For the past five and a half years Americans have been held hostage to the whims of one man, to the mercurial personality and deep-seated pathologies of Donald Trump. On June 16, 2015, when Trump descended the escalator of his eponymous tower and launched an improbable bid for the White House, few in the country could have predicted the wild course of our coming half decade. In an infamous clip from June 17 (starting at the 3:45 mark), the comedian Jon Stewart mocks Trump and delights in the ridiculousness of his presidential ambition. “He is putting me into some kind of comedy hospice,” Stewart says, “where all I’m getting is straight morphine.” This was an understandable sentiment at the time, but rings hollow today. Later that June, intrigued by the controversy surrounding his behavior, I searched online for Trump’s presidential announcement video and began to watch it. Five minutes, I told myself, just five minutes, but I found the performance so laughably bizarre that I remained transfixed for nearly an hour and couldn’t turn it off. The fact that I couldn’t look away from Trump’s shtick should have been a warning to me, but I didn’t heed it. Like most everyone else, I laughed at Trump and trusted experts who assured us he couldn’t win.
But then, a few weeks later, Trump defied conventional wisdom and mocked the military service of Senator John McCain without incurring significant repercussions from Republican voters. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said, referring to McCain. “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” The blowback was swift and uncompromising, but also futile. “Donald Trump owes every American veteran and in particular John McCain an apology,” said Rick Perry, Trump’s future Energy Secretary, while Senator Lindsay Graham predicted that Republican primary voters would soon rebuff Trump’s nascent campaign. “Here’s what I think they’re going to say: ‘Donald Trump, you’re fired,’” said Senator Graham to laughter and applause. Graham today is one of Trump’s closest confidants, and a golfing buddy.
It was during this period that I began to pay sustained attention to the Trump campaign and to the startling displays of raw demagoguery that increased with every news cycle. On August 26, the Spanish-language Univision anchor Jorge Ramos was ejected from a Trump event for challenging the candidate on the specifics of his proposed border wall. At the time I was teaching high school ESL to first-generation Latino immigrants, many of whom had crossed the Mexican border illegally and were shocked and confused by Trump’s behavior and asked me to explain it. I tried my best, but the meaning of the Trump phenomenon was considerably more difficult to impart to them than the past tense of irregular English verbs or the rules of possessives. I offered historical analogues — Santa Anna in Mexico, Juan Perón in Argentina — until eventually one of my Dominican students volunteered a name. She had grasped it suddenly and was firmly convinced. Trujillo, she said. He is Trujillo. I see this now. I know.
I hope not, I answered her. Hopefully it’s not so bad as that. Not yet, anyway. Let’s hope not.
September passed, and then October, and as Trump competed in the Republican primary and his poll numbers continued to rise, I began to fret that perhaps my conservative family members in north Louisiana had fallen for Trump’s spell. It was inevitable that we would discuss the race, and I determined in advance to speak my mind and to oppose Trump no matter whom it might offend. After all, with Trump in the race, one could not be so picky: I would be willing to accept Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, John Kasich, even Ted Cruz. Surely Trump with his Biblical illiteracy and his egregious cruelty was a bridge too far, surely we could agree on that? Surely we could?
We couldn’t. The Trumpist delusion, while still a bit weak in this early stage, had already infected the patient’s body and would soon dominate it. Faced with enthusiasm for the billionaire candidate, I bit my tongue, kept the peace, said nothing.
Of course, I can’t pretend I didn’t sometimes sympathize with Trump supporters, for I, too, enjoyed the repudiation of the GOP and its abysmal governing record. It can be hard to remember today after all that has happened in our nation, but back then it was cathartic to watch Trump in the primary debates as he faced down traditional GOP leaders and called out their hypocrisy and condemned their bankrupt values. It was refreshing to witness for once a Republican who was willing to defend Social Security and Medicare, and to criticize big corporations, and to attack George W. Bush for the incompetence of the Iraq War. Certainly, I will never forget that South Carolina debate in which Trump did the unthinkable and, amid boos and heckling from the audience, blamed the 9/11 attacks on the Bush Administration, called the Iraq War a “big, fat mistake,” and accused Republicans of lying about weapons of mass destruction. This fiery critique was more than merited in the face of Republican warmongering, and I couldn’t help but root for Trump, while also despising him and fearing his success.
It was around this time — in late 2015 and early 2016 — that I began to read T. Harry Williams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Louisiana’s own famous demagogue, Huey P. Long. Long was the Democratic governor of Louisiana, and later one of its senators, who rose to political prominence during the Great Depression by promising new populist reforms and by exploiting class divisions in the rural South. In many ways, Trump and Long could not be more different. Long was a progressive in the Bernie Sanders mold who railed against corporations and advocated for a radical redistribution of wealth to help the rural poor, and he was also one of the few Southern populists who eschewed racial appeals in preference for full-throated attacks on the rich. In other ways, though, Long and his administration in Louisiana was a dress rehearsal for the corruption and proto-authoritarianism of the future Trump presidency. Like Trump, Long was an infamous bully who derided his political foes with offensive nicknames and scathing personal attacks (for example, instead of the Constitutional League, the Constipational League), and was preeminent at presenting himself as a man of action who worked on behalf of the people and opposed the corrupt establishment politicians obstructing the state’s progress. In 1929, after Long was impeached by the Louisiana House, he finagled acquittal from the Senate through the use of bribery and political violence and emerged stronger than ever. Described as the “Hitler of one of our sovereign states,” in 1935, Long was planning a raucous presidential primary campaign against Franklin Roosevelt when an assassin’s bullet cut him down and ended his life. For a while I reflected on this history, and I worried.
And yet, after Trump was elected in 2016, I made an effort to give the new president the benefit of the doubt, at least for the first few months while he grew into the role. He did not make it easy. From his inaugural address — forever to be remembered as the “American Carnage” speech — to his Muslim travel ban; from his separation of migrant families at the border to his impeachable attempt to damage a political rival; from his disastrous handling of the Covid pandemic to his brazen assault on the fundamentals of democracy, Donald Trump has embodied in his presidency the worst tendencies of American life and has rivaled only the Confederacy as the gravest of threats to the continuation of the Republic. Fortunately, due to Trump’s many failures, we may at last be rid of this president and the vile passions he’s unleashed, and perhaps in a hundred years, Americans will speak of him as a cautionary tale to remind citizens of the dangers of tyranny and to serve as a check on destructive ambition.
Or maybe not. Certainly, the Trumpist hold on a significant portion of our population is great cause for alarm and bodes ill for the success of America in the 21st century. But perhaps there is a lesson for our new president, Joe Biden, in the career of Donald Trump. Maybe there is something to be learned from Trump’s victories, as well as from his failures, from his strengths, as well as from his obvious deficiencies.
In the annals of American political myth, there has long been a folk dream that envisions a day when a populist outsider — a regular citizen beholden to no party, or perhaps a businessman — will fight his way through the scrum of corrupt politics-as-usual and attain power and govern finally on behalf of the average American voter. This is the premise of Frank Capra’s classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but also of campaigns as diverse as those of Bernie Sanders, Ross Perot, and Barack Obama. Inevitably, whether in victory or defeat, much of the public is disappointed to discover that the work of politics, in Max Weber’s phrase, “is the strong and slow boring of hard boards,” of gradual change as opposed to grand and triumphant flourishes. On the other hand, with increasing inequality and the collapse of the middle class, the failures of the American system can no longer be denied and cry out today for vigorous reform. Like Huey Long a century earlier, Trump realized that his bull-in-a-china-shop persona was an asset in a battle against establishment politicians of both parties who were distrusted by many members of the American public. In this way, both Jeb Bush, the son and brother of presidents, and Hillary Clinton, a president’s wife, were the perfect foils for Trump and his campaign against our political institutions. In a nation where both sides increasingly feel disenfranchised and unrepresented, it is a certainty that the Trumps of the future will continue to be empowered unless our political leadership concentrates on achievable goals that can restore faith in the workings of our government and that will reduce inequities among the broader American public.
Trump, for his part, had an opportunity to lead in such a way, but spurned his chance and suffered electoral defeat as a consequence of his inaction. With a surprise victory, and having overthrown both the Republican and Democratic candidates, Trump could have governed as an independent dealmaker on behalf of the American people, working with members of both parties, much as Emmanuel Macron has attempted in France, to construct an agenda supported by the broad middle of the American electorate. Investments in infrastructure, paid family leave, cheaper healthcare, even a wealth tax — these are policies popular with Democrats as well as with populist Republicans and could have helped the president to secure his reelection. Certainly, liberals would have continued to loath Donald Trump, but they would have cooperated with him to secure healthcare for the poor, and might have been willing to enact some immigration restrictions in exchange for legalization of a large portion of the nation’s undocumented residents. Trump, though, chose a different path and catered instead to the extreme elements of the Republican base and spent more time attacking liberals on Twitter than he did concentrating on ways in which he could improve the country and grow his support among people who hadn’t voted for him in 2016. Indeed, it was four years of squandered possibilities for the American people, and for the president.
So this, then, is the tragedy of Donald Trump, or one of many tragedies. Wasted years, needless cruelty, purposeless fights, ambition with no responsibility, failure to lead.
Let’s hope President Biden and Vice President Harris have learned lessons from the last five years. They should begin by restoring trust in government and offering policies popular with many sections of the public. They must make reducing inequality and the strengthening of the American Dream among all people their central goal, avoiding unnecessary controversy, and focusing energy on improving the material lives of their constituents. In short, voters must know that their government has their back; that their leaders listen to them; that they represent them; and that they care for them.
And so, as we say farewell to Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States, we must acknowledge to ourselves that we as a people have dodged a significant bullet and been given a chance to correct our nation’s problems and to reform the Republic.
Or, as Otto von Bismarck, the 19th century German chancellor, allegedly said, “God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America.”
Let’s hope we’re worthy of that providence and make changes while there is still time.
A Poem for Sunday
“The Hill We Climb” by Amanda Gorman
In Defense of the Misanthrope
In yesterday’s New York Times, critic Gina Bellafante reviews Martin Scorsese’s recent seven-part Netflix documentary, Pretend It’s a City, about the New York writer and comedian Fran Lebowitz. At 70 years old, Lebowitz is a cantankerous observer of New York City life, whose biting commentary gives voice to common residential complaints. Bellafante, though, objects to Lebowitz’s “misanthropic, cranky, and besotted view of Manhattan life” and is put off by her snark and her irritability:
On the occasions when her tastes are not predictable, they can seem confounding. Ms. Lebowitz is irked by the existence of a small Manhattan institution devoted to the history of immigration in New York City. Really, you say? Indeed. “Now there’s something on the Lower East Side called the Tenement Museum,’’ she begins, referring to a place that has been around for more than 30 years. “The Tenement Museum! What’s in there, a tuberculosis epidemic?”
When my son was in kindergarten, I accompanied his class on a trip there and watched 20 privileged children gawk at the recreation of tiny turn-of-the-century apartments where a family of 12 might have shared a single bathtub in the middle of a kitchen. But Ms. Lebowitz doesn’t see the point.
Or, perhaps Lebowitz does see the point and was merely making a joke to entertain her audience. The rest of Bellafante’s review reads much the same way: she takes issue with Lebowitz’s “condescension” and “dubious self-certainty,” but never seems to comprehend that Lebowitz’s observations are made in jest and meant to make us laugh. Later, when Lebowitz jokes about the subway, Bellafante asks in all seriousness:
Is the deterioration of the city’s transit system funny? At the risk of seeming like a killjoy, I might have laughed a lot harder 15 years ago, when it wasn’t on the verge of bankruptcy.
Well, at the risk of making too obvious a point, it is indeed possible to laugh at the deterioration of the city’s transit system, while also being concerned about the state of New York’s public infrastructure. Bellafante should lighten up and stop policing what jokes Lebowitz can and can’t make. Humor is in the eye of the beholder. Let her laugh.
Check out the trailer if you’re interested. Pretend It’s a City is streaming on Netflix.
A Short Story for Sunday
Today at the Sour Mash, I present “Beyond the Bayou,” a story by Kate Chopin, one of America’s first feminist writers, about a Black woman named La Folle in south Louisiana who must cross “beyond the bayou” for the first time to save a small child. It is a story of change and transition, perfect for this week in which we welcome the future and whatever is in store for us. Check out this brief excerpt, see what you think:
The bayou curved like a crescent around the point of land on which La Folle's cabin stood. Between the stream and the hut lay a big abandoned field, where cattle were pastured when the bayou supplied them with water enough. Through the woods that spread back into unknown regions the woman had drawn an imaginary line, and past this circle she never stepped. This was the form of her only mania.
Quote of the Week
“Some days when you need a hand, there are other days when we are called to lend a hand. That is how it has to be, and that is what we do for one another, and if we are this way, our country will be stronger, more prosperous, more ready for the future, and we can still disagree,” - President Joe Biden, in his inaugural address.
A Sour Mash Smorgasbord
For your weekly entertainment this morning, here is another small sampling of light reading with a smorgasbord of links from around the Web that I hope you will enjoy.
If you’re interested in movie history, check out this article at Jacobin about Francesco Misiano, an Italian Communist who brought the film Battleship Potemkin to the West.
Or, if you’ve seen the Broadway show Hamilton, you might be intrigued by a piece in Hyperallergic about Ishmael Reed’s satire,"The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda."
At Vulture, meanwhile, Keith Phipps looks at the 50 Greatest Western films of all time. Check them out and get back to me if you agree, disagree, or reject his whole list.
Have you ever wondered why dogs bury their bones? Live Science has the answer.
At the Daily Beast, Spencer Ackerman delves into ancient history and compares the recent Capitol Hill riots to the Catiline Conspiracy that rocked the Roman Republic.
And lastly, in the Spectator, Christopher House discusses 12 examples of magnificent church architecture, including the Hagia Sophia and the mosque-church of Cordoba.
And, Finally, a Note to Readers
The Sour Mash Review will now be published weekly and will arrive in your inbox on Sunday mornings. If you like what you read, please share with others interested in a distillation of politics, religion, literature, and life. If you have comments, dissents, arguments, or questions, please respond to this email. I would love to hear from you.
In parting, I appreciate your support and have a good week. See you next Sunday,
-JCB