Opinion
Don’t Fool Yourself. Trump Is Not an Aberration.
Oct. 30, 2020
173
For many millions of Americans, the presidency of Donald Trump has been a kind of transgression, an endless assault on dignity, decency and decorum. They experience everything — the casual insults, the vulgar tweets, the open racism, the lying, the tacit support for dangerous extremists and admiration of foreign strongmen — as an attack on the fabric of American society itself. And they see the worst of this administration, like separating children from their families at the border, as an unparalleled offense against the values of American democracy.
There’s no question these are useful beliefs — they are responsible for the mass outrage against Trump at the beginning of his term, the wave against the Republican Party in the 2018 midterm elections and the currently strong anti-Trump energy of at least half of the voting public — but it’s hard to say they are true ones. Trump is transgressive, yes. But his transgressions are less a novel assault on American institutions than they are a stark recapitulation of past failure and catastrophe.
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For as much as it seems that Donald Trump has changed something about the character of this country, the truth is he hasn’t. What is terrible about Trump is also terrible about the United States. Everything we’ve seen in the last four years — the nativism, the racism, the corruption, the wanton exploitation of the weak and unconcealed contempt for the vulnerable — is as much a part of the American story as our highest ideals and aspirations. The line to Trump runs through the whole of American history, from the white man’s democracy of Andrew Jackson to the populist racism of George Wallace, from native expropriation to Chinese exclusion.
And to the extent that Americans feel a sense of loss about the Trump era, they should be grateful, because it means they’ve given up their illusions about what this country is, and what it is (and has been) capable of.
There is very little about Donald Trump or his policies that doesn’t have a direct antecedent in the American past. Despite what Joe Biden might say about its supposedly singular nature (“The way he deals with people based on the color of their skin, their national origin, where they’re from, is absolutely sickening”), the president’s racism harkens right back to the first decades of the 20th century, when white supremacy was ascendant and the nation’s political elites, including presidents like Woodrow Wilson, were preoccupied with segregation and exclusion for the sake of preserving an “Anglo-Saxon” nation.
ImageWhite supremacists marched at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in 2017.
White supremacists marched at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in 2017.Credit...Edu Bayer for The New York Times
Trump’s indifference to the pandemic is, in the same way, an echo of the Hoover administration, which stood by as the country was crushed by economic depression and the immiseration of millions of Americans. It is impossible (for me at least) to think about child separation without also thinking about chattel slavery and the nation’s vast trade in enslaved people, conducted over decades under three generations of American presidents, including men like James Polk, who — decades removed from planter-politicians like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe — bought and sold human beings from the White House.
The president’s personal corruption is unique — there’s never been someone in the White House so clearly committed to the most petty forms of graft — but his lawlessness (and that of his administration) is the direct outgrowth of a contempt for accountability that stretches across four decades of Republican presidencies, from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush. Trump does nothing more than embody Nixon’s quip to David Frost that “when the president does it … that means that it is not illegal.” And in that, he’s backed by deputies like Attorney General William Barr, who on his first turn through Washington helped cover up Iran-contra for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and who is now, under Trump, ready to abuse the law for the sake of the president’s re-election.
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Trump isn’t the first president in recent memory to let Americans suffer and die in the face of a deadly hurricane — that distinction goes to the aforementioned George W. Bush. And he’s certainly not the first to let a plague kill thousands of Americans — that distinction goes to Reagan (of course, for his dull response to the flu pandemic in 1918, Wilson deserves that distinction too).
Trump has helped bring ugly forces out into the open, giving aid and comfort to assorted racists and white nationalists. Yet it’s also true that these groups and individuals have always been with us and that our focus on Trump betrays a lack of attention to the ways in which they’ve grown and changed over time, waiting for a moment like this one.
Read the catalog of horribles for Donald Trump and his White House and what you find is an administration that has embraced the worst aspects of our political culture and merged them into a potent brew of destruction, lawlessness and authoritarianism. But to recognize this is to see as well how it doesn’t make sense to say that Trump is an aberration from the mainstream of American life. Instead, he is the exclamation point on our consistent failure to live up to our own self-image.
Perhaps more than most, Americans hold many illusions about the kind of nation in which we live. We tell ourselves that we are the freest country in the world, that we have the best system of government, that we welcome all comers, that we are efficient and dynamic where the rest of the world is stagnant and dysfunctional. Some of those things have been true at some points in time, but none of them is true at this point in time.
What Trump has done is made it difficult to maintain the illusion. Whenever he finally leaves the scene, we can either take the opportunity to look with clear eyes and assess this country as it is and as it has been or again seek the comfort of myth.
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Mike commented October 30
M
Mike
SD
Oct. 30
Times Pick
An excellent piece and all of a piece. One significant episode you did not have space to mention was the comeback to our government of one of Nixon’s dirtiest tricks. The election of 1994 , when Newt Gingrich and his minions, including “exterminator,” Tom Delay, won the House of Representatives. The vile order went out to never at all costs fraternize with those across the aisle. Those who did faced censure in the GOP caucus. It seems a long time ago now, but in my long history, I rate that vitriol as the first true smashing of norms of civility in our body politic.
1065 RecommendShareFlag
susan smith commented October 30
S
susan smith
state college, pa
Oct. 30
Times Pick
Thank you, Jamelle. The NYTimes needs more voices like yours. The terrifying thing about Trump isn't Trump. It's the fact that millions and millions of Americans worship and adore him. It's the fact that I'm doubled over with grief and anxiety today that he's going to be reelected despite being the most loathsome human being on the planet. I just showed my students "Selma." A student stayed after class to speak with me. She told me that this was her favorite movie of the semester. She was so moved by it. But she still hadn't voted and wasn't looking forward to filling in her ballot because she still couldn't decide between Biden and Trump. She loved a movie about racism and voter suppression and dignity and morality, yet she didn't know how to vote. This isn't Trump's fault. This is the fault of a country that has abandoned public education, of a media that has abandoned civic engagement, of a Democratic party that has saddled us with a candidate deeply unappealing to the young. This is who we are. A country unable to learn from our mistakes, a country that refuses to aspire to Dr. King's dreams, a country that values money and white supremacy above all else. If we wake up on Wednesday morning and find that we're still stuck with Trump and McConnell and Graham, we will not be able to console ourselves with the thought that we deserve better.
1333 RecommendShareFlag
CH commented October 30
C
CH
NYC
Oct. 30
Times Pick
Preach! Every Trump outrage is built on a foundation of American history. When he took office, he took up the most noxious strands of American culture and history, and wove them into a carnival tent for his presidency. Many people enjoy the show. They know all the songs and sing along. His audience is comfortable with buying a truly American product.
659 RecommendShareFlag
RMS commented October 30
R
RMS
NYC
Oct. 30
Times Pick
The saddest thing about America is that we are a people who prefer to believe the myths rather than the truth.
The second saddest (and a direct subset) is our inability to get past race.
Goldwater and Wallace showed a desperate Republican party, fearing for its future in early 1960s after reading the demographic tea leaves, that the holy grail of voting is race.
It was Nixon, then Reagan, who, in the aftermath of Civil Rights, put it to best use, effectively turning the GOP into the "White Man's Party." Republican's have adopted it as its main political strategy ever since, reliably dragging out its straw dogs every four years.
Its real power comes in the benign language of "states rights," "law and order," etc. which gives cover to all those nice white suburban voters, whose only contact with black people are the surly clerks in government offices, apathetic postal workers, etc. Which brings us back to the myths.
It will never be eliminated until it is exposed and we stop dancing around this "elephant" in the American voters' living room.
We need to pull the cover back on Republican perfidy.
The question is: are Dems brave enough to seize this opportunity?
412 RecommendShareFlag
Ms commented October 30
M
Ms
Santa Fe
Oct. 30
Times Pick
Thank you Thank you, Jamelle. Your column gave me hope. I find it so scary that anyone would think Trump is anything other than a conman channeling the selfishness and intolerance already rampant in America.
It seems to me some of the columnist in this collection must have been living in a different world the last 40 years.
Look at pensions trashed and jobs lost while execs took golden parachutes and gave out bonuses to themselves and their cronies. And we celebrated and glorified them and Boards overpayed them and still do today. How about the shady dealings before and after the financial crisis. Then there is “Greed is Good” or “If you’re not Cheating you’re not Trying Hard Enough”” or “I’m Doing God’s Work”(At Goldman Sachs).
The adoration of this attitude and behavior of our rich and powerful is the through line to Trump. Mr. Your Fired is just an extension of “I Built it Myself.”
And how about Reagan in Philadelphia, MS? Willie Horton? Or Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and their divisiveness? They were busy long before Trump. And Hilary Clinton didn’t help with her “Basket of Deplorables.”
The deliberate co-opting of Evangelicals by the Republicans over the years seems like the play book Trump followed.
This pipe has been leaking a long time. We’ve just been mopping up the spill to disguise it.
We all need to own that or nothing will ever change. Blaming Trump is the feel good, easy way out.
347 RecommendShareFlag
Annie commented October 30
A
Annie
Los Angeles
Oct. 30
Times Pick
People say Trump hijacked the Republican party. He did no such thing. He is the *result* of the Republicans' policies and strategies for the past 50 years. There is a direct line from Nixon's Southern Strategy and Reagan's climbing into bed with conservative Christianity, to Trump.
Trump is the personification of the GOP: cruel and bigoted, ignorant and fearful, greedy, selfish, and willing to lie, cheat, and steal to maintain power.
1119 RecommendShareFlag
Gowan McAvity commented October 30
G
Gowan McAvity
White Plains
Oct. 30
Times Pick
Rather than an aberration, I see Trumpism as the death throes of the white patriarchy. Before Trump, white supremacists paid lip-service to universal civil rights while continuing to usher in another generation of well-trained progeny to protect the dominance of their tribe. Other white men of supposedly goodwill would convince themselves that racism was dead because of MLK or Obama and turn a blind eye mostly because they like all the privileged benefits white men have enjoyed since the beginning. Then demographics caught up with white men and they freaked out, revealing themselves in Trump and blatant racist policies. They are out in the open now and seem destined for political annihilation. They have stuffed the judiciary with their fellow-travelers, but that gambit is doomed to failure. The Mandate of the People will overwhelm them and Biden has seen the light. Good riddance, I say.
7 Replies299 RecommendShareFlag
CV Danes commented October 30
CV Danes
CV Danes
Upstate NY
Oct. 30
Times Pick
The grand joke of Donald Trump is not that we woke up and realized he had no cloths, but that we woke up and discovered the naked ones to be ourselves.
1 Reply426 RecommendShareFlag
David R commented October 30
D
David R
New York
Oct. 30
Times Pick
It is a good thing to shatter illusions. And, yes, all recent presidents have done things for which one can find parallels to Trump.
But if Reagan failed to combat AIDS, he also had enormous success in defeating the USSR. If George Bush led us into a disastrous war, he also combatted AIDS and saved millions of lives.
Let us never normalize the presidency of Donald Trump, but rather use it as an object lesson of how much unalloyed damage a sociopathic president can do. Maybe that is one of the most important illusions to have been shattered.
4 Replies188 RecommendShareFlag
Hector Bates commented October 30
H
Hector Bates
Paw Paw, Mich.
Oct. 30
Times Pick
There was a meme going around during the 2016 election season: “Forget A Giant Wall On the Border- America Needs a Giant Mirror to Look At Itself.”
That election WAS the giant mirror.
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