Machiavelli’s “Prince” was published in 1532 almost 500 years later Edwards analyzes Trump’s performance as president in a similar manner with a bit of technology. In this short essay, I am not only going to look at the power construction of these two images of a leader (that has been studied extensively), not also the notion of analog and digital when it comes to Trump as a politician.
The massive use of digital space, the adaptation of TV show methodology to politics and constant comparison of Trump to the idea of a president (which is somewhat vague) makes him a great candidate for a classical concept of digital that Critical Art Ensemble brings up. The digital model in an assembly line is a copy of a unique analog that came out of chaos or no specific order before itself, while the digital comes from a known order like contemporary politicians have regulations written before them that they have to follow. However, the digital copy still must “stand the test of equivalence” to the analog, and Trump had to persuade that he is a valid digital president.
Machiavelli said that “the actions of a new prince are watched much more than those of an hereditary one, and when they are recognized as virtuous, they attract men much more and bind them much more to him than ancient blood would do.” In terms of Trump, being a new prince means not being a politician before the election and having every movement and word watched, or being a digital version of a president. According to Edwards, the celebration of Ryan Owens heroic death was considered as the “virtuous” action when “he became President of the United States in that moment” because “Trump brought the logics of the entertainment realm in which he had achieved global recognition” to the space of politics. Thus, “Trump achieved the blurring of the distinction between American popular culture and US foreign policy.”
Edwards underlines that Trump adapted the methods of reality TV shows and shifted the medium in the Capitol chamber from Hollywood cinema of Ronald Reagan to reality television. In this instance, Trump brought to politics methods from dominant culture of his time and “theatre of everyday life” that is the process of copying in digital aesthetics – “a process that offers dominant culture minimal material for recuperation by recycling the same images, actions, and sounds into radical discourse.” The constant repetition of Trump’s methods is a technique of arranging what people can see and, thus, believe. “The people are fickle; it is easy to persuade them about something, but difficult to keep them persuaded.”
The digital expansion of Trump’s politics develops the force in Machiavellian terms as it is not about physical but informational dominance, especially through the internet. Poster thinks that “the internet holds the prospect of introducing postnational political forms because of its internal architecture that is not centered and cannot be controlled.” However, the case of new politics with digital leaders as Trump shows that the internet still operated under the power structures.