US President-elect Donald Trump after claiming victory in the 2024 US election. Photo: AP
You’d like to say the dustbin of history awaits Donald Trump. But how could you be so unkind to the bin?
Thousands upon thousands of words, including by myself, have been expended on Trump, his actions, his thoughts, his character and his influence. But as the smoke clears on the US election results and we see Trump about to enter the Oval Office, this question still stands … What is the point of Donald Trump in public life?
In his private life, it’s neither here nor there, but in public life, it is.
The question may sound churlish to some, after all, the man is on his way to the White House for the second time after a four-year interregnum. The last time this happened was in the case of Grover Cleveland (1885 to 1889 and then 1893 to 1897). So, it’s an achievement worth noting, and it was a comprehensive victory. Many millions more voted for him over Kamala Harris.
Trump’s war cry during the campaign to those millions was to make America great again (an echo from Ronald Reagan’s 1980 cry: ‘‘Let’s make America great again’’). Primarily, Trump was going to do this by deporting each and every illegal immigrant in the country, by force if necessary. He was going to be the strongman on the economic front, he was going to destroy to rebuild. People believed him.
And now, he can set about doing it. It is impossible to imagine Trump functioning without the grit of conflict in his teeth. He lauds himself as the greatest dealmaker in history, but his deals are never altruistic. “Drill, baby drill’’, goodbye climate.
Of course, one’s view of what greatness looks like changes with where you are on society’s ladder. Trump is rich; his method in making the country great is to make it great in his image. You won’t find that concession in his speeches. But it’s there. The rich will get richer, the poor will get the picture (apologies Midnight Oil). There will be massive tax cuts for the wealthy. Because, well of course, they are the most needy in society.
In a newspaper interview in the past week, a young woman from the mid-west said she was going to vote for Trump, but she had to look beyond his character to do so. This is an understandable justification, but it’s a dreadful and damning line to cross. Character is all, especially in leading a country. Well, that would be the theory of a reasonable person. But history has other ideas and examples. History is not reasonable.
And it’s a line as wide as a six-lane highway. The man is a criminal. Yet it didn’t matter, not to him, not to the US Constitution, not to the millions of people who returned him to the White House.
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Now that he will soon be in there, the myriad further charges against him will likely disappear, as whoever he appoints as attorney-general will simply drop them. And those he has labelled “patriots” many times, that is, the ones convicted and jailed for their part in the January 6 insurrection, now must be waiting for their Trump pardon. Presumably, when he spoke of healing the nation in his victory speech, he was focused on his own tribe.
One would think being a convicted felon would disbar you from holding office in the highest office in the country and indeed in the world. No. Didn’t matter. One would think being a habitual liar would disbar you from office. Nope. Didn’t matter. Indeed, the bigger the lie the greater positive effect it had on your chances. One would think decrying every piece of negative information about you as fake news would diminish your standing. No. Didn’t matter. One would think using racism as a weapon would hurt you. No. Not at all. It seems that they really were eating the cats and dogs in Springfield.
Maybe Trump is Friedrich Nietzsche’s par exemplar of the will to power. Philosophers and academics have debated the term since it was coined by Nietzsche more than a century ago. Broadly, it is the striving of a person by sheer dint of determination and ego to dominate.
What I am, and am becoming, so are you. Maybe Trump’s followers are working towards that. Simply, they like what they see. They want to become that. They didn’t see it in Kamala Harris. However, it’s the American Dream as gossamer that will as it runs through the next four years become a nightmare.
Guardian columnist George Monbiot before the election posited that Trump was extrinsic. These are people who are “more attracted to prestige, status, image, fame, power and wealth. They are strongly motivated by the prospect of individual reward and praise. They are more likely to objectify and exploit other people, to behave rudely and aggressively and to dismiss social and environmental impacts.
“Trump exemplifies extrinsic values. From the tower bearing his name in gold letters to his gross overstatements of his wealth; from his endless ranting about ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ … from his rejection of public service, human rights and environmental protection, to his extreme dissatisfaction and fury, undiminished even when he was president of the United States, Trump, perhaps more than any other public figure in recent history, is a walking, talking monument to extrinsic values.”
For the non-Trump world, there is a kind of consolation in this. All things must pass. The problem, however, is if this wrecking ball leaves such a ruinous state of affairs that things can’t be rebuilt.
