Trump and the Political Establishment

Who does Trump really represent?

I am addressing this plea to anyone who, while remaining more or less apolitical or rightly sceptical of mainstream political discourse, is sympathetic to the argument that Trump’s presidency represents an alternative to The Swamp — a metaphor used by Trump (and others) for the corrupt governing elite. I don’t dispute the potency of the metaphor, nor the appropriateness of its application to the shady atmosphere of Washington insider wheeling and dealing, in which corporate-sponsored politicians, including the Clintons and Obama, are covertly and undemocratically influenced by lobbyists and donors. Nevertheless, I will argue that, far from draining The Swamp as promised, Trump has simply turned it into an open sewer. Trump, a billionaire whose presidency serves the interests of the billionaire class to which he belongs, is not an anti-establishment figure in any meaningful sense of the term. Trump differs from establishment politicians only in style, not in substance, such that there is no material difference, I argue, between Trumpism and conservative Republicanism— Trump has simply found a convenient way to bypass public scepticism of elites while simultaneously advancing their interests. A closer look at some of Trump’s policies will therefore be instructive (especially since Trump supporters are, in my experience, often unable to point to anything specific, at least in policy terms, that they support, or that distinguishes him from establishment politicians).

Economic policy

The arena in which Trump has most obviously acted on behalf of America’s corporate elite is the economy. On economic policy, Trump is more or less a standard conservative Republican, which is, no doubt, why so many rank and file Republicans are willing to stand by him (despite having to wash their hands publicly of him from time to time — the most shameless example of which is surely Trump’s supposedly devout running mate Mike Pence’s reaction to the infamous ‘Access Hollywood’ tape during the 2016 election campaign). You may have heard that Trump’s election has been good for the economy — a claim that isn’t subjected to anything like the level of scrutiny it should be, since Trump shares many of the same economic interests as his opponents. His presidency has certainly been good for billionaires, even if his attempts to use his office to enrich himself (arguably in violation of the constitution’s emoluments clause) haven’t always succeeded. And as many pundits predicted, Trump’s flagship economic policy, namely, his big ‘tax cut’ (the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017), has mostly benefited the rich, who have simply pocketed the proceeds in the form of raises and bonuses. Equally predictably, moreover, the increase in the deficit needed to pay for Trump’s tax policy has come at the expense of funding for social programs. Too bad for the ordinary Americans who rely on those social programs, I guess. Next time try being a billionaire!

Despite promising workers that he would bring manufacturing jobs back to the US (a promise made in ludicrously bad faith, which every serious political commentator considered prima facie absurd), all that Trump has been able to do to keep American companies from moving offshore is bribe them, a tactic which ultimately hasn’t paid off. We can expect the same lack of success from his useless trade war with China, a policy which has so far only hurt American workers by raising the prices of basic goods. Any claim that Trump has brought about an economic boom, therefore, should be met with scepticism. One piece of evidence that is sometimes given for this claim is the fact that, as has been widely reported, since taking office, the stock market has responded favourably to Trump’s political fortunes. It should be stressed, however, that the stock market is not at all synonymous with ‘the economy’ — at least as far as workers are concerned. The rise and fall of share prices does not correspond in any meaningful way with improvements in the conditions of workers, whatever financial benefits their bosses might derive from it.

Far from being responsible for an economic boom, therefore, Trump is merely taking credit for an economic recovery that began under Obama, a slow and painful process of rebuilding since the 2008 financial crash (liberals should note, however, that Democrats like Obama did little to mitigate the harm of the latter, since they are beholden to the same business interests as Trump). Moreover, as Professor Noam Chomsky has pointed out (a genuinely anti-establishment figure whose work I highly recommend, if you aren’t already aware of him — particularly his commentary on US foreign policy), unemployment figures showing job growth under Trump are misleading. The ‘gig economy’ may have provided increased opportunities for work in some areas, but many workers now find themselves without protections, and are not being adequately compensated for their labour. And things are not getting better, as Chomsky points out: wage growth has remained stagnant since the 1970s, but wealth inequality has skyrocketed. The mega-wealthy are simply helping themselves to an ever-increasing share of the economy, with Trump actively assisting them in their efforts.

Healthcare policy

Even conceding his favourable employment figures, what good is Trump’s supposed economic boom to workers if they find themselves without any guarantee of adequate healthcare provision? America’s public healthcare system falls far behind other developed economies, in no small part because it is hamstrung by the powerful and greedy corporate insurance and pharmaceutical industries and their armies of lobbyists (whose greed, incidentally, is largely responsible for the current opioid epidemic, afflicting huge swathes of Trump’s midwestern constituencies). Average Americans, uninsured, crippled by medical debt (on top of rising student loan debt), or even, as is all too common, going bankrupt because they can’t afford their medical bills, are hardly in a position to be thankful for the fact that shareholders are seeing a bigger return on their investments, or that CEOs have received bigger bonuses under Trump. When it comes to healthcare, Trump is, again, no different from a standard conservative Republican. His dismantling of Obamacare, and his opposition to Medicare for All (a standard policy position in almost every other developed economy), is to be expected. It is the position of America’s corporate ruling class: fuck the poor.

Environmental policy

America’s present economic tidings won’t matter much in any case if we don’t have a planet left to live on in the foreseeable future. Trump, a prolific promoter of conspiracy theories, is a stubborn climate change denier at the head of a country that leads the world in carbon emissions. Aside from using his position and influence to attack scientific consensus on the issue, muddying the waters of a debate that concerns our very survival as a species, he has taken measures to hasten climate change: pulling the US out of the Paris Climate Accord, as well as approving more drilling and fracking, including the controversial Dakota oil pipeline (desecrating sacred native land against warnings and protests). Even viewing climate change as an economic issue, rather than simply as a moral one (though it is clearly both!), Trump is on the wrong side of history. Somebody will have to pay for the effects of catastrophic climate change, which is expected to cost the global economy trillions of dollars — if not Trump’s generation, then certainly ours. So much for Trump being ‘good for the economy’! On environmental issues, Trump is a dinosaur, whose outdated beliefs remain as set in stone as the fossil fuels he advocates digging up and burning for short-term gain. While climate change is literally and figuratively heating up, Trump plays with fire — that is, when he’s not taking time out of his day to harass an autistic teenage girl who asks for nothing more than the guarantee of a viable future.

Race and immigration policy

Just as Trump plays on his supporters’ ignorance on environmental issues, so too is he constantly playing on their prejudices on issues of race for his own gain. There is no question that Trump is himself a lifelong racist. From his racist business practices during his early career in real estate, his public insistence on the guilt of the Central Park Five even after they were exonerated, his support for the racist Obama ‘birther’ conspiracy theory, or for the alt-right in the wake of their murderous rally in Charlottesville, to his treatment of Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar, or the fact that his presidency has inspired numerous white supremacist mass shooters (a deadly cycle that will likely continue unabated, due to Trump’s inactivity and evasiveness on gun reform). Trump is, as far as arch-racists like Richard Spencer (alt-right figurehead) and David Duke (former KKK Grand Wizard) are concerned, “their guy”. Of course, this is not to say that Trump doesn’t have black supporters — though they make up a very small percentage of his base. It’s always possible to find those who, out of ignorance or sheer indifference, are willing to vote against the interests of their own community, whatever their race.

Kanye West’s support for Trump is a case in point. Kanye’s public stance on the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, a disaster that disproportionately affected the black community, was laudable: he called out Bush’s racism on live TV. Yet his more recent political positions have received criticism from prominent voices in the black community, including Kanye fan and author Ta-Nehisi Coates. While Kanye says he is sick of being told that, as a black person, he shouldn’t support Trump, his support for Trump seems to have very little to do with politics at all. In a televised interview with Jimmy Kimmel, for example, Kanye states that his support for Trump is based on a felt connection with the man, a personal affinity which he considers more important than the question of whether or not he agrees with Trump’s policies. But politics is not a game of personalities. It is a struggle for power, one in which competing interests work to impose their respective aims, i.e. their policies, on each other. Kanye has the luxury of ignoring the competing interests driving American politics, because, as a wealthy businessman himself, Trump’s policies don’t materially harm him (in fact, they benefit him). Thus, Kanye, who himself has often courted controversy, can freely decide to support a controversial president whose personal style resonates with his own — if for no other reason, perhaps, than as an aesthetic choice (or contrarian stunt) — without needing to consider the political realities of such a decision. Indeed, when Kimmel attempts to confront Kanye with some of the ugly realities of Trump’s presidency later in the interview, Kanye has no response.

Many of Trump’s supporters during the 2016 election campaign believed that Trump would put ‘America First’, a slogan with racist historical resonance meant to imply that he would not only restrict immigration, but also act as an isolationist president, keeping America out of costly foreign wars. Certainly, the debate surrounding illegal immigration, which Trump has often exploited, ignores the damage that America’s military interventions have done to places like Latin America and the Middle East. The two issues work in tandem. For example, Trump’s travel ban, a policy which was intended to restrict travel from countries in the Middle East connected to terrorism, was directly targeted at Muslims, yet did not include Saudi Arabia, the country of origin of the 9/11 hijackers, because the latter is a US ally. And in the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections, Trump stoked his Republican base’s fears of a migrant caravan headed for the US, implying, without evidence, that the caravan was filled with middle eastern terrorists — ironic, given that many of the refugees among them were fleeing countries such as Guatemala and Honduras, countries ravaged by the effects of US-backed terrorism in the 1970s and ‘80s. That it is not illegal to seek asylum under domestic and international law in the US is of little interest to a president as compassionless and racist as Trump (who, hypocritically, employs undocumented workers in his own businesses). This is, after all, a president who separates children from their families and puts kids in cages.

Foreign policy

On defence and foreign policy, Trump has blatantly betrayed his supporters by proving himself to be a standard militarist neoconservative president in the mould of his predecessors Bush and Cheney, continuing America’s imperialist project abroad through continued funding and support for the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, carrying out bloody military interventions in the Middle East, employing deadly drone strikes, and threatening new wars against Venezuela, Iran, and North Korea. Trump has escalated Obama’s drone war, which critics rightly point out amounts to a policy of extra-judicial assassinations that kills innocent civilians as well as its stated targets. He has pardoned convicted war criminals, abandoned his Kurdish allies to Turkey in Syria, threatened Iran, abandoned the nuclear deal, maintained friendly (and lucrative) relations with the murderous Saudi royal family, supported Saudi war crimes in Yemen, and given unprecedented support for Israel at the expense of Palestinians and the prospect of peace.

Yet in spite of all these atrocities, Trump’s foreign policy has, so far at least, caused a good deal less harm than Bush’s, a fact that many liberals seem to have forgotten. After all, Bush instituted torture, used 9/11 as an excuse to grossly restrict civil liberties, and is responsible for perhaps as many as a million dead Iraqis — though if Trump takes us to war with Iran, after having murdered one of their highest ranking military officers, the death toll may be even higher. The other crucial difference between the two presidents is that, while Bush felt compelled to give phony humanitarian justifications for his actions, Trump is open about the reason why America is in the Middle East: oil. On foreign policy, Trump says the quiet part loud, which certainly doesn’t justify his belligerence, but at least lets us know what kind of heartless, warmongering president we are dealing with.

Personal and moral failings

I would be remiss if I didn’t also point out, in addition to specific policies I disagree with, the sheer irrationality and volatility of the Trump White House, a chaos that has been well documented by those who have seen it firsthand (such as his many fired staffers). Regardless of ideology, Trump is by all accounts a difficult, small-minded, petty person, a narcissist who is deeply unpleasant to deal with. He is also a coward, taking no clear position on many important political and moral issues, changing his stated views whenever it’s convenient to do so, making ludicrous and contradictory statements to his supporters about the things that matter to them, including abortion, religion, the Bible (‘it’s my favourite book!’), and so on — none of which really matter as far as he is concerned. Being such a bald-faced liar and hypocrite would be bad enough, but Trump’s personal and moral failings (including his many misogynist statements) are more than just disgusting, they’re also criminal: from the multiple sexual assault allegations (from credible accusers, including Trump’s ex-wife Ivana, who has testified under oath during court proceedings that she was raped by Trump) to his well-documented connections to pedophile sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein (Trump was not only his close personal friend, but is accused of raping one of Epstein’s victims, a 13-year old girl), anyone with any sense of empathy or decency ought to conclude that, regardless of his actions as president, as a man, Trump is a sick, deranged sociopath without a moral compass.

The aesthetics of Trumpism

I’ve tried to balance criticisms both of Trump’s policies and his personality, since it’s been my assertion that, whether from supporters or critics, the focus is often on style over substance, an approach which I’ve tried to avoid. Nevertheless, the image that Trump has cultivated for himself in the minds of his supporters, through positioning himself as a populist outsider has, I think, been a major ingredient of his success. Sadly, while more cunning conservatives have often managed to suppress their distaste for Trump’s personality and governing style in order to put their weight behind the substance of Trump’s policies, liberals have too often ignored the substantive similarities between Trump and standard Republican politicians, focusing instead on what they see as the offensiveness and even the danger of Trump’s total lack of respect for the office of president. In other words, style over substance. But the very insistence by liberal pundits that Trump’s contempt for their West Wing fantasy of bipartisan normalcy is beyond the pale has inadvertently strengthened the perception that Trump is ‘anti-establishment’. It has made his style appealing. Which is not to say that Trump’s political style isn’t dangerous — he has demonstrated a very real commitment to undermining democratic norms (this is, after all, a man who seems to greatly admire dictators, and who kept a copy of Hitler’s speeches by his bed), actively spreading fake news, and initiating a post-truth era. What kind of president in a democracy holds regular rallies outside of election season, in which he attacks journalists and freedom of the press, calls for the jailing of his political opponents, and calls for foreign countries to influence the outcome of elections?

One possible definition of fascism, according to the philosopher Walter Benjamin (who was himself hounded to an early death by fascists in 1940), is the aestheticization of politics. Contemporary comparisons with Nazi Germany can be unhelpful (in any case, Trump is closer to Mussolini), but I do think Trump cultivates a certain proto-fascist aesthetic, featuring a fetishistic fixation on symbols of power, as well as combining, on the one hand, the insistent projection of strength and of a sadistic enjoyment of violence, and, on the other, a masochistic celebration of white male victimhood. Trump’s frequently exaggerated bouts of performative outrage make many of his supporters very worked up indeed, and also, I think, very horny. In her 1975 essay ‘Fascinating Fascism’, critical theorist Susan Sontag writes of the eroticism of fascist aesthetics: an art of ideal nude bodies and sexy leather uniforms. Fascist aesthetics, she writes, seeks to ‘turn sexual energy into “spiritual force”’. Drawing on the theoretical writings of German psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich and his landmark 1933 study The Mass Psychology of Fascism — in which Reich diagnoses the condition of fascist upheaval as intimately bound-up with the harnessing of sexual repression — the post-structuralists Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, in Anti-Oedipus (the first volume in their two-volume mindfuck Capitalism and Schizophrenia), writing on the politics of desire, make the provocative point that Hitler ‘got the fascists sexually aroused. Flags, nations, armies, banks get a lot of people aroused.’ We might also add: MAGA hats.

Yes, Trump’s body is widely ridiculed as gross, and we all know his weird mushroom dick (as Stormy Daniels describes it) probably doesn’t work, but does revulsion for the man in any way diminish the libidinal energy of Trumpism? Trump’s world is outwardly sexually charged, furnished with models and pornstars, beauty pageants and handsome generals (‘better looking than Tom Cruise!’). Power, as celebrated war criminal Henry Kissinger once said, is the ultimate aphrodisiac, and Trump’s performance of power gets people off. Why are liberals always implying Trump is gay for Putin? Obviously because they want to symbolically castrate him (albeit in a very hypocritically homophobic way). And Trump, for his part, loves to provoke this kind of reaction. The aesthetics of Trumpism, at least for a significant chunk of his most extreme supporter base, is the aesthetics of anti-PC transgression, as Angela Nagle documents in her commentary on the rise of the alt-right, Kill All Normies. This constant effacing of symbolic boundaries applies not just to Trump’s invectives on the culture wars, but in every aspect of his presidency. Where for Nixon ratfucking was a matter of strategy, for Trump, smear campaigns and dirty tricks are done openly, as a matter of style. The fact that Trump seems to get away with saying and doing all the horrible things in public that many of his supporters wish they could get away with saying and doing gives them a powerful transgressive thrill. Like any good aspiring fascist leader, Trump is in tune with the very worst impulses of his supporters.

Is there anything to be said for Trumpism?

Amateur psychoanalysis aside, you might object that I’ve given a completely one-sided analysis. He can’t be all bad, surely? Nothing is that black and white. But I think if you look back you’ll find that I’ve listed many of Trump’s strengths — at least from the point of view of the ruling elite, who, I cannot stress enough, have been the main beneficiaries of Trump’s presidency! Trump’s politics (to the extent that any kind of coherent political vision can be disentangled from Trump’s web of contradictory speeches and actions) differ so radically from my own that it’s nearly impossible for me to muster any kind of praise for anything he’s done. I suppose the best thing that can be said for Trump, from a leftist point of view, is that he’s largely responsible for inaugurating a new type of politics, giving momentum to populist movements on the left as well as on the right (this was more or less the leftist case for Trump given by philosopher Slavoj Žižek). Since Trump’s election, the image of the sensible corporate centrist candidate as harmless technocratic manager no longer seems plausible, and such candidates are unable to conceal the harm of their compromises behind a veneer of respectability. Moreover, as the pure antithesis of ‘safe’ political rationalism, Trump has proven to be so stubbornly irrational at times that he may have inadvertently hindered some of his advisors’ more aggressive agenda-pushing, perhaps slowing down the establishment political engine ever so slightly. The trade-off, of course, is that his irrationality is unpredictable and often dangerous. And, as we have seen recently, it could lead us into war.

In the end, considering the appalling fact that Republicans overwhelmingly support his presidency, and even some Democrats have voted for his policies, it should be obvious that, even as a populist, Trump hasn’t strayed very far from the prevailing neoliberal ideology of the political mainstream, as much as both sides like to pretend otherwise. Impeachment won’t make any difference. However much of an aberration he seems, I have argued that Trump represents the very establishment he rails against. Again, the difference between Trump and a conventional politician should be viewed as a difference of style, not of substance. And in terms of style, Trump is not even very original — he’s arguably nothing more than an American version of Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, a billionaire working to advance the interests of his fellow billionaires. It’s the same lewd, openly corrupt spectacle. Don’t be fooled by it! Trump is a grifter, a huckster, an old fashioned snake oil salesman. He’s been a successful celebrity, perhaps, but not a successful businessman. Whatever you admire about him is likely just the illusion of depth (eg. the laughable suggestion that ‘he’s playing 4D-chess’) — there’s nothing beyond his surface gaudiness, no evidence of real feeling, just a thoughtless, spiritually empty husk. And, as someone who has followed Trump on Twitter since before he ran for office, I can attest that his mind is rapidly deteriorating in the most cringe boomer way imaginable. His tiresome boomer bluster is familiar to anyone who has ever argued with a racist uncle or kooky anti-vaxxer aunt on Facebook. The Swamp is not just a perfect metaphor for insider corruption, but also for Trump’s confused, erratic, senile thought processes, evidenced in his batshit speeches and deranged tweets. His undeserved confidence and inarticulate ramblings represent all the worst things about boomers taken to a bizarre mutant extreme. He’s a crass, childish Caligula presiding over the beginning of the end times — cruel, bigoted, indifferent to suffering, a perfect symbol of late capitalist decline, of the bloated American ego, a pitiful man whose proud pleasure palaces stink of the rot of a decaying empire.

You could even say, in fact, that in a certain sense the ruling class has never been more honestly represented than by Donald J. Trump. He’s their avatar. The mask’s off.

Is there a genuine alternative?

Not everything is hopeless, however. There is a candidate whose campaign is actively opposed by the billionaire class, who has received no donations from billionaires but a record number from individual donors, who opposes war with Iran, has no allegations of sexual misconduct against him, isn’t horny for fascism, will implement a Green New Deal, and will deliver workers the same standard of living they enjoy in most other developed nations — offering, for example, free public healthcare and higher education (which only a fraction of Trump’s enormous defence budget would pay for). This kind of social democratic platform was considered fairly unremarkable in Western democracies during the post-war Keynesian consensus, before the Thatcherite/Reaganite neoliberal takeover in the 1970s and ’80s effected a massive transfer of publicly controlled wealth into the hands of a few private owners, producing the unprecedented inequality we see today. But it’s not impossible to recapture those past gains. You probably already guessed that the candidate I am referring to, and whom I support, is Bernie Sanders. Based on his policies alone (after all, his personality is not very glamorous — substance over style, all the way), I would support him over Trump or any other candidate in the current field, even if there was no chance he could ever win (which I don’t think is the case, as recent polling data indicates). Against Bernie, who seeks to challenge entrenched interests, Trump, I have argued, represents the establishment: the perception that Trump is anti-establishment or immune to influence by a corrupt insider elite has been shown not to hold up under scrutiny. Trump is a billionaire whose policies and ideology has proven amenable to billionaires. If you want a genuinely anti-establishment alternative to The Swamp, if you want to avoid a retreat to the ‘safety’ of Clintonite woke capitalism (which, in any case, is no longer a viable electoral strategy), or if you would simply like to stick it to the man, there is really no other choice but to support Bernie Sanders for president.