of the state of nature before governance—becomes “nasty, brutish, and short.” 

Ironically, the only defenses an individual has—that is, the only defenses of the individual’s individuality!—are (1) shared values as expressed in government, culture, and collective action, and (2) revolution. But the history of revolution is long, bloody, and mostly sad. So we’re left with our personal independence being dependent on just government, which is precisely what Trump trying to destroy. And right now, he has the cards.

When you read headlines proclaiming Trump’s “expansive interpretation of executive power” under the Constitution, don’t be fooled. This administration isn’t trying to interpret the Constitution, but to do away with it. They will still wear their “We the People” hats and tattoos, but they are not the people, and they have no interest in any of the words that follow anyway, least of all “provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.” Nor do they believe in the Pledge of Allegiance they claim to hold so dear. Do they really belief in “liberty and justice for all”? The words “for all” are, to this administration, nothing more than creeping communism.

And in any case, this is an administration that has the specific aim of deleting the very notion of justice, and replacing it everywhere with “retribution.”

The cards have been dealt, the former rules of the casino have been suspended, and the emerging America has reconstituted itself as the new state of nature, a land of social Darwinism (but creationism in the schools!), one nation, under God, infinitely divisible, with nastiness and brute force against all.

It’s time to shuffle the deck, to rebuild and reinvigorate the institutions of liberty and justice—both inside the government and out—before it’s too late. Let’s get together to think, dream, devise, and act. The only cards we have are one another.

– GBM, March 20, 2025