Let brutal Trumpism proceed and then pass
The US might just need to get Donald Trump out of its system, but the greatest democracy on Earth needs to experience the symptoms of Trumpism before it can hope to find a cure, or even decide whether it needs to be cured at all, writes Joe Hildebrand
Opinion
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During the first Trump administration a very close and very wise friend of mine was living in Mexico, where he was in what might be called a senior “government-adjacent” role.
Mexico was ground zero for Trump Mark I, whose entire presidency was predicated on building a giant impregnable wall between the United States and its southern neighbour.
Needless to say, the general sentiment in that country — as among progressives the world over — was that Trump was something akin to the Antichrist, and he needed to be destroyed and defeated at all costs.
My friend had a different view.
When Joe Biden beat Trump at the 2020 election the left rejoiced, declaring — often in these exact words — that the nightmare was over. Never again would the world be troubled and tormented by this gross and grotesque aberration.
My friend had a different view.
And when Trump was resurrected as a presidential candidate for the 2024 election the left dismissed him, declaring — with the same assured certainty — that he was un-electable. Even against the brain dead Biden and even more so against the lushly verdant word salads of Kamala Harris.
My friend, it may not surprise you to hear, had a different view.
And his view was this: the US needs to get Donald Trump out of its system.
This was no moral or ideological pronouncement that Trump had no place in US politics and needed to be expelled. That was the delusional touchstone of the Democrats who seemed to think that if they just closed their eyes and wished hard enough it would somehow come true.
Instead it was the diagnosis of a firm but friendly doctor: Trumpism isn’t a blanket that has descended on the US from on high, it is something that flows through America’s veins like a drug or a disease or perhaps just DNA.
And so the greatest democracy on Earth needs to experience its symptoms before it can ever hope to find a cure — or even decide whether it needs to be cured at all.
For this, Trump’s tariffs are the ultimate test. Where Trump Mark I was measured by elements of the existing Washington establishment, Trump 2.0 is an utterly unfettered beast.
Trump has both the will and the way to execute his ultimate vision for what America should be, with a hand-picked executive at his side and Republican majorities in both the upper and lower house.
To quote someone about to test drive a sports car — or a Tesla in Trump’s latest ironic turn — let’s see what this baby can do.
As a pragmatic polemicist I would be derelict in my duty if I didn’t say that so far the results have been reasonably disastrous.
The US stockmarket lost trillions after Trump’s tariff announcement. Local pundits like to talk about the horror of Australia’s total national debt being $1 trillion long term — that is less than one third of what Wall Street lost in one day.
But Trump and his acolytes still say this is all just bad medicine. That there is a short term price to pay for American industry to boom in the long term.
Far be it from me to argue with that. If Trump’s tariffs truly re-energise US manufacturing and deliver higher wages, then good luck and Godspeed.
But if I were a gambling man I would be putting the house on anything but red. As the ridiculous Covid roadblocks and shutdowns proved, the world is far too interconnected to have national problems solved by retreating into hermit kingdoms.
And despite early promise, the world is hardly safer either. Ceasefires still elude Ukraine and the Middle East. China is as aggressive as ever. Trump’s madman diplomacy was good shock therapy but there was no strategy below the surface.
Then we get into the culture wars, which are the most fun but least influential factor in any election campaign.
Culture wars are an indulgence when there is not enough else to worry about. In hard times they are an indulgence only for preordained ideological warriors of the left and right whose votes are baked in.
Trump acolytes think he won by killing woke. In fact the Democrats lost by presiding over a devastating decline in living standards. Trump killing woke was just a bonus.
Don’t get me wrong: Woke is profoundly annoying. But it is annoying because it sucks energy away from the mainstream concerns of ordinary people, not because it is a mainstream concern in itself.
Woke doesn’t put food on the table and neither does anti-woke. The economy does that. And if Trump’s tariffs aren’t the miracle cure he claims then woke won’t be the only thing that’s dead in America.
But his supporters won’t believe it until they see it, so let’s see what Trumpism unleashed really does.
And maybe then we can all get the loveable circus juggernaut out of our system and go back to boring old peace and prosperity.
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