Trumparama
'We do not know what our nature permits us to be.' Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, 1762.
Donald Trump was taught by his father that there are two kinds of people — winners and losers. Donald was encouraged to become a 'killer', his father's terminology for embodying ruthlessness and unscrupulousness. As a young man he acquired a second mentor, Roy Cohn, who, as expressed by the late British historian Eric Hobsbawm, 'made his legal and political career in a milieu where money and power override rules and law—indeed where the ability to get, and get away with, what lesser citizens cannot, is what proves membership of an elite.' Roy Cohn saw himself as an iconoclast but in reality he was deeply hypocritical. He died of AIDS, a disease that he denied he had, and while physically diminished he was unable to fight back when the IRS seized property and sued him for $7 million in back taxes. Before his death he was also disbarred, having been found guilty of dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation. Donald Trump's interpretation of these events was that it is a terrible thing to come after a sick man.
When people who think like and behave like this, are entrusted with power, what can we expect to happen? It was the freezing temperatures in Washington DC that caused the exclusion of Trump's base of supporters from his inauguration, but is it not neatly symbolic of their fate now that they have served their purpose in getting him democratically elected? Trump's showmanship distracted people from his true mission, his ideology, his creed within the way he has lived and what he has made of himself. There is no place for them in that world except if they can be used for his aggrandisement.
Given prominence at the ceremony within the warmth and comfort of the US Capitol Rotunda were the world’s three richest people—Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg. These tech moguls (the 'oligarchy' of tech billionaires that Biden warned about in his farewell address to the nation), were seated together on the dais with former Presidents, Trump's family and Cabinet nominees.
Though Trump has claimed that the slogan 'Make America Great Again' popped into his head as an original thought, it was the same pledge that Reagan had used in his successful 1980 campaign. America had suffered the humiliation of defeat in Vietnam, the Iran hostage crisis and unemployment, inflation and taxes were all high. It was a country doubting itself and Reagan offered an optimism that they were all going to be a part of. Trump is speaking to the aggrieved in a country that actually has low unemployment, rising wages, high GDP growth and is close to being energy independent.
Reagan implemented supply-side, free-market, trickle-down economics that became known as Reaganomics. At one point tax on the wealthiest was reduced at the same time that it was increased on the lowest earners. The success of these strategies is debatable but what is irrefutable is that they caused inequality to rise significantly because they enabled the rich to become richer at the expense of the whole. Reagan thought that entrepreneurship would benefit everyone, perhaps he did not anticipate how greedy people could become, because he was a decent human being himself.
America was actually great during its time of high taxation. In 1913 the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was made and Federal income tax was implemented with strong support for it because Americans did not want to become as inegalitarian, oligarchic, and plutocratic as old Europe. Such was the sentiment at the time, making America a powerful democracy. The tax rates for the wealthy were very high and so was prosperity. High taxation did not stifle ambition and enterprise, and less income disparity created social cohesion.
What is needed now is a major cultural shift. Life is more than money and trust is sacred. Greatness doesn't come at the expense of others.
