The Portal
Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and stepping back into American history
The photograph of a bloodied former President Trump
defiantly pumping his fist in the air beneath the
American flag as his Secret Service minders struggle to
protect him was immediately among the most indelible
political images of the past half-century. As memorable
as a hunched Richard Nixon signaling V for victory, or
JFK standing tall in West Berlin, these are the kinds of
images that are impossible for political operatives to
gainsay or counterfeit, because they capture character in
action. Once seen, these images are impossible to un-see.
This was one of them.
In Trump’s case, the photograph was of a man who took a
bullet in front of his supporters and lived, just like he said
he would. He got up with blood on his face, in front of
10,000 or more people, and showed both the presence of
mind and the unkillable ego strength to stage the political
photograph of the century with himself as the star. Worship
him or hate his guts, it was the most Trumpian act
imaginable.
Hordes of commentators were quick to analyze the
significance of the moment in terms of what did not
happen. Imagine if the shooter hadn’t missed! Had Trump
not survived the assassination attempt, they all argued, the
country would obviously have been plunged into one form
or another of civil war, a result of the inevitable violent
response from the right. Luckily, extremists on both sides
would have to go at it some other time. …
This interpretation is exactly wrong. In fact, the
meaningful, history-changing event is the one that
happened. If Trump had been killed, having failed to
anoint a successor, the people who have been putting
Jan. 6 protesters in prison by the hundreds for the past
three years would have rolled right over what was left of
Trump’s MAGA movement, and Joe Biden—or whoever
they chose to run at the top of the Democratic ticket—
would have won the election by a minimum of 20 million
votes. The idea of an American center that is manfully
holding the extremists of “both sides” in check is a
palliative illusion drawn from a bygone time and place that
ain’t coming back. It’s wishful nonsense, whose function
is to conceal the true unpleasantness of the reality that we
are living in.
Instead of two radical extreme wings flanking a sober
center, as the important commentators want us to believe,
there are in fact only two sides in American politics now.
One is the Democratic Party, a power vertical that mediates
between the interests of the country’s billionaire oligarchs;
its corporate elite; the ranks of elite professionals; the
press, which functions as the propaganda arm of the party;
the billionaire-funded NGO complex, through which
billionaires fund party “organizers” who turn
out votes and pressure the bureaucracy and its corporate
analogues; public employees unions; academics; and the
various state-sanctioned identity buckets from which votes
are harvested and to which public benefits are distributed.
Then there is the Republican Party of Donald Trump, a
bucket of social losers and other undesirables, like family
farmers and white working-class voters, who of course are
all racists; religious people, who are crazy and whose child
ren will eventually hate them if they don’t already; car
dealers from Wisconsin with three or fewer dealerships;
small businessmen who sell things like miracle pillows;
and a few billionaires whom the majority of the other
billionaires don’t like.
Now, America being a free country, it’s perfectly
acceptable for any citizen, myself included, to disapprove
of both sides in this equation, to instinctively dislike the
powerful while at the same time being repelled by the
aesthetic and other shortcomings of the powerless. You can
decry McDonald’s food and the general idiocy of rural
life, and shudder at the horrible fashion sense displayed
by people who live in the middle of the country who don’t
have much money and watch the wrong TikTok videos.
Maybe you fled rural life when you were younger and
have zero desire to return to the miseries of your dreary
small-town home in Nebraska now that you’ve seen the
wonders of dinner parties in Park Slope. Or maybe you
share the natural human preference for winners over
losers. Or maybe you are a believer in a world without
borders. That’s your business, and not mine.
What you can’t do, however, is assert that a mighty
American center made up of the moderate, right-thinking
majority of the country is waiting in the wings for the
noise to stop and make everything normal again. That is
never going to happen, any more than a troupe of magical
unicorns is going to gallop through the streets of Chicago
at the end of the Democratic National Convention pooping
soft-serve ice cream.
It’s Trump or the Democrats. Those are your choices.
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