Trump Thoughts, Part 2

OK, here's part two of my post from last night.

Regarding the comparisons of Trump to Hitler: I'm glad that people are taking the threat posed by Trump seriously, but I don't like this rhetorical move.

I don't like it for the reason that making analogies between two atrocious situations is always a risky business (because it runs the risk of trivializing one or the other situation, because it's generally an exploitative move, etc.).

I don't like it because it ignores vast differences between 1930s Germany and contemporary America (Germany had just lost a major war and was in serious economic straits, it was the Great Depression, and Germany was a young nation-state with consolidated ethnic nationalism as its raison d'etre; whereas the US is currently the world superpower and doing relatively fine from an economic perspective and, however convincing it may or may not sound, is founded in explicit rhetoric about ethic diversity).

I don't like it because it is a kind of fear-mongering that seems inauthentic: if Trump is so scary, then he's scary enough by virtue of being Trump -- he doesn't also need to be Hitler.

I don't like it because dramatic tactics are by their nature short-term -- the focus here is on this person and this moment, not on the massive lead-up that got us here (like, if he loses, then everyone will be like "Yay, defeated Hitler/Voldemort! Now back to business as usual," which I don't think is the right reaction).

And I don't like it because it's a kind of avoidance of contemporary reality -- it's a kind of "othering" Trump to be part of another, "not us" era. But he is us. And it's harder to look at that than to call him Hitler.

Aside from that, there are several dynamics that it seems to me that everyone has suddenly forgotten about in the reaction to Trump's ascendancy:

-Democrat or Republican in office, US policies and tactics are largely the same, at least when it comes to foreign policy (but not only). The person who is in office just does a better job selling those self-same policies to us if s/he belongs to the party we prefer. This is not real change; this is repackaging for enhanced complacency.

-Who the president is, I think (aside from a small number of cases, such as veto-power and choosing Supreme Court justices) doesn't directly determine policy. In some cases, who the president is has a reverse effect on policy depending on the ripple effect through other elected officials, reactions from other countries, etc. In Trump's case in particular, he's such a wildcard that it's very difficult to predict how a Trump presidency would affect policy -- it depends a lot on his advisors and his relationship with them, other influences, who gets elected to Congress and the Senate, how the world reacts to a Trump-led America, how his rhetoric would change once he's actually in office, what other forces mobilize in reaction to him ...

-Systemic racism and xenophobia, when dressed up in liberal, "civilized" clothing, are still systemic racism and xenophobia. These values have characterized American society and policy, to a greater or lesser extent, since the country's inception. A president who is explicit about these values would not be unilaterily "inventing" them (obviously, considering that a lot of people would have voted him/her into office -- and in Trump's case, even after being exposed to those values quite explicitly as part of the campaign persona.) It is hard to know what the consequences of this would be for the country and for the world, but one of them, perhaps, would be being forced to confront this part of America's personality. I am not sure that that is a bad thing.

-As far as American imperalism and interventionism, the candidate who is touting a continuation of recent American foreign policy in those directions is Clinton. Like it or not, many (though not all) of Trump's foreign policy statements have been in the isolationist direction. You don't have to like his approach or believe it's smart or practical, but if you're anti-imperalist and anti-militarist, then actually, it's not so clear-cut that the Democrats are embodying your values.

Here's the thing that's hardest to say: I think Trump simply makes explicit a lot of what underpins, and has underpinned, American policy for a long time (aside from some deviation in terms of foreign policy, but again, it's not clear to me what that will add up to in terms of actual policy impact). A vote for Clinton is a vote for the same policies, but packaged in such a way that it will continue not to raise much alarm among the American public / abroad. A vote for Trump is a vote for those policies to be delivered in a way that cannot avoid raising hackles, both at home and abroad, meaning we will have to fight this stuff out. This is a risk, because if we fight it out explicitly, all kinds of depressing and/or destabilizing things can happen, many of which can be summed up as, "The American brand (TM) might break, and then there's no telling what will happen."

So it seems to me, that a lot of the alarm about Trump is not based in alarm about the racist and imperialist nature of American policy, but rather about a fear of those things being exposed. And this is also why I don't like the Hitler memes -- because I see them being used not as a call to shift out of racist and imperalist modes in some kind of substantial and sustained way, but as a call to continue to sugarcoat US racism and imperalism so that, God forbid, the existing political power structure doesn't collapse and US doesn't lose its global dominance. Honestly, I don't think it's so easy to collapse those things anyway (which is why I also don't like this kind of fearmongering that posits the US as vulnerable in a way that I think is patently untrue and thus manipulative) -- if it were, then we'd be seeing other kinds of unrest preparing to take advantage of that weakness. But if it is possible to collapse those things, then it's also not so clear to me who is going to benefit or pay the most -- to some extent, the most vulnerable will pay the most because they always do, but I don't think that's where a lot of the alarm is coming from -- I think the alarm is coming from the powerful who are afraid of instability because in the context of instability they stand to lose their power.

I guess what I'm trying to say is take your pick. If you want business as usual, then you have no right to complain about Trump's white supremacy, because white supremacy is business as usual. If you want revolution, then you have no right to complain, because this might be the beginning of the dissolution that leads to revolution. If what you want is reform, well, then you have the right to complain, but do something to work toward real change other than post Hitler memes about Trump, because the problems that are rearing their heads now did not begin with Trump and will not end with Trump.

And, with all this said, I'm still totally planning to vote for Clinton in November. So... there's that.