( Tomdispatch.com ) – Give him credit. As a start, for that first surprise victory in 2016.
No, I didn’t fully get it at the time, but I kind of get it now (since, like the rest of us, I’ve lived through it all, including his close loss in 2020). Still, twice? Him? A convicted felon, no less! And yes, I do think italics are all too appropriate under the circumstances.
Two times as the president of these increasingly disunited states of America? Holy cowpie!
Perspecting (No, That’s Not a Typo) Donald Trump
This country actually did it — elected him (again!) — and so we deserve whatever we get, at least a little less than 50% of us do: Fox News… oops, sorry, Pete Hegseth to run the largest, best-funded, and least adept military on planet Earth? Robert Kennedy, Jr., to keep our health in check(mate?) or do I mean checkerboard red shape? Tulsi Gabbard overseeing what still passes for American “intelligence,” though in some sense it couldn’t have been dumber for endless years? Or Chris Wright, who denies that there’s any kind of a climate crisis on Planet Earth, to lead — yes, of course! — the Department of Energy. And that’s just to start down an endlessly expanding, mind-blowingly unnerving list.
Yikes! You really couldn’t make this stuff up, could you? And I haven’t even mentioned Kristi Noem as secretary of Homeland Security. Nor did I have time to put in Matt Gaetz at the Department of (In)Justice before he went down in an instant cloud of smoke and scandal. (The question is: Before we’re done with the madness of it all, will everything be, in some fashion, enveloped in that same cloudy firmament?)
I suppose there’s no reason to be shocked, not really. After all, it’s a matter of history. Sooner or later, all great imperial powers go down the tubes — or do I mean the drain? — in some fashion, even if Donald Trump, the second time around, gives tubes and drains a new meaning. Just ask any of the emperors of imperial China or Winston Churchill or, for that matter, Mikhail Gorbachev about imperial decline. But to have almost 50% of the population vote to send this country directly (no stops along the way) whooshing down those tubes into the basement of history, well, that’s no small thing, is it? Or maybe, on a planet already going to hell in a climate-changed handbasket, it actually is a small thing. (And, yes, I just can’t seem to help myself when it comes to italics and him, though he’s all too literally not a small thing, not The Donald!)
Who knows anymore? Who can make any real sense out of it when you’re not comfortably outside looking in, or in the present peering into the long-gone past, but right here, right now (and nowhere else), distinctly experiencing everything from the inside out — or do I mean, the outside in or even the inside in? That, in truth, may be the lesson Donald Trump(ed us all) has to offer when it comes to our ever stranger world. And perspective isn’t exactly available to us, is it? After all, when The Donald fills the screen 24/7, how can anyone perspect — if you don’t mind my making up a word to fit our ever-stranger world — anything?
And yet, let’s face it, if you try to take a step or two back, even if it’s into the deep doo-doo of the rest of this planet of ours — check out Benjamin Netanyahu’s nightmarish version of Israel, for instance — Donald Trump isn’t just a strange (all-)American happenstance. Under the circumstances, however happenstantial, of a country in which there was already an increasingly greater (and still growing) space between the wildly wealthy (especially the rising number of all-American billionaires who have more money than half of the rest of the population combined) and the ever more pressed working and middle classes, what populace, already distinctly in trouble (or he never would have made a political appearance in the first place), wouldn’t have elected a “businessman” (and I’m only being socially truthful by putting that word in quotes) who claimed to be all in for them on his third presidential run (though, of course, you won’t actually see 78-year-old Donald Trump, the man who reputedly once urged soldiers on our southern border to shoot migrants in the legs, running anywhere). Whew, that was one long sentence! And no wonder, since he’s distinctly wound us up in an endlessly convoluted world.
And this time around, the richest man on Planet Earth, Elon Musk, was ready to pay out millions of promotional dollars to potential voters to increase Trump’s vote totals in swing states — and don’t for a second think that was bribery! After all, in a country where keeping yourself afloat amid still rising prices is no small trick, why wouldn’t you find appealing a man who swore he spoke for you and whose claim to fame, in a sense, was his remarkable ability to keep himself (and no one else) on the (more or less) flat and level, or even the uphill incline, as he sent his own businesses distinctly downstream into failed or bankrupt states? Whew, again!
And don’t be surprised, given his record, if, in his second term in office, he sends this country into his own version of, if not bankruptcy, at least ruptcy. After all, Donald Trump is — if you don’t mind my inventing another word — a distinctly remarkable (or do I mean smashing?) rupturist. His story (or do I mean history?) — since Kamala Harris lost, it certainly isn’t herstory — suggests that he’s likely to repeat his business “success” with this whole country the second time around, keeping himself on the flat and level or even the uphill incline as so much around him goes down, down, down. And don’t be surprised if he somehow manages to outlast that disaster, too. (Or do I mean two?) Oh, and since he’s already quipping about a third term in office, however jokingly — no joke there for the rest of us, of course — you should feel distinctly nervous (if, that is, the fate of this country means anything to you).
You can undoubtedly understand his position when it comes to a third possible round in the Oval Office, right? I mean, to hell with that old amendment! (“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”) If it were of any importance, it would obviously be the first, second, or third amendment, not the 22nd one, right?
The Dis-United States of Trumperica
Of course, none of this should truly surprise us. After all, historically speaking — and no, I don’t mean his story here, I mean the long, long story of humanity on this planet — great powers never seem to end up in particularly great shape toward the end of their ride. (And what a ride it’s been lately! Just ask… well, yes, Donald J. Trump!) As I like to remind TomDispatch readers, the country whose officials, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, touted it as the last superpower (or perhaps that should be in caps, The Last Superpower, or maybe even THE LAST SUPERPOWER) on Planet Earth, now seems to be in the process of transforming itself into the last super-basket-case on a planet that itself is becoming a basket case and heading downhill all too rapidly.
And I write that as someone living in a city — New York — that until recently was in the midst of a historic drought, the worst since records began to be kept here in 1869, in a state in drought in a region in drought. My city, in other words, was anything but alone in a country 40% of which recently was considered to be experiencing drought conditions. Even New York City’s parks were burning — more than 230 brushfires in just two recent weeks — and smoke was regularly been in the air here. All of this on a planet where weather extremes — from devastating heat waves to devastating floods to devastating storms — are distinctly on the rise. It’s in that context, of course, that Donald Trump, the proud “drill, baby, drill” guy, who has long insisted that climate change is a “hoax,” plans to do anything he can to promote fossil fuels in the coming years. He’s also intent on reversing the Inflation Reduction Act of the Biden years, which has been “providing hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks for clean energy” in a country that, in 2023, set a global record for the production of oil.
In short, Donald Trump’s second (and third?) term(s) is (are) guaranteed to turn much in this country (though not its wealth disparities) upside down. In fact, as a preview of what’s coming, perhaps it’s time to think of this land as the Dis-United States of Trumperica.
Imagine that, in the years to come, he will once again be inhabiting the place built during George Washington’s presidency and occupied by Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy, among so many others. Need I say more when it comes to matters of decline and fall?
In truth, it’s a rather straightforward fact that this country is now visibly going down in a potentially big-time fashion and that, domestically speaking, there’s far worse to come. Of course, sooner or later, great powers do go down in various ways and Donald Trump’s version of that (just like his version of going up) could mean a distinctly failed state for the rest of us, no matter what happens to him.
Gaining Perspective on Donald Trump?
Imagine this: I was born when FDR was still president. (I was eight months old when he died.) And 80 years later, “my” president is Donald Trump (again!). If that doesn’t count as a political lifetime, what does? Whether the 78-year-old Donald or the 80-year-old me will live to see the end of “his” presidency is, of course, beyond my knowing.
But count on one thing: whatever we do see, it’s not likely to be pretty. In some sense, whatever chaotic version of guardrails were imposed on him in his first term will be largely removed this time around. From Pete Hegseth to Robert Kennedy, Jr., he’s already trying to appoint a crew of men (and yes, they are largely men) who would once have seemed inconceivable in this country — and not just because so many of them are rumored to have mistreated women.
Imagine that, starting in January, Trump and Elon Musk, the richest man on Earth, will be occupying the White House with “cat ladies” Vice-President J.D. Vance waiting in the wings. Fox News will be in the saddle (all too literally, given Trump’s appointments) and, this time around, President Tariff could essentially take the planet down with him. Yes, Matt Gaetz recently came up short (the earliest failed cabinet pick in modern history), but so many other nightmarish Trumpian figures won’t. They’ll be there doing their damnedest as “agents of his contempt, rage, and vengeance.”
Gaining perspective on Donald Trump? In some ways, his greatest skill in life has been in making such perspective inconceivable. No matter what you think, you can never quite fully take him in or know what he’s likely to do.
So, here we are, about to be Trumped once again. In fact, in the years to come, if things go as they now look like they might, with Elon Musk, Fox News, and him inhabiting the White House, it might be possible to think of this country (and even this planet) as Donald Trump’s last bankruptcy.
Copyright 2024 Tom Engelhardt
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