The Age of Trump

You don’t have to be good to be famous in history. (Obviously.) Which is encouraging news for Donald J Trump, if his universally acknowledged narcissism stretches that far into the future. One wonders whether Hitler would be altogether disappointed with his present-day historical reputation as the ultimate villain of the twentieth century, meaning as it does that he hasn’t been forgotten, at least. (That’s not of course to compare Trump to Hitler in every respect.) And of course Hitler still has his champions today. Elon Musk may be one of them, if his favourite salute – Nazi fashion – is any guide.

Trump of course has many more supporters currently than Hitler – almost 50% of the American population, if opinion polls are to be believed. But they seem to be a declining number, and we still have the remaining Epstein files to add – presumably – to the debit side of his reputation; as well as the damage that his latest fiscal and foreign adventures may be shown to have done. These could be the aspects of his two presidencies that future historians will focus on, when defining his ‘legacy’. – But I don’t know. I’m not likely to last long into that retrospective period; and historians should not try to predict the future in any case.

Of course any assessment will depend on how the final years of his presidency turn out, both for him personally, and for the United States. If his policies are successful – measured against either his original promises, or the very different objectives that seem to have replaced them: ‘no more foreign wars’ is an obvious one that has changed – then he will probably be credited with that; or debited with it if their longer-term effects are thought to be less positive. And that in turn will depend on what kind of country the US becomes over the next decade or so. Will it be the quasi-fascist autocracy that many of Trump’s critics are fearing, in which case he’ll be seen as the Great Leader that brought it about? Or alternatively, will it return to the democratic principles enshrined in its Constitution; in which case the Trump years will be regarded as simply an interregnum, or an unfortunate blip? There are seeds of both these outcomes showing in the country’s condition just now; and also in its 250-year previous history, which exhibits a few proto-fascist features, even before Trump. (Slavery, for a start.) The suppression of the ‘Radical Left’ may be the next stage, if Trump himself is to be believed: https://www.facebook.com/FoxNews/posts/greatest-enemy-president-trump-torches-the-radical-left-democratic-party-as-the-/1345000207489838/. This is what his ‘legacy’ will depend on, and hence his ‘place in history’.

In any event, there can be little doubt that Trump’s time in office has seen some pretty major changes – ‘ruptures in the world order’, as Canada’s Mark Carney famously characterised them recently at Davos – whose repercussions are still being sorted through. They include a couple of wars in the Middle East which could crucially reorganise that region, with Israel – who started them – being radically affected one way or another as a result. Then there’s Trump’s global trade war, of a kind and virulence that has never been seen before; the collapse of the decades-long alliance between the US and its immediate northern neighbour, and consequently of the transatlantic relationship in its old (NATO) form; liberal Canada joining Europe (in spirit) against the USA; the latter becoming everyone’s enemy, apart from Russia’s and China’s; Russia left free to (re-)gobble up poor Ukraine, and possibly going on to conquer or dominate other eastern European countries too; regime-change in Venezuela; a US conflict with little Denmark over icy Greenland, of all places; and beyond all this – but more vaguely – the end of what used to be called the ‘new world order’, in favour of a return to the ‘Realpolitik’ rivalries and hostilities of the past. Back in the USA it could undermine that nation’s much-flouted ‘democracy’, turning the country into something much closer to a ‘dictatorship’, through the powers – previously and constitutionally wielded by the Legislature and Judiciary – currently being overridden by the Executive branch. Lastly, there’s the Orwellian patina that is covering all this: ‘alternative facts’, lies, propaganda: claims made purely for their appeal to unthinking voters (‘they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs…’), rather than based on reliable knowledge; and diplomacy by insult and blackmail rather than by calm negotiation: the ‘Art’ (so-called) of the ‘Deal’. These are some of the changes we can attribute to Trump’s two sessions as Commander-in-Chief – if he isn’t toppled or corrected before the end of the second one.

They clearly (in my view) define Trump; but whether they make him, personally, the only (or main) begetter of this potentially seismic revolution in American and world affairs must be open to doubt. As a historian of a certain kind, I’m loath either to credit or to debit him, as an individual, with any of this. I’m an ‘underlying factors’ kind of bloke, not the ‘Great Man Theory’ type; and more likely therefore to regard him as expressing or exemplifying broad trends in modern American history, than as someone who took hold of history by the scruff of its neck and turned it around. His own clear lack of any thought-out policy or theory behind his actions, but simply instincts and prejudices – and, as is often charged against him, whatever was said to him last by one of his sycophants – bolsters this idea. He is of course, relatively uneducated, and even breathtakingly stupid on most subjects; which makes it all the more likely that he soaks up prevailing prejudices uncritically. That gives ‘underlying factors’ even more purchase on his mind; and should do more to explain the United States’ current predicament than his biography alone.

My own view of this would place ‘late-stage capitalism’ at the hub of those underlying factors, with Trump’s personal history and professional identity being a perfect illustration of this. What better representative of modern America could there be, than a dishonest, ignorant and amoral millionaire property developer and television game-show host, with the shallow values that those two occupations exemplify? There you have ‘the Age of Trump’, in a nutshell. It’s not his achievement alone. He’s merely the creature of his times.

Or of ‘dark forces’ and ‘conspirators’ pulling his strings?