Trump's American Fairy Tale and (A Little of) What's Missing From It

Once upon a time, in a country not so far away, a president who wanted to be more told a story about the way things were, from his perspective, anyway, the view from privilege, power, wealth -- keeping and getting more of all of it. He wanted to self-congratulate, to look good, so left some important parts out of the story, parts that, well, might have complicated things. More on that in a bit. In this uncomplicated story things were going well, according to plan, and there were good people (called winners, business interests, investors, rich and powerful tough guys) and bad people (called losers, foreigners, lay-abouts, terrorists, and other worse things); the story made the president look like a hero: finally getting rid of that liberal stuff like consumer protection, regulations on corporate power, healthcare, lax immigration, pending gun laws, membership with the rest of the world in dealing with climate change, and on and on. He played the easy notes of platitude, cliche, melodrama, either/or. It made listeners proud, chest-thumping proud, of hard work, nuclear families, sacrifice, tribal membership, having dispatched a villain. He picked some low-hanging fruit that everyone could feel good about before plunging into some pretty selective examples intended to make the story believable. Oh yes, the story he told had some truth, but it didn't much connect the dots of history or context. It never mentioned why we had so many enemies or where all the wealth had come from or that the military budget has been a black hole of glut and corruption. He forgot that his country had used it to support dictatorships, overthrow democratically-elected governments, assassinate political organizers, terrorize whole countries with carpet bombing and scorched earth policies. He also did not say that he planned to rob social, educational, and environmental programs to fund his military upgrades. He was not humble or introspective or self-critical in any way, but rather god-like, turning his chiseled profile to the camera. His story was one of radical individualism and self-made men. (Whatever that is...) He worshiped gold and power more than just about anything and he liked people who told him what he wanted to hear. His story said that giving rich people more money would help everybody. He forgot that giving rich people more money had mainly made them richer while everybody else stayed about the same or got poorer. He didn't like people who pointed this out, didn't like people who asked hard questions. In fact he made fun of them. He liked people who took orders and he wanted lots of soldiers to keep outsiders outside of his kingdom. He liked to scare people, to tell them that if they didn't do what he wanted the country would be taken over by gangsters, rapists, criminals. He said we need a wall. A big wall. To keep us safe. Migration equals terrorism and crime he said. He said hoards are coming through loopholes to take away all we hold as dear. (He didn't mention that his family had emigrated from Germany after being deported or that his audience was descended from immigrants.) But he was here now, and rich, so he didn't want to share with any new people. That's not really part of his story, the sharing thing. He only told part of the whole American story, the who-was-here-first story, and what happened to them; his story began with his people, Europeans, and told of great ideals -- like freedom, hard work, and democracy -- founding fathers (who were themselves revolutionaries throwing off the restraint of empire, the kind we fight against today). He forgot to mention that success of white, landed, idealistic politicians had come from stealing Indian land and running a slave economy and working laborers to death. He left a lot of that stuff out; his light doesn't have room for a shadow. His story said don't think about that, but instead, be afraid of our enemies, build bombs, walls, and guns. It's about security that comes from dominating others. This story is about getting ready for the fight, the one that we must win, the one that will never end. Trust me he says. Divide the world into black and white, good and evil, friends and enemies. He called on the people to join him, to be on his side, to drink a bit of poison, to see him as a benevolent, trustworthy leader, to follow him without question down a dark, violent, fear-filled, greedy path. We're good he says. I'm good he says. Put down that damned book and don't look behind the curtain or follow the money.