Trump reconsidered

In this post I am thinking out loud. I don’t understand America, but I am trying to. It is important to develop some analysis of what has just happened. As a Socialist I am deeply worried by the global shift to the authoritarian right, the growth of nationalism and the appeal of populist politics. I see it here in Aotearoa: in Seymour’s colonialist Treaty Principles Bill and in Jones’ empty promises of a future where every man, woman and child can stuff themselves with crayfish, the way he does. Trump is dangerous – environmentally, socially, globally. I have written posts about Trump before – gobsmacked as I was when he was first elected US President in 2017.

I am interested in how the political appeal of such an overtly flawed character is generated and sustained. What are the socio-economic drivers? What are the cultural / ideological settings (and shifts) that have made this possible? It is easy, perhaps too easy, to write-off the American voting public as inherently stupid. This is too simplistic. Americans aren’t stupid – indoctrinated and manipulated maybe – but not stupid, or at least no more stupid than the rest of the human race.  

What, then, are we to make of the madness? Internationally, Putin is pleased, Netanyahu is ecstatic and the tolerant among the liberal American left are resigning themselves to the conclusion that ‘the people have spoken’, and the pay-back is that they must now live with the consequences. Trump’s success is part of a particular political conjuncture – the coming together of many things: a power hungry Republican Party prepared to ignore his moral failings and criminal past, a complacent and timid Democratic Party, angry young white men raging in the twisted reality of cyber-space conspiracy and, most of all, the flexibility of liberal ideology. Trump has powerfull allies – Elon Musk, the sworn enemy of working class collectivity and the anti-immigrant far right UK politician Nigel Farange were among those ensconced in Maralago as the results came in. Give me strength – Maralago! – there is a name shrouded in vacuous myth if there ever was one.

America is often narrated as the land of the free and the home of liberal democracy, although it is more fundamentally the home of unbridled capitalism: everything is individualised, everything is commodified; everything has a price. As Žižek (2014) has pointed out, liberal individualism is the essential political vehicle for capitalism – it’s principles and legal institutions can be used to curb excessive exploitation in market economies, but they are quickly backgrounded when they conflict with the twin pillars of capitalism: private property rights and the extraction of profit from human labour (Kelsey, 2020).

In this sense there is ‘almost’ a perverse honesty in the Trump approach – he forgoes any pretense: doesn’t give a fuck about the rules of the liberal constitution and legal system when it conflicts with his own interests. And his own interests and his political intentions form a seamless whole. The obvious example is his refusal to accept / admit defeat in the 2020 election, encouraging his enraged supporters to storm the Capitol Building in Washington. Like many, I thought Trump had scuppered his political chances at that point. I was wrong.

Trump says some patently idiotic things – there is little question of that. Drinking bleach as Covid remedy, anyone? He is perfect fodder for glib political satire. But none of this seems to matter: why is this? It has been suggested that he hands out permission for ignorance and bigotry in equal measure. He validates his supporters – says what people may think but cannot say in a tolerant liberal world. This is not just about recognising and articulating the prejudices and grievances of the disenfranchised working class poor. More insidiously it also provides a safe space for more sinister racist, misogynist and neo-fascist groups under the pretence of free speech.

Much, quite rightly, is made of the political and economic divide – the rift – the chasm – between the sophisticated sensibilities of the educated liberal classes of the coastal mega-cities and the conservative disaffected populace of the rust-belt industrial cities, burned out company towns, the bible belt and the deep south. Bernie Sanders has argued that the Democrats have lost touch with working class America – disrespected the experience of their natural base. Trump has filled a vacuum.

I have read half of the autobigraphical book by Trump’s running mate, the sometimes bizarre and mysogynistic J.D. Vance. Some, but not all, of the explanation lies here. Postwar internal migration, for jobs in the industrial heart-land of US cities and company towns, generated working class prosperity of sorts – the culture of work and weekends: cars, beer, barbeques and ball-games; the possibility of home ownership. All, or much, of this imploded with the globalisation of corporate capitalism from the mid-1970s. This phenomenon was not restricted to the US – we saw the same social damage / human fall-out in, say, Glasgow or Belfast and comparable industrial cities across the western world (Bourdieu, 1999).

Ironically the social suffering caused by Western de-industrialisation is a direct outcome of the machinations of capitalism and the inherent drive for profit (as embodied by the values and behaviours of Donald Trump). This wave of economic restructuring, where labour was out-sourced to Asia and the Global South, was supported by neoliberal ‘third way’ governments – the compromised, watered down left of liberal politics – the (sometimes) socially  progressive neoliberalism of the US Democratic elite as identified by Nancy Fraser. This is where the traction of the Trump promise is generated: a return to post war prosperity – making America great again.

And, of course, Brian Tamaki wants to make New Zealand great again too. The reality of this postwar world was intensely conservative – raced, classed, gendered and homophobic – all of those things. A return to this mythic past is an illusion but that doesn’t matter. And the fact that Trump’s policies are very unlikely to deliver the nostalgic image doesn’t matter either – it is the myth-making that is important. Illusions are almost always more important than realities in politics. In the US the cultural soil is rich for the cultivation of the Trump narrative.

The internal geopolitics of the US is complex and contradictory. The nation is divided along racial lines; there is a long history of racialised capitalism and the disproportionate incarceration of the Black population (see Angela Davis interview). It is a nation built on migration, although the manufactured fear of threatening and dangerous cat-eating migrants was central to the Trump campaign. It seems that the American dream of individual advancement – the central liberal capitalist illusion – is somehow hard-wired into the American imaginary. It is part of the national consciousness – entwined with the ritual of thanksgiving and the singing of God Bless America. The realities – widespread urban decay, poverty, homelessness, racist policing and welfare disparities, addictions, people dying of curable diseases in trailer parks because they have no heath insurance, rampant gun violence, the highest prison population per capita in the world – don’t count for much it seems.

What counts is living ‘in the land of the free’. Buying into this is the price of social inclusion for immigrant populations. It seems that the idealized notion of individual success against the odds, redemption and triumph is lauded, celebrated and deeply ingrained in the US psych: the quintessential American dream. No one does celebration of individual success quite like the US. The mythic culture heroes (and anti-heroes) are nearly all men – men alone, overcoming moral and physical odds. Even the socialist heroes of the collectivist labour movement or Black civil rights – Joe Hill or Martin Luther King – are lionised for their individuated achievement. Think of the images of the old West, perhaps the greatest myth of all. Wagon trains (always) moving west, moving forward, progressing, civilising, building … the perfect metaphor for capitalist development. What is the place of women and indigenous people in this picture?

All of the many powerful classic novels with a claim to American literary eminence are about individuated morality and fortitude – even those which examine struggle, decay and failure or the destructive effects of American capitalism. I am thinking of Sinclair Lewis’ ‘Babbit’, Steinbeck’s heart-wrending ‘The Grapes of Wrath’, Faulkner’s ‘As I Lay Dying’, Upton Sinclair’s ‘The Jungle’, or even Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ (to name a few). Or moving through to Hemingway, the counter-cultural work of Kerouac and the haunted heroes developed by Annie Proulx. The practical and ethical struggle of the differentiated moral self – which is the core of the liberal identity – occupies the heart of all of these works.

Trump, of course, is completely amoral. But illusion is his strength. He embodies an archetype – the self referential ego of the consumate capitalist individual. Somehow his appeal taps into this deep-seated mythology – not just (perhaps least) for the urban educated elite whose children do have a better chance of material success in a post-industrial society – but for everyone who ‘can’ (but ‘really’ can’t) succeed in an idealised Amerika. Many people – women, migrants, minorites, young people voted for Trump. Liberal politics is always about hearts and minds – what people are predisposed to believe. Perhaps this is the lesson we must take from the Trump phenomenon. I am with Bernie on this one – the liberal political left must have a hard look at itself – get out of its own echo chamber and look to unify while there is still a world to be won. Another world is possible but it can only be supported by another story.

Image credit: Jonathon Gross

References

Bourdieu, P. and Fergusson, P.P (1999) The Weight of The World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society, Oxford: Polity Press.

Kelsey, J. (2022) ‘Truth to power – the critical legal academic as livensed subversive’,Valedictory Address np. Available at: https://e-tangata.co.nz/reflections/jane-kelsey-truth-to-power-the-critical-legal-academic-as-licensed-subversive/

Žižek, S. (2014) From the End of History to the End of Capitalism: Trouble in Paradise, London: Routledge.