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Roaming Charges: Manifest Destiny’s Child

12 0
24.01.2025

Manifest Destiny political cartoon in the Philadelphia Press, 1898.

“Businessmen became politicians and were acclaimed as statesmen, while statesmen were taken seriously only if they talked the language of successful businessmen.”

— Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

There was a messianic fervor in Trump’s Second Inaugural speech that wasn’t evident eight years ago. As dark as the 2016 American Carnage diatribe was, there was still the sense that Trump was a salesman pitching a vision he didn’t quite believe in but thought he needed to sell in order to legitimize himself to his own ragged ranks of followers. Mainly, he seemed surprised to find himself where he was. The man who returned to power this week seemed sterner, surer of how to leverage his authority and who to use it against, more confident of his own invincibility. Was this hubristic exhibition infused by the bullet that grazed his ear, or his close encounters with incarceration, and the Supreme Court anointing him with an almost Divine-like cloak of immunity to do whatever he wants for whatever venal reason? Likely, all of the above.

Refreshingly, Trump’s speech lacked any promises of national unity, political comity, rhetorical civility, or letting bygones be bygones. Trump was as explicit as he could get (given his limited facility with the language he wants to require everyone to speak) about what’s coming, and what’s coming is the dismantling of the regulatory state and the expansion of the imperial state. As always, the American underclass will pay the price, and it will be a severe one, subjected to both destitution and persecution. Only the most foolish and faint-hearted will fail to take him seriously now.

I probably have a softer spot than most for Napoleon, but as I watched the inauguration, diverted into the Rotunda of the Capitol because of the Dante-esque weather (See below) outside, I couldn’t help but think of the Corsican upstart seizing the imperial crown from Pope Pius VII and proclaiming himself emperor in the dark sacristy of Notre Dame 221 years ago. At a time when trust in religious institutions is at its lowest in many decades, the US government is almost entirely in the grip of Christian Nationalists or those who exploit Christian Nationalism for their own power and profit. Trump seemed like an Old Testament prophet announcing his own Second Coming. (Although Stormy Daniels might dispute the last part.)

“Just a few months ago, in that beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin’s bullet ripped through my ear. But I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.”

More than anything, this was a Trump speech about Trump. It was twice as long (2888 words) as his first inaugural speech (1433), but even more about himself. In his first speech, Trump referred to himself 52 times. In this week’s speech, Trump referred to himself 140 times, more than twice as much as he mentioned the country he is now ruling once again.

“Many people thought it was impossible for me to stage such a historic political comeback. But as you see today, here I am.”

Trump’s concept of his own authority is so all-consuming that he could declare there are “only two genders: male and female,” even though around 1.7 percent of any given population of humans (and other animals) are born with intersex traits. (The intersex population of the US is about 5.7 million, which is about the same percentage of people in the US who identify as Jewish or Mormon.) He also granted himself the authority to rename the geographical features of the hemisphere he seeks to control.

“A short time from now, we’ll be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. And we will restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, to where it should be and where it belongs.”

Will he also be renaming all the animals?

For the past four years in exile, Trump seems to have been marinating in the accolades of the YouTube evangelists who have proclaimed him Manifest Destiny’s Child, the savoir of Christian America in a demon-haunted world. The former self-proclaimed nationalist has emerged as a Teddy Roosevelt imperialist with designs on expanding the empire by annexing Canada, Greenland, northern Mexico, Panama and, yes, Mars.

The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons. And we will pursue our Manifest Destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.

Trump has accumulated a small mountain range of political IOUs. The question is whether he’ll be more willing to pay them off than his own debts. If the seating arrangement at the inauguration is any indication, where the Technogarchy was seated in front of his own cabinet, Trump seems intent on rewarding the billionaire class at the expense of the working-class........

© CounterPunch


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