If Not My President, Then Whose?
It’s only just begun, but we can get a pretty clear picture of what the Trump White House will look like. As WhiteHouse.gov is updated, we get a clear look at the priorities of the Trump administration before it begins.
The first thing we see — several times — is “America First”. Historically, the “America First Committee” is best known for its leader Charles Lindbergh, an anti-Semitic Nazi sympathizer who pushed for an isolationist approach to World War II.
Despite his isolationist and xenophobic campaign, however, the Trump White House devotes two of its six issues to the strength of the US military, decrying our modern military’s weakness and resolving to rebuild it.
This is highly inaccurate, as America spent “more on defense than the next seven countries combined” in 2015.
However, it should paint a terrifying picture. If our military is not to be used abroad, what will it be doing? Given the fears that Trump will turn out to be an autocrat, his military obsession should terrify us. When I read about Trump’s desire to hold military parades in American cities, I cannot help but think of Caesar returning from Gaul to Rome with his legions and declaring himself Imperator (emperor). Trump had initially wanted tanks and missile launchers, a practice that is very common in North Korea.
And if his prioritization of military strength is not enough, he has dedicated one of his six issues to Law and Order. He cites a recent uptick in crime, but the actuality is that violent crime has dropped dramatically since the 1990s, when it was over 300% the current rate.
Another two sections are devoted to manufacturing and trade, where Trump asserts that Americans have been screwed out of manufacturing jobs by anything from unfair trade deals to immigrants to other countries out manufacturing us. In fact, globalization has increased demand for American manufacturing. It is not the Chinese or Mexican immigrants who are “stealing” American manufacturing jobs. Robots are.
Gone are any mentions of Climate Change or clean energy. In their place is a dedication to increase our production of shale oil and gas, despite the fact that fracking has polluted ground water and threatens to cause earthquakes, and man-made emissions continue to heat our planet.
So what is Trump’s Issues platform really about? The changing paradigms of masculinity that the last 30 years have brought us. Many of the previous metrics of (primarily white) manhood — the military, law enforcement, providing for a family from a factory job — simply don’t have the same societal importance or see the same success that they used to.
It is machismo and toxic masculinity that Trump is proposing to make “great again” with his big guns and his goosestepping military and his army of cops.
What is notably missing from Trump’s list of issues?
Women’s issues. No references to abortion or birth control. No references to women’s equality of pay or protection from gender discrimination. No references to violence against women.
Civil Rights, whether they be race or LGBT or disability based. Voting Rights.
Ethics. While President Obama launched the Campaign to Cut Waste, Trump’s Secretary of Education couldn’t even say if she would enforce the existing standards that prevent waste, fraud, and abuse.
A platform on education (which should come as no surprise, given that Trump himself ran a for-profit university which swindled its students out of millions of dollars.
Poverty or Economic Mobility, despite the rapidly ballooning economic inequality America faces.
Seniors and Social Security. Service. Technology. Any guidelines on healthcare, despite the contentious fight over Obamacare.
What we are left with is a bleak picture: a White House which believes the government should be doing very little for the American people. A White House which has seemingly taken as its sole directive the protection of an outdated model of masculinity.
The man who is the head of his family and works with his hands as its sole provider. The man who uses state-sanctioned violence to enforce his will on women and racial minorities, and protect a patriarchal, white supremacist society.
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