“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” What’s in a name? Well, it’s the start of trying to define what we are talking about. And what we are talking about is the movement that Donald Trump has conjured out of thin air. He has breathed life into the Right after the establishment Republicans had managed to beat it and its proponents into the ground over the course of the last sixty-five years.
Why he did it? I wonder how many people actually have the answer to that question. Maybe even Trump doesn’t really know why. How he did it is clearer. Trump is a salesman or more accurately he’s a huckster, a flim-flam man. He sells snake oil. And because of that training he could see that the Republicans and the Democrats were conning us. And because they weren’t conning us out of our pocket money but out of our freedoms and our descendants’ well-being, he decided to expose them. And the results were tremendous. He has pole-axed every fake conservative that has faced him. Think of Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney if you need examples of his victims. These men were the most respected conservative leaders of their time. Now they’re laughing stocks and walking/talking memes for what a fake conservative looks like.
So, does Trump have a political philosophy? If he does, it’s very pragmatic. I think he looks at himself as our business agent. He’s trying to cut the best deal for the American people that he can. And I don’t think he cares whether he treats the rest of the world fairly. He’s a cutthroat dealer and screwing over the other guy is just part of that trade. But he’s also experienced. He knows that China has some very strong cards and that he has to be realistic when bargaining with powerful and savvy adversaries. He may be pro-Israel but he realizes that making a good deal with Iran is in America’s interest. He has no desire to fight anymore middle eastern wars. The same with Ukraine. Tying himself to that slaughterhouse is a mistake. Enabling some kind of deal is the smart play.
But there is some part of me that hopes he’s also doing all this because in some sense, no matter how vague the link is, he thinks of himself as one of us. Maybe not a regular guy. Maybe a prince to our paupers but still a fellow American. Someone who could sit down at a table with one of us and eat a McDonald’s Big Mac and talk about what it was like to be a New Yorker growing up in the sixties and seventies when the city was a train wreck but the working class people living there still had a popular culture that was quintessentially American; the melting pot and egalitarianism and neighborhoods where the people actually knew who their neighbors were. These were the people who built his hotels and skyscrapers and casinos. Mob-connected construction bosses, ironworkers, masons and laborers. Actual people who also happen to be Americans.
So is Trump a populist, a nationalist or a fascist? No, he’s just Trump. But he is an American and he’s doing something that no one else would. He’s giving us a last chance to get our country back. I hope he succeeds.
