Reflections On Trump's Inauguration
Nine days ago, I was in Washington D.C, watching Donald Trump ascend to the presidency for the second time. With me were about two hundred other students, all packed into a single hotel conference room. As we watched the ceremonies unfold on TV, I could see a sharp division in the crowd: half of us were solemn and grim-faced, preparing ourselves for the Dark Time; while the other half was absolutely ecstatic about the "Golden Age of America" that Trump promised to usher in. But we could all tell that we were witnesses to a moment of History.
What follows is a mixture of thoughts, impressions and analyses that ran through my head as I watched the inauguration. They are organized according to the appropriate theme, but are also in roughly chronological order. Hopefully they are of some use to the reader.
Democracy
The inauguration opened with an address from Senator Amy Klobuchar, who spoke about "our enduring democracy." Overall it was a rather tepid bit of messaging from the Democrats, designed to give Trump the wink-wink-nudge-nudge that he still has to respect the rule of law and the Constitution and the limitations on presidential power. As Trump's recent flurry of executive orders has shown, that message fell on deaf ears.
Klobuchar's speech also had some populist flourishes for the folks at home. "There is a reason this ceremony takes place in the Capitol," she said. "In other countries, it might be in a presidential palace or a gilded executive office building. Here, it is traditionally held at the Capitol---the People's House." A lofty sentiment, but in these cynical times the words ring hollow. Especially when we consider who was actually in the house that day: Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos—the makings of the new American oligarchy.
In truth, American democracy has been on its last legs for some time now. As far back as 2008, the political theorist Sheldon Wolin argued that our democracy has been supplanted by "inverted totalitarianism": a wholly new political formation, born out of the fusion between corporate and state power. Unlike classical totalitarianism, which aims to fully mold, shape and direct its population, inverted totalitarianism renders its citizenry politically impotent through the slow corrosion of the democratic process—what Wolin calls "managed democracy." He writes: "One cannot point to any national institution(s) that can accurately be described as democratic: surely not in the highly managed, money-saturated elections, the lobby-infested congress, the imperial presidency, the class-biased judicial and penal system, or, least of all, the media" (Democracy Incorporated, p.105).
When the masses have been sufficiently disempowered, elites are free to pursue their goals, which often involve the slashing of social services and the expansion of American empire. The invasion of Iraq was a perfect example -- an imperial adventure that wasted lives, wrecked a country, and filled the coffers of the American military-industrial complex.
But that was in 2008. The American political scene has changed since then, but not for the better. What used to be inverted totalitarianism has transmuted into something resembling classic totalitarianism, with its cult of Trump and various White nationalist movements. And it seems we can draw a straight line between the two: people have grown sick and tired of politicians and "the system," so they jump at the opportunity to vote for a man who practices anti-politics. Obviously there is a lot more going on, but that is a topic for another article.
Clearly, the prospects for democracy are grim. They may become darker over the next four years. But it is clear that if we are really to bring about a revival of democracy in our country, it will require organization, principled resistance, and sweeping reform -- not some Senatorial blather about how everything is terrifically fine.
Religion
After Klobuchar came two clergymen, Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Reverend Franklin Graham, both of whom delivered a prayer for the new administration. Dolan's prayer was the more reasonable of the two, as his tone was measured and scrupulously nonpartisan: "Give our leader wisdom, for he is your servant aware of his own weakness and brevity of life. If wisdom, which comes from you, be not with him, he shall be held in no esteem."
Graham, meanwhile, made no pretensions of neutrality.
"Our Father, today, as President Donald J. Trump takes the oath of office once again, we come to say thank you, O Lord our God. Father, when Donald Trump's enemies thought he was down and out, You, and You alone, saved his life and raised him up with strength and power by Your mighty hand. We pray for President Trump that You'll watch over, protect, guide, and direct him. Give him Your wisdom from Your throne on high. We ask that You would bless him and that our nation would be blessed through him."
When I heard Graham speak, I was annoyed at the pure amount of fawning in his prayer, but also disappointed to see him commit the sin of idolatry. Idolatry being, in the words of philosopher Simone Weil, the action of holding up something "whose whole reality is confined to this world as an absolute value." Graham did this by equating the will of Trump and the will of God, and in doing so elevated Trump to the role of a New American Prophet. This sin isn't even that original; as Sheldon Wolin writes in Democracy Incorporated, the Bush administration did the exact same thing: "As Americans were continually reminded, President Bush was a 'born-again' believer whose speeches were notable for their biblical allusions; who often struck prophetic poses and assumed the role of divine instrument for combating and overcoming evil." Some may say that God chooses the most flawed people to do His work. But given that there is a long history of powerful, morally dubious people who have used God's name to bolster their credibility, one begins to wonder if all the religious rhetoric is out of convenience, delusion, or both.
But Graham is just one figure in a larger matrix of cultural forces. America is no stranger to Christian conservatism, but in recent years we have seen the rise of an especially virulent form of Christan nationalism, as well as the formation of the cult of Trump. As journalist Jeff Sharlet documents in his book The Undertow, this reactionary Christianity has its own ideology (White nationalism) and its own mythology (QAnon-type conspiracy theories). It often has a tenuous grasp on reality, and is openly violent, exchanging the imagery of the cross for the imagery of the sword.
It is fair to say that this is an egregious misinterpretation of Christianity. Frankly, I am uncertain how to respond -- perhaps all one can do is attempt to understand it, engage in dialogue, and evangelize against its distortions.
Patriotism
Finally, Trump took the podium and delivered his inaugural address. For a Trump speech it was remarkably coherent, but it was also rather upsetting.
He opened his speech with a bold proclamation:
"The Golden Age of America begins right now.
From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world. We will be the envy of every nation, and we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer. During every single day of the Trump administration, I will, very simply put, put America first."
Some triumphalist rhetoric, for sure. Then he made the following statement, which I found very interesting: "Our sovereignty will be reclaimed. Our safety will be restored. The scales of justice will be rebalanced... America will soon be greater, stronger and far more exceptional than ever before."
Reclaim our sovereignty from who? The immigrants? The Democrats? The rest of the world? There are a number of ways to read this statement. But all of them convey the idea that Americans (however you decide to define that term) have lost control of their country, which seems to resonate with Sheldon Wolin's thesis on managed democracy. A populace that has shut out of political participation for too long is ripe for the cultivation of right-wing populism.
The next statement was even more interesting:
"As we gather today, our government confronts a crisis of trust. For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens, while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair."
Incredible! Any more talk like this and we may have to call Trump a socialist! But of course in typical Trumpian fashion he deflects from who the "establishment" really is. Is it Wall Street? United Healthcare? The four Silicon Valley oligarchs who were literally in the room? No, Trump declines to give us specifics. But the threat is shadowy enough that he can raise a coalition around it.
Overall, Trump's speech sought to unite various groups (white people, black people, Hispanics, Asians) together under the umbrella of Americanism. And the image of the new America that Trump projects sounds quite a lot like the dreams of old: strength, power, dynamism, progress. On one hand this image is full of romanticism: he portrays Americans as people who "crossed deserts, scaled mountains, braved untold dangers, won the Wild West, ended slavery, rescued millions from tyranny, lifted millions from poverty, harnessed electricity, split the atom..." On the other hand there is a darker side to this image—Trump pretty conveniently skates over the fact that it was American plantation owners who introduced slavery to the continent, and American industrial capitalists who plunged people into poverty—but he has a coalition to build. The question is whether it will last, given Trump's flirtations with White nationalism and the intense class divisions among his supporters.
Trump's Americanism also revives another thing from earlier times: the dream of Empire. It is the same, tired old tune—it is America's Manifest Destiny to expand its territory, only this time we have expanded our purview to outer space. At least this particular dream is fairly harmless -- there are no people to dispossess on Mars -- but there are very few people (i.e. Elon Musk) who actually stand to benefit. The same thing cannot be said about Trump's designs for Panama and Greenland, which, if they are carried out, will ruin both countries for the sake of American economic and military power.
Trump says that he wants to be remembered as a "peacemaker and a unifier," but his imperial fantasies and frequently divisive rhetoric suggest that he will be remembered otherwise. The Americanism he presents is an inherently unstable one, that in all likelihood will implode under the pressure of its own contradictions.
Personally, I am not excited to see the outcome when that happens. But what is clear to me is that Trump is not the only one who defines what it means to be American. That is something that everyone in this country gets to decide, because patriotism is a terrain of constant struggle. We can take it to mean the reckless pursuit of national glory and power, as Trump does; or we can follow Martin Luther King's example and try to reconnect with the nobler parts of the American tradition. We can reclaim what is best in our heritage, and take part in that age-old struggle for freedom, justice and democracy.
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