Donald Trump giving his inaugural address. (photo: unknown)
Trump's
Speech Gave Us America the Ugly. Don't Let It Become Prophesy.
By Frank Rich, New York
Magazine
22 January 17
Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks
with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture.
Today: Trump’s inauguration.
Many
Americans surely held out hope, despite themselves, that Donald Trump would’ve
used his inaugural address to accomplish what he could have done with his
transition: demonstrate an understanding of the gravity of the office, allow
suspicions of his campaign (and his associates) to be
allayed by honest investigations, search for reconciliation with those who
doubt him. The past few weeks have shown that Trump had different ideas for his
transition. What do you think he achieved with this address?
Not to
put too fine a point on it, but in a word: Nothing. It was a recycled Trump
campaign speech sporadically retrofitted with ersatz poetry (“the windswept
plains of Nebraska,” yet) and boilerplate stabs at unity (“We are one nation!”)
and inclusion (“there is no room for prejudice”), but otherwise
characteristically nationalistic, populist, and apocalyptic in its view of
America. According to our new president, our country is a Valhalla of
“rusted-out factories” and schools that leave students “deprived of all
knowledge.” The “wealth of our middle class” has been “ripped from their
homes.” Our communities are blighted by “the crime and the gangs and the
drugs.” If you weren’t eager to take some of those drugs at the moment he was
sworn in, you certainly were by the time his scowling account of America the
Ugly was done.
Earlier
in the week, Trump’s press spokesman, Sean Spicer, previewed the speech with a
burst of ecstasy: “It is a Trump draft. It is
written by him. It is edited by him.” We were treated to a photo of the
president-elect posing with pad and Sharpie while penning his masterpiece,
apparently (we were later to learn) while
sitting at a concierge’s desk at Mar-a-Lago. There were some typical Trumpian
declarations in the text (“America will start winning again, winning like never
before”), but most of it was pure Stephen Bannon. The
language was violent and angry — “This American carnage stops right here” —
reeking of animosity, if not outright hatred, of “the Establishment.” The tone
was one of retribution and revenge. The contempt for Washington, including the
Republican Party’s current leadership, was omnipresent: It’s not just John
Lewis but the many officeholders onstage during the inaugural ceremony who were
condemned for being “all talk and no action.” Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell
continue to live in a dreamland if they think their collaborationist
accommodation of Trump will spare them from the auto-da-fé.
I
guess I live in that proverbial bubble because, almost without exception, most
people I know were determined not to watch today. They made the right call.
Trump didn’t attempt to win anyone over from what he calls “the other side,”
even with disingenuous efforts. The inauguration boycotters also spared
themselves the nauseating spectacle of network talking-heads mindlessly
parroting the supposedly reassuring clichés of the hour (“the peaceful transfer
of power”) and, at the stroke of noon, succumbing to the herd mentality of
grading on a curve. On CNN, the historian Douglas Brinkley declared the
inaugural address not only “presidential” but “solid and well-written” and the
“best speech” Trump has made “in his life.”
Trump
ascends to the height of American power with a historically low approval rating from
his fellow citizens and an administration largely staffed thus far — to the extent it has been staffed —
by billionaires, strident ideologues, and incompetents. His kitchen cabinet is
led by his son-in-law. He took the oath of office to a virtually monochromatic
sea of white faces. His biggest political ally — and arguably the key
clandestine player in his electoral victory — is a Russian strongman who could
be found this week testifying that our new president did not avail himself of
prostitutes when visiting Moscow but that if he had, he would have been
serviced by women who “are undoubtedly the best in the world.”
But
you know all that. What stood out about Trump’s inaugural address was his one
bedrock conviction, the one core belief he never reverses — that the country he
will now try to lead is an unmitigated disaster. The great task before us is to
stop him from taking down with him all that remains good about America, before
his reign comes to its inevitable bad end.
C 2015 Reader Supported News
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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