“It Is What It Is”: Donald Trump, Moral Apathy and the Cult of Crisis
By far the most salient takeaway from Tuesday’s televised U.S. presidential debate — the first of three to be held in the coming weeks between Republican party nominee and incumbent Donald Trump, and Democratic nominee and former vice president Joe Biden — is that it was, in the words of one particularly frank CNN pundit, a complete and utter “shit show”: a farcical, deeply embarrassing, shit-slinging spectacle entirely devoid of substance or merit.
Not one to mince words, The Guardian’s Moira Donegan tore into the spectacle with almost primal savagery:
“The coarseness, dishonesty, and grandstanding on display was a mockery of the dignity of the electoral process and a slap in the face to the Americans whose lives will be shaped by the actions of the next president… Debating Donald Trump is like debating a chimpanzee: he is less likely to deliver a thoughtful and substantive answer than he is to throw his own feces at you.”
But truthfully, folks: what did we expect? Really? Has anything in Trump’s disastrous first term as president, or Biden’s limp efforts to become the seemingly reluctant, slightly lesser-evil candidate, provided any indication that this great meeting of geriatric minds would produce something of value besides more cannon fodder content for the 2020 media cycle?
It’s a question Donegan herself gestures towards at the end of her column:
“What was the point of tonight’s debate? The circus of vanity, lies and hostility certainly didn’t reveal anything new about the candidates, and it would be laughable to suggest that the exchange was productive to the democratic process. Though Tuesday’s debate was a new nadir of national embarrassment, televised presidential debates have been unhelpful for some time, always light on substance and heavy on spectacle.… Maybe this is why Donald Trump loves them so much. He doesn’t seem interested in fulfilling the duties of his office or in meeting the challenges of the nation, but he is very, very interested in being on TV.”
A Million Ways to Die in the West
Earlier in September, when Trump was pushed for comment on the staggering death toll from the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a breathtakingly honest observation wiggled its way out of his lizard brain and turned miraculously into cogent sound:
“It is what it is.”
It’s an admission that is, on its face, stunning for two reasons: one, the sheer frankness of it coming from a notorious liar and court jester rhetorician; and two, for the blatant moral apathy on display. Nevertheless, a thought stuck with me. If “it” is what “it” is, then what exactly is “it”? I began to think of the last thirty years of American empire in the post-Cold War era, and the numerous crises faced (intentionally or otherwise) by former presidents and their administrations.
In the 90s, George Bush’s Gulf War conflict (1990–1991) racked up 1143 U.S. casualties, not including the death toll in Iraq and the surrounding Middle East region. In 2001, the September 11 attacks claimed 2997 lives and provided the impetus for George W. Bush’s “War on Terror”: spawning two distinct areas of conflict, including the War in Afghanistan (2001-present) and the Second Gulf War or “Operation Iraqi Freedom” (2003–2011), both of which have incurred 22266 and 36710 casualties respectively. Outside of the theatre of war, 2005’s Hurricane Katrina disaster and George W. Bush’s dismal response accounted for 1833 deaths. That’s to say nothing of the many deaths linked to fallout from the Global Financial Crisis (2007–2008), or the insane rate of U.S. gun homicides each year.
For those playing at home, adding these figures together gives an approximate total of 65000 casualties littered across three decades.
And yet, as of right now, in just the six-month period spanning from March to September 2020, the U.S. domestic death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic has reached 207000 deaths, with over 7.3 million confirmed cases. That’s an infection rate for roughly 2.21% of the entire U.S. population. Last week, we crossed the threshold of 1 million global deaths from the pandemic, with the U.S. death toll comprising a jaw-dropping 20% of that figure. This fact was brought into even starker relief by Biden in the debate when he noted that while the U.S. has only 4.25% of the world’s population, they make up one-fifth of all COVID-19 deaths.
The question then is this:
Why hasn’t this staggering death toll mattered more?
If the success of Trump’s campaign for office was indeed a referendum on the state of an American empire in obvious decline, emphasised by his much-publicised sloganeering of “Make America Great Again” and the grand nostalgic return to excellence and world prominence that such a phrase implies, then how can these many deaths — far exceeding the combined death toll from thirty years of cumulative conflict, war, and natural disasters — on Trump’s watch possibly represent any form of greatness?
And, perhaps, most importantly:
Why doesn’t Trump seem to care about any of it?
“A Civil Servant in Public Housing”
According to Trump’s niece, Mary L. Trump, a clinical psychologist and crucial Trump family insider:
“Nobody has failed upward as consistently and spectacularly as the ostensible leader of the shrinking free world” (197).
In the closing chapters of her book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man (2020), Mary Trump lays out the dangers inherent in the mindset and pathology of the current U.S. president with a veritable laundry list of alarming red flags.
For decades, Donald Trump has been “incapable of growing, learning, or evolving, unable to regulate his emotions, moderate his responses, or take in and synthesize information,” “completely unaware that other people [are] using him for their own ends and [believing] that he [is] in control,” while also acting under the misguided assumption that “he has accomplished everything on his own, cheating notwithstanding” (197).
In every action, Trump’s obvious cruelty is not merely a consequence of action; it’s the intended — and desired — result:
“His cruelty serves, in part, as a means to distract both us and himself from the true extent of his failures. The more egregious his failures become, the more egregious his cruelty becomes…. His cruelty is also an exercise of his power, such as it is. He has always wielded it against people who are weaker than he is or who are constrained by their duty or dependence from fighting back” (201).
If his conduct during his disastrous first term in office wasn’t a strong enough indicator, the presidential debate “shit show” made it abundantly clear to everyone watching: Trump is nothing but a whining, petulant child, in over his head and out of his mind.
“Donald takes any rebuke as a challenge and doubles down on the behaviour that drew fire in the first place, as if the criticism is permission to do worse… The deafening silence in response to such a blatant display of sociopathic disregard for human life or the consequences for one’s actions, on the other hand, fills me with despair and reminds me that Donald really isn’t the problem…
This is the end result of Donald’s having continually been given a pass and rewarded not just for his failures but for his transgressions — against tradition, against decency, against the law, and against his fellow human beings…. The lies may become true in his mind as soon as he utters them, but they’re still lies. It’s just another way for him to see what he can get away with. And so far, he’s gotten away with everything” (204–05).
The Cult of Crisis
As Donegan acknowledges with the headline of her column, America is in pain, and the whole world can feel it. For the last few years at least, the blame for this collective anguish must lay squarely at Trump’s (no doubt tiny) feet.
By doing nothing to assuage the fears and anxieties of the voting public, by fanning the flames of discontent and refusing to denounce the reactionary forces opening inciting violence in the streets, by “lying and misrepresenting his own record, his opponent’s record, President Obama’s record, Hillary Clinton’s record, the records of several Senate and congressional Democrats, and the state of fires, crime, economic activity, coronavirus infection rates, and ballot distribution in various states and regions,” Trump is steadfastly refusing to do his job as president.
Instead, Trump is proudly reigning as Commander in Chaos, leading his fervent followers in the Cult of Crisis down a dark path of national misery.
Works Cited
Trump, Mary L. Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man. Simon & Schuster Inc., 2020.
