The liberty of power: Leaders and foreign policy in a state of exception

Comment published in New York Times online blog, in response to opinion essay by Mikhail Gorbachev, “A New Nuclear Arms Race Has Begun,” October 26, 2018:

Gorbachev suggests that American foreign policy now is designed to operate with no obligations or limits. This should worry us all.  

Is this what Trump's style is about? Clearly, rules don't apply to him. Is there a broad project of capital and state to undue our tradition of limited government? With power outside law, citizens are not expected to abide by laws they might appeal to, but only obey authority.  

Is truth a lie, or what the boss says it is? These are the same. Trump calls his critics' statements false facts, while his own plainly are.  

Are the rules being broken or nullified? Do they still apply but only to others, or have the rulers abandoned them? These two possibilities become indiscernible. Call this a politics of transgression. Trump is like Freud's primal father who beds all the women; the extraordinary leader is an exception to the laws.  

This models an America whose powerful and wealthy can get what they want, and social norms are only for ordinary people. We are like subjects in a premodern monarchy.  

The personal is power-worthy. #MeToo indiscernibly sought to change mores, and apply existing laws. Is this law enforcement or political invention? It was appropriately both, mirroring present conditions.  

Something is rotten in the state of America. Top and bottom. Goya's sleepy dream of reason produces monsters; a belligerent capitalism produces victims and corpses. We must resist this logic with another.