President Trump's widely attacked moral flaws — are not the main problem

© 2017 Peter Free

 

23 January 2017

 

 

Theme

 

Culturally, we are going nowhere pleasant. However, President Trump is not the primary force at fault.

 

 

Briefly thinking about this conundrum is worthwhile

 

Escaping from "deep shit" usually requires a plan. We cannot come up with a plan, when we don't recognize the problem.

 

Wandering enthusiastically around in the Streets of Protest (even in the tens of thousands) is unlikely to be productive on its own.

 

 

Two short essays

 

Two essays do a good job of explaining where we are today, post-inaugural. The first is from former U.S. Foreign Officer, Peter van Buren. The second, from Columbia University professor, Hamid Dabashi.

 

Collectively, the two make the point that President Trump's arguably unattractive persona simply exposes a long-standing, core American problem.

 

 

Peter van Buren's perspective

 

Regarding the cause of America's rotted representative democracy:

 

 

We are consumed most of all by our fears.

 

[After 9/11] We enthusiastically abandoned so many of the good things about America, such as our Bill of Rights.

 

Trump is at best/worst a symbol of all this. How powerful people play us against each other and exploit our differences. How fear (currently fear of Trump filtered through fear of Putin) can be used to manipulate us. How the ideas of democracy can be so easily tossed aside so that our most progressive thinkers are convinced elections are illegitimate, and anything from silly name calling to demands for something akin to a coup are justified when the enemy is as perceived evil as Trump.

 

Echoing the famous lines from Vietnam, it is in their minds necessary to destroy democracy in order to save it.

 

Somebody . . . is one day going to stop and wonder how [we] got to where [we] ended up, an oligarchy that profits from mouthing the nice words of our Founders while ignoring them.

 

© 2017 Peter van Buren, We’re Still Here, 1/20/17, Consumed Most of All by Our Fears, WeMeantWell.com (20 January 2017)

 

 

Professor Hamid Dabashi

 

Regarding the United States' cultural disease:

 

 

US history finally came down to this:

 

a morally compromised, blatantly racist, white supremacist, xenophobic, sexist, tax-avoiding real estate crook, swinging loudly the arrested vocabulary of a third-grader, ceremoniously entering the highest and most revered office of this proud and hitherto confident nation. 

 

Our active defiance of Trump must not be predicated on a false nostalgia for Obama, or even worse, on an even more false regret for Clinton. Trump was their parting gift of a Pandora's Box to the US and the world around it.

 

Obama . . . was the last shining smile concealing the frightening gnarls of American militarism.

 

Millions of . . . Americans are now trapped inside a vulgar buffoonery, as Palestinians are in Israel, and as Arabs and Muslims are in their own countries from one end of the globe to the other - caught in the web of a graceless, crass, kitsch of a state, with the picture of President Trump all over it.

 

© 2017 Hamid Dabashi, Lady and the Trump, Al Jazeera English (21 January 2017) (excerpts)

 

 

In other words, nothing is new in this world of arguable American evils

 

Not a thing is dominantly present now, which did not exist before.

 

That said however — visibly and for the first time, some among the public are beginning to recognize that we Americans are in the same powerless box that other peoples — whom we so eagerly usually ignore — occupy.

 

President Trump's list of unattractive moral attributes just puts a more visibly accurate face on what is wrong with our violently money-grubbing, power-stealing culture.

 

 

Sound harsh?

 

Maybe not so much.

 

With regard to President Trump, Professor Dabashi's list of oozing character sores is accurate enough to start a reasonable conversation about leadership.

 

And for the rest of us —

 

"morally compromised . . .

racist,

white supremacist,

xenophobic,

[often] sexist,

[corporate] tax-avoiding . . .

[frequently] swinging loudly the arrested [moral] vocabulary of . . .

third-grader[s]"—

 

arguably also applies to the United States' me-first-motivated, excessively capitalistic culture.

 

 

Watch Frontline's illuminating biographical presentation

 

Frontline did a nice job of examining Donald Trump's rise to the presidency. Is there anything in President Trump's portrayed history that offends the principles at Capitalism's core?

 

Hardly.

 

President Trump is, I think, an outstanding reflection of core American capitalistic values taken to their logical end. He is eminently successful, elaborately famous, filthily rich, enormously powerful — and flying stratospherically far above the herd of poor piddling sheep below.

 

Except for not coming out of poverty, Donald Trump is a good example of the successfully accomplished, materialistic American Dream.

 

Frontline's presentation should generate grudging respect for the man. Trump succeeds exactly because he so skillfully and manipulatively does everything that our culture, deep down, competitively values. Winning is all that matters.

 

President Trump's genius for showmanship and virtually end-to-end lies successfully manipulates an ethically corrupt and corrupting System.

 

Though Donald Trump stands at a moral pole opposite mine, he makes an exceptionally worthy adversary to my way of thinking and acting.

 

Which one of us is actually outside the American Mainstream?

 

 

So now what?

 

Since President Trump is not the problem, but instead a manifestation of the moral rot at the root of America's historical soul, probing social thought and action are required. Provided, of course, that We the People would like to go somewhere other than (a) where we are or (b) where we are headed.

 

The above list of cultural negatives will not vanish, even when President Trump leaves office. As Professor Dabashi implied, President Obama simply obscured our ruthless exploitation of others under his elegantly charming hypocrisy and rhetorical grace.

 

 

The moral? — In President Trump, we "get" what the System actually is

 

If we object to circumstances today, fixing the future will require fixing our culture. This is a task that Chris Hedges and Professor Noam Chomsky repeatedly emphasize.

 

However, this fix-it mission is one that I can almost guarantee Americans are not going to undertake. We share President Trump's aversion to accurately looking at ourselves. Confess no errors. Attack all critics. And "the Russians did it."

 

Thoughtlessly blind cultural hubris — as Peter van Buren and Professor Dabashi suggest — is the real problem.