Trump’s
Defining Moments
By
Lawrence Davidson
August
24, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- In the last few weeks President Trump has gone
through a series of defining moments, in which
his disturbing rhetorical reactions to
historical developments have opened a window on
his sense of the world and the nation.
Let’s pick up the story on Friday, August 11. On
that day the New
York Times (NYT) announced “Conservatives
Relish the ‘Fury’ in Trumps Talk.” A blurb for
the article said, “Fans of Tough Rhetoric See a
Promised Kept.” The reference was to Donald
Trump’s suggestion that he would respond to any
North Korean aggression with a counterattack of
“fire and fury.” Maybe he would even consider a
preemptive strike.
The
“fire and fury” talk seems to have been a
spontaneous, uncensored display of what
President Trump would do to North Korea if not
precariously held in check by select others –
perhaps certain Republican Party leaders and
military advisers – who will now try to
sublimate the president’s belligerency into a
new strategy for Afghanistan.
As is
typical of spontaneous responses, the “fire and
fury” outburst was contextualized not by
historical facts or thought-out policy, but
rather by the uninhibited personality of the
responder.
At this
point it should be noted that it has taken
centuries to mature a set of diplomatic rules
and practices which even now only just manages
to keep the aggressive behavior of most
nation-states in check. To see the President of
the United States treat that history as if it
meant little is chilling. Just as chilling is
the response of the president’s “base.”
Trump’s
belligerent rhetoric exhilarated his “die hard”
(pun intended) supporters, who obviously have
the “bring ‘em on” attitude made famous by
George W. Bush. The NYT kept referring
to this group as “conservatives” who saw Trump’s
aggressiveness as a “promise fulfilled.” Many of
them proclaimed that they did not fear a nuclear
war with North Korea because, living in places
like Colorado, Arizona and Georgia, they saw
themselves sufficiently isolated from danger of
nuclear attack and, apparently, to hell with
other Americans – particularly those cursed city
dwellers. Among those exhilarated by the
president’s words was “the conservative pundit
Rush Limbaugh,” who proclaimed that the U.S.
finally had a real man in the White House after
eight years of Barak Obama, whom he referred to
as a “pajama boy who wears mom jeans who can
barely throw a baseball.”
The NYT is
wrong in its “conservative” attribution. What is
revealed here is not conservatism, which by
definition implies a certain reserved and
disciplined posture. What the NYT was
really describing is the behavior of rightwing
extremists, from the president on down. This
fact was confirmed on the following day.
Moment Two
On
Saturday, August 12, white supremacist groups
ranging from the Ku Klux Klan to neo-Nazis
showed up in Charlottesville, Virginia, to
demonstrate against the removal of a Confederate
monument, and ended up in violent clashes with
counter-demonstrators. Both sides stand for
easily recognizable, if somewhat stereotypical,
opposing cultural programs: the white
supremacists demand a white-dominated America
with archaic racist values, segregation and the
elimination of any ethnic programs of upper
mobility or immigration policies that might
cause a threat to white privilege. The
counter-demonstrators stand for an America of
greater diversity, equal opportunity,
desegregation and an array of other progressive
values.
President Trump was slow to react to the
Charlottesville violence. Perhaps he was
initially rendered speechless at witnessing a
truly “deplorable” subset of his “base” suddenly
showing up at a broadcasted riot in a Virginia
college town. How would the real Trump respond?
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He ended up hedging.
Under great pressure from both Republicans and
Democrats, Trump begrudgingly condemned klansmen
and neo-Nazis as “bad people” but simultaneously
insisted that (1) also demonstrating on the side
of the bad guys were a lot of “very fine people”
and (2) both sides must be blamed for the
violence. Though he and his advisers might not
have realized it, in the eyes of the greater
public, Trump’s position put him, de facto, on
the side of the Klan and the neo-Nazis.
The Ku Klux Klan and various like groups have
always been extremist expressions of a broader,
historically rooted, racist expression of
American culture. This cultural “ideal” is
juxtaposed against a more cosmopolitan, open and
liberal America. Up until the time of the U.S.
Civil War, racist culture predominated, with its
most extreme expression being in the
slaveholding south. After the Civil War, that
territorial stronghold was destroyed, and
despite the ultimate failure of “reconstruction”
the culture of racism began a long and very slow
decline. However, it has never disappeared
entirely and what happened in Charlottesville
tells us that this reactionary vision is capable
of at least a temporary resurgence when given
political encouragement. That is what President
Trump’s this-is-the-real-me response has done.
In the last few weeks Donald Trump has shown
himself willing to almost offhandedly ignore two
hundred years of the world’s diplomatic history
and decades of his own nation’s progressive
cultural development. This display of historical
ignorance and spontaneous stupidity reminds one
of Edmund
Burke’s warning against
men with “intemperate minds.”
It has
also drawn ever more sharply the cultural divide
now facing the United States. Do Americans
really want a return to the racism signified not
only by the Klan and its ilk, but also by the
ongoing upsurge in police violence against
African-Americans? Do Americans really want a
reaffirmation of a monopolistic white culture
that, through Trump’s immigration policy, would
destroy the historical contribution of numerous
ethnic groups in making a progressive
multicultural society?
Most
Americans, if pressed to take a side, would
probably stand against the real Donald Trump
revealed by these recent defining moments.
However, in order for them to effectively take
that stand, there needs to be a political
alternative – an institutional choice that
allows for the political defeat of the rightwing
radicals. When we look around for that
alternative, all we find is a dysfunctional
Democratic Party, which, under its present
leadership, has proven incapable of checking the
reactionary trend besetting the nation.
So, the
U.S. is in both political and cultural limbo.
Its citizens are left asking if Donald Trump’s
defining moments will also define their own
future.
Lawrence Davidson is a retired professor of
history from West Chester University in West
Chester PA. His academic research focused on the
history of American foreign relations with the
Middle East. He taught courses in Middle East
history, the history of science and modern
European intellectual history.
http://www.tothepointanalyses.com/