OVER DEZE AFLEVERING
Why Do We Have Trump?
The US is an empire in decline. It is immensely powerful with trillions of dollars, but no manufacturing base. The decline of its manufacturing base has been a reality since the 1960s. I saw the decline firsthand in the textile mill town where I grew up during those years. The textile mill across from where I taught at a junior high had already been largely emptied and abandoned by companies who went to the US South then overseas seeking cheap labor and infrastructure. The same experience of decline took place across the nation in industries such as automobile manufacturing. It seems that so-called defense manufacturing escaped decline because empires need weapons to fight increasingly futile wars such as the war of aggression that the US fights now in Iran and as a proxy in places like Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria. A good primer on US war- fighting since World War II is William Blum’s Killing Hope (1995 and other editions).
A police action was justified after the terror attacks of 2001. Tragically, the answer to that horror were the endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
When the Soviet Union reached its demise, in reality well before 1991, the US was left as the world’s only superpower. How many millions have died in US open and proxy wars since then is a guess at best. It’s all about money and the extension of power. Donald Trump has turned the presidency into a cash cow in opposition to the words of the Constitution.
As a nation, the US depended on expansion following its founding 250 years ago. Native people suffered from the result of that expansion and white supremacy that thrives to this day. How else can the support of a man who verbally attacked and denigrated people of color at the announcement of his first candidacy be explained? Dog whistle politics have been standard operating procedure beginning with the campaign of Richard Nixon. The Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan, opened his campaign for the presidency near where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964, and that fact makes a lot of sense to those who an appeal to hate rings true. Jim Crow has morphed into mass incarceration. Warehousing people who were no longer of use in the economy made lots of sense to the power elite. During Jim Crow, even returning soldiers following World War II felt the brunt of the kind of hate that Trump expressed at the opening of his first campaign. Is it a shock to people of goodwill that he would militarize the campaign against immigrants in the US with an equally militarized ICE to round up and deport even children? Now the Trump administration has a nonexistent political left in its sights to further stir up the flames of hate. If an established left existed in the US, why are the streets so quiet in response to increasing dictatorial practices from Washington, DC and beyond?
The absence of quality education and the rise of the Internet go far in explaining why so few question the loss of democracy and democratic norms in the US. Many are interested in acquiring things and democratic norms mean little. To examine the rise of the far right in the US, people need to be able to read and assess what’s going on. What level of pushback was there to halt counting votes in 2000 by the Supreme Court? The Democratic Party was silent in response to this coup d’état. The No Kings rallies are a good example of how a toothless movement allows the government to look as if it tolerates protest. How can citizens think critically when their heads are bent in tribute to the god of tech screens?
Thank you for subscribing. Share this episode.
