Don't Pity the US Because of Trump, Oppose Him, Isolate Him Aggressively

And from yours truly,

Fintan O’Toole wrote a devastating evaluation of the state of American leadership under Donald Trump for the Times last Saturday. He declared that whereas “the rest of the world” has viewed the country with a panoply “of feelings from “love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”

While I largely agree with Mr. O’Toole’s assessment of Trump’s America, and even the notion that the state of the affairs in the country is pitiful, there are two points upon which I want to take issue with him. First, I think there are some nuances in regard to the role of race in American politics that he overlooks. Secondly, I urged my fellow citizens of the world not to pity Trump’s policies, but to aggressively oppose them.

O’Toole’s analysis of the way that the Republicans have rolled over in the face of Trump and the potentially horrific impacts of their posture in the COVID-19 crisis is spot on. He concludes that the party’s failure to stand up to Trump “is deliberate and homicidal stupidity.”  He finds the reason for the party’s stance in the contradiction between its desire “to control all the levers of governmental power” even as it has built its “popular base by playing on the notion that government is innately evil and must not be trusted.”

O’Toole is only partially right here. Republicans may be no more interested in total control over the government than Democrats. But what the corporate wing of the party seeks is a control that cuts taxes and regulation of the economy as much as possible. Such cuts include axing the social programs of America’s attenuated welfare state as much as possible. That agenda could never have been majoritarian. But since the presidency of Richard Nixon in the 1970s, and ever more aggressively from the time of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, Republicans have used the resentment of white Americans unhappy with the civil rights reforms of the 1960s to craft a reconfigured national party coalition. That coalition featured economically conservative capital and socially conservative white racists (and fundamental Christians as well). So it is not “homicidal stupidity” as much as corporate greed and white racism that animates the Republican base and makes it all but impossible to make rational public policy.

The corporate wing was the party establishment. For half a century they were able to dupe working class whites into believing that big government was “evil,” because it helped people of color to white people’s disadvantage. But as communism collapsed and with it, the logic of “big government,” free markets were unleashed, flight of capital toward cheap labor overseas ensued, and social programs were slashed. Black and brown people certainly didn’t benefit from those policies, but neither did the white working class.

Getting angrier and angrier, especially after the trauma of the Great Recession in 2008-09, white racists, by now termed “white nationalists,” engineered the Republican victory in the 2010 mid-term US Congressional elections, let us recall, with a black man in the White House. And when too many establishment politicians (Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio) stayed in the 2016 primaries too long and split the establishment vote, racist whites coalesced around Donald Trump and propelled him to the nomination … The nation was in shock! America continues to have its problems around race, but as O’Toole admits, most of us didn’t vote for Trump and we certainly didn’t ask for a president like him.

In my work I have talked about how with the demographic shifts this century, America is becoming two nations: a traditional America which is older, whiter and more male, and a progressive America, which is younger, more multiracial, female and gender non-conforming. People of Color had been pounding on their chests since the millennium observing that by mid-century America would be a majority-minority nation. Many scholars and activists have proclaimed that for people of color, “the future is ours” (Bowler and Segura, 2010). The oncoming majority is generally thought to be the natural constituency of the Democratic Party.

Unfortunately for progressives, Republicans were also reading that data. In states they controlled Republicans passed state-level policies imposing strict voter identification standards and the configuring of electoral districts in ways that concentrate racial minority voters into fewer districts and minimize the number of Democrats winning office. Policies such as these forestall the day when the true American majority can exert its will in the halls of government and public policy.

Working class and poor whites support Trump, because they feel marginalized in 21^st century  America. When they hear “build the wall” to keep Latinos out, or immigration bans on mostly Muslim countries, they also hear “make America great again” as “make America white again!” O’Toole is right. Trump does embody this mindset, “but he did not invent it.”

On the question of the world’s pity for the United States, American progressives and moderates, still the majority, need not your pity but a greater determination on “your part” to oppose Trumpism more aggressively than has been the case up until now. Yes, you were appalled as Trump pulled out of the Paris environmental accords, and stunned when he abrogated US involvement in the Iran nuclear deal; but you didn’t do anything about it. This is especially true in regard to the Iran deal upon which world peace might reside. Trump promised sanctions against any country whose corporations continued to do business with Iran. So even while European governments remained in the deal, the European corporations immediately stopped doing business with Iran so they could continue to do business with United States. In the end EU governments are but paper tigers and EU corporations are no different than greedy anti-humanitarian American corporations, and Trump.

In this regard then, Europe is no less pitiful than the United States. In fact, the entire North Atlantic world which has dominated world politics even beyond the last 200 years Mr. O’Toole talks about is ineffectual in the face of Trumpism and the right-wing populism he represents. I would advocate that European politicians openly assault Trump’s character and make fun of him with a devil may care attitude! Screw him! Treat him the way he treats you. I would also suggest that European companies should return to doing business with Iran in defiance of Trump and risk sanctions. Multinational corporations are always nervous about severely affecting their global market opportunities. But could US sanctions be any worse than the shock from nowhere --- COVID 19?

I don’t suspect European corporations to stand up frontally to Trump over Iran, but I do think that the risk for EU politicians is less, as he bumbles his way through the corona crisis. Let me just close by saying that in America, unlike Europe, there is a very courageous populist left matching Trumps’ populist right and represented by Bernie Sanders and people like Elizabeth Warren. It is not at all certain that we will win the November elections, because of the structural inequities alluded to earlier. But we are very vocal and determined to take our government back. What we need from you is international solidarity!