Power in the United States is no longer exercised primarily through coordination, law, or consent, but increasingly through assertion and spectacle. Recent domestic enforcement actions, rhetorical excesses, and executive overreach reveal a system experimenting with how much authority can be claimed without institutional resistance.

From Governance to Performance

The defining feature of the current American political moment is not polarization alone, nor even the resurgence of executive power. It is the replacement of governance with performance, a shift in which authority is asserted theatrically rather than exercised coordinately, and legitimacy is claimed through visibility instead of institutional alignment.

This transformation did not begin with Donald Trump, but his presidency has accelerated it dramatically. Where previous administrations expanded executive power through legal abstraction, classified memos, emergency authorities, and regulatory capture, Trump’s approach has been conspicuously declarative. He announces power into existence. He names himself. Furthermore, he brands authority. “The King of Tariffs,” “the King is doing good work,” and offhand remarks suggesting China effectively controls Canada or that territory and alliances are malleable by proclamation. These are not policy statements in any traditional sense. They are symbolic assertions of dominance, aimed less at implementation than at spectacle.

“When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.” — John F. Kennedy.

This matters because spectacle short-circuits deliberation. When authority is performed loudly, opposition is forced to respond to tone rather than substance. Attention is diverted from mechanisms—how power is exercised, constrained, or corrected—to personality and outrage cycles. In such an environment, the executive branch does not need to win arguments; it only needs to occupy the field of attention.

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