ON TRUMP'S AMERICA, AND MAKING IT GREAT

Donald Trump, for many people, is said to channel the core of the ‘everyman’. Rightfully, or as I suspect, wrongfully: he is seen as ‘the man who made it’, who rang the bell labelled ‘American Dream’ with a large neon hammer in an arcade. To my mind, however, his power and wealth was created not by intelligence, but by a reliance on toxic masculinity and baseless bluster. President Trump’s greatest weakness is his resistance to vulnerability, and his fear of admitting a gap in his knowledge or understanding. This has been clearly shown by his hesitance to further question opponents on policy and seems to suggest a pretty damning explanation as to why the President was not willing to engage in the more controlled environment of a Zoom Debate in the upcoming weeks.

Visually, he is constantly on the attack when feeling threatened, the physical and loud verbal shouted interruptions physically blocking discourse. This is the hallmark of his ‘pitbull-in-a china shop approach, and is effective in as much as the moderation, in the name of neutrality, allows it to be. While Biden also, to some extent, relies on a projection of confidence that is based in nothing significant other than his privilege: since becoming the Democrat nominee, he’s made a commitment to investing it in knowledge and social outreach for disadvantaged communities, with his proposed “aggressive $2trn climate and jobs plan.” A senior campaign official stressed the urgency of these reforms to reporters, stating “The reality is we will be facing a country that will be in dire need of these types of investments that are going to be made here”. The article goes on to emphasise that this need is magnified by the convergence of two stark crises: the struggle to control the coronavirus pandemic, and the “rapidly closing window to significantly cut heat-trapping emissions and lead on global climate action.”[1]

Comparatively, Trump’s reliance on the economy harkens back to the brute physicality inherent in the Industrial Revolution, which manifests in the ‘proletariat’s perspective’ that physical labour is the de facto fall back career. This monetary investment in certain skill sets precedent for the valuation of those skills to increase, both as freelance and as careers (expressed as an intersection of skill sets). When looking at a general population, they should never be viewed through monolithic stratification- the fiction of ‘the people’ is a fallacy, which feeds into the core logical incompatibility of ‘Make America Great Again’. For a policy to accurately reflect the statement, it would have to take into account the diversity of the population which, when harnessed correctly, could function as a self-driven economy whilst maintaining newly implemented structural welfare.

Instead, Trump’s dogmatic focus on ‘the economy’ is built on the foundations of a fantasy. The trickle down model is not as foolproof as it projects itself to be, and it can never be while because money in our current system is obtainable with different types of effort depending on social and class evaluation. Ironically, the same system disenfranchising the rural inhabitants so crucial to Trump’s vote in the Red Belt is the system that suppresses minority communities, for whom Biden’s policies appear to be comparatively more popular. Through commitment to educational reform, and with appropriate and equitable access to technology, one could create an economy that pulls from the full diversity of a settler state, and acknowledges its part in the global ecosystem. When Donald Trump decries ‘Make America Great Again, the America he refers to is the colonial idea of America. It does not encompass, and subsequently cannot benefit from, the full range of cultures, brain chemistries and skills, and instead

In conversation with people who identify as Trump supporters, they typically laud Trump for his work on foreign policy and defence, often citing his handling of China as ‘necessarily aggressive’ both before and after the coronavirus, as “aggression is the only thing they will listen to.” Stepping away from the xenophobic undertones of that statement, I find it suitably ironic when the only policy that he’s generally praised for have nothing to do with his central desire “to restore Greatness” to his supposedly beloved America . To find logic amongst the absurd, one could argue that his strategy for greatness is by leveraging power over foreign countries through the same means as his economy: by brute force, intimidation and anti-globalism in the name of falsified patriotism.

In Trump’s ideal United States, America is Great, in the neo-tyrannical sense. It is great over and above all other countries, rather than working within a system of these nations, who have infinite capacity to achieve greatness through utilising diversity. We often hear the soundbite that America has the largest economy in the world. This is not, however, due to some grand manipulation using strategy: it’s because of the diversity of natural resources the country contains. But, in the true fashion of Trumpian management, instead of listening to the communities indigenous to those resources and respecting their management, he brutalised those resources for short term gain. As the West Coast grows increasingly uninhabitable, it is almost unfathomable that he denies climate change through both speech, and through willful negligence in policy. Even for his callous, forceful approach; it takes a special kind of stubborn ignorance to ignore California’s huge contribution to the GDP, Los Angeles the new pinnacle of the ‘If I can make it here, I’ll make it anywhere’ mindset. The vast economic and social cost of relocation will be unavoidable if drastic measures are not put in place, yet his previous management of climate change policy does not point in a progressive direction. The various Indigenous communities, that Trump’s policies ignore, have been practicing ritual tree burning to reduce the likelihood of forest fires for centuries, and the Department of Forestry is being both chronically underfunded, and ineffectively managed. Despite the Democrat’s attempt to direct $500million (⅙ of a 3 billion dollar commitment to wildfire and climate projects), the “legislative hurdles...proved too difficult to overcome.” The presumptive charge of a decade’s fees to fund the bill proved difficult to support, and opponents to it included: “The California Chamber of Commerce, the California Farm Bureau Federation, the Western States Petroleum Assn., Pacific Gas & Electric, San Diego Gas & Electric.”[2]

In a discussion that remains entirely separate from a question of party politics, there is no doubt that climate policy in general is woefully neglected by both parties in the bipartisan system, particularly given the large engagement with it on traditional social media. There seems to be a universally held reluctance to engage in anything completely trans-national, countries’ individual agendas once again securing priority over collective global management.

The issue is, of course, that within Trump’s perception of America; the knowledge of different cultures, sciences, and histories is not seen as capitalistically valuable. Rather than admit that his projection of the ‘ultimate America’ ceased as an effective approach at the close of Queen Victoria’s reign, his ethos remains obtusely static in both discourse and policy. He’s setting his own boat on fire, and proudly sailing into the abyss.

To my mind, President Trump’s main issue is, and always has been, that he lives in a world of antiquated ideology and allusion, and his policies are demonstrative of this lack of progression (which is arguably conservatism at its core) . The link between welfare- physical, mental and social, is acknowledged in neither his speeches, policies or budgeting . Unsurprisingly, his solution to coronavirus is no different. He’s praised by his supporters for keeping the economy afloat, while he hammers a square peg into a round hole with the subtlety of a teenager. Instead of running a breaking motor into the ground, America needs to sit with this global economic lull to focus on reform, which should be created with the aim to restart a new economy with an adapted vigor and direction. Tantamount to this will be the diversification of economic policy to include all human and natural resources America has to offer, in an equitable and dynamic way, and with a nuance that reflects America’s relative position amongst the global economy. The President’s perpetuation of neo-colonial ideology, shown by his insistence of promoting an unhealthily functioning economy in order to laud his management over other countries, is a bizarre place to dig his heels in. He’s surfing the spitting foam of the American Dream- but as much as he wishes to turn back time to when America was supposedly ‘Great’, you can neither stop the progression of time, nor halt the increasing global communication through access to technology.

However, he’s tried. Trump’s decision to ban TikTok and WeChat is a panicked attempt to resuscitate a dying past- yet his direct defiance of the Constitution he’s quick to cite when denying social reform is the first major chunk out of his ideological armour. When the threads of his convoluted web begin to disappear, the sustainability of his foundation disintegrates. His core biases are deftly uncovered through TikTok’s lawsuit, which seamlessly highlight Trump’s two main biases, stating

“The order is thus a gross misappropriation of IEEPA (International Emergency Economic Powers Act) authority and a pretext for furthering the President’s broader campaign of anti-China rhetoric in the run-up to the U.S. election”..., with Patrick Ryan’s attorney, Mike Godwin, highlighting that, “It’s very rare to see those powers used to essentially destroy a company and deprive employees of the right to be paid — lawful employees have the right to be paid,”[3]

The echoes of the distorted fantasy- that America’s existence as a diverse collective has ever been fully unleashed- are fading slowly away. And with this, so too people’s confidence that Donald Trump is the governor to manage these crises.

We may well have another four years of Trump’s America, as the historically bleated falsehood that economy is the only solution will be used against the most vulnerable people, turning to the ideological ‘Mandela effect’ of “economy” as the only apparent solution. However, the visible cracks in his foundation will only widen, and after another four years absorbing the shockwaves of his negligent management, the dying fantasy of industrial colonialism will be evident through the trail of destruction left in our wake.

[1] Joe Biden unveils aggressive $2tn climate and jobs plan (The Guardian, 14th July 2020) [2] Second effort to boost California wildfire funding fails (LA Times, 31st August 2020) [3]Trump TikTok ban: Company lawsuit calls it unconstitutional (LA Times, 24th August 2020)