Tom
Engelhardt
(
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.
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