Donald Trump is a pompous, reckless, heartless imperialist. He's also a near perfect reflection of the nation he rules.
Back in the summer of 2024, after the failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, President Joe Biden said: "There's no place in America for this type of violence. It's sick." Vice President Kamala Harris, repeated the sentiment: "Violence such as this has no place in our nation."
A version of this message was delivered by nearly every major mainstream pundit and politico across the ideological spectrum. As though speaking in a great chorus, thousands of elites across the nation condemned the shooting. "Political violence is un-American," was the common refrain.
An astounding claim, to be sure, in a country where fifteen out of forty-five presidents have survived assassination attempts with another four being murdered outright. Not to mention the other fifty-seven murdered congressional representatives, federal judges, diplomats, and state and local officials. To say nothing of the thousands killed in political acts of terrorism, blown up by anarchists, lynched by mobs of white supremacists, or killed in politically-motivated mass shootings. An astonishing claim in a nation in which half a million people were killed and numerous cities destroyed in a four-year-long civil war.
The United States was forged in violence ("the shot heard round the world") and since coming onto the world stage at the turn of the last century has become one of the biggest exporters of violence. Since 1776 the United States has engaged in nearly 400 military interventions, touching at one point or another every single corner on the globe.
If you disregard the sovereign governments we've destroyed and the regions we've destabilized through military action, we've also flooded the world with small arms. As of 2023 America owns 42% of the global arms market, far outpacing France and Russia (11% each) and even China (6%).
Our output of tools of death and destruction is so prolific that the Mexican government is currently suing US gun makers for fueling cartel violence there. And as for being an "arsenal for democracy," we've certainly armed nations like Ukraine, but our three biggest weapons buyers remain Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait. Not exactly the world's most democratic states.
The truth is violence is as American as apple pie, and in the same vein, one could say that so is hypocrisy. Americans have a long tradition of speaking in big, transformative, flowery ways that don't always match our actions.
Hypocrisy is how Thomas Jefferson, while personally owning hundreds of human beings as property, including several of his own children, could write the words "all men are created equal" in one of this nation's founding documents without the slightest hint of shame. It's how Woodrow Wilson could declare forcefully that "the seed of revolution is repression," while institutionalizing Jim Crow across the federal government. It's how Ronald Raegan could call the United States the "shining city upon a hill," while also funding extralegal death squads in Central America paid for by the proceeds from illegal arms sales to Iran.
Hypocrisy is how we can lecture the world about democracy and self-determination while also maintaining a global military empire that includes hundreds of installations and governs a population of roughly 4 million people with no meaningful representation within the federal government. If you want an earful on American hypocrisy just ask the people of the Philippines, or Cuba, or Puerto Rico.
In fact one could make a pretty strong argument that America itself only became a democracy in 1965 with the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
And yet, much to the consternation of foes such as China and Russia, American rhetoric, punctuated by the occasional act of altruism, has allowed the United States to ride above its own contradictions. As the old adage, often misattributed to Winston Churchill, goes, Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing, after exhausting all other possibilities.
Without question we are a violent nation. We have overthrown democracies. We have committed genocide and exploited native peoples. We have worked tirelessly toward our own selfish national interests. But what separates us from the British or French empires, from the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China, is that time and again, despite our selfishness, greed, and hypocrisy, America has, on the whole, eventually, usually, after exhausting all other possibilities, tried to do the right thing.
Americans fought to preserve slavery but Americans also died by the tens of thousands to oppose it. Americans did conquer the Philippines and Cuba, but also became one of the few imperial powers in history to (eventually) willingly grant its imperial possessions freedom. Americans firebombed most of Germany and Japan in World War II, but then spent billions to rebuild those former enemy nations. Not to mentions the billions more it spent rebuilding Western Europe.
The United States has often acted as selfishly as other nations, but through aid programs, alliance, and (at least in the last century) an aversion to annexation, has largely managed to stay on the right side of history. As Lincoln might say, America has strived "to appeal to the better angels of our nature." It's been messy and it hasn't always worked, but we've certainly usually tried.
And in this context, perhaps America's rhetoric can be viewed less as hypocrisy and more as asperation. Because in a world of jabbering apes language matters. The United States hasn't always acted properly, but its always tried to speak properly and at least put some of its vast resources behind what it says.
Enter Donald Trump. The first modern American president who does not use aspirational language, who does not appeal to the better angels of our nature, and who doesn't care to follow big talk with action. To Donald Trump, America is like every other country in the world and through our few good deeds, including foreign aid programs, we've only demonstrated weakness.
In 1958, William Lederer and Eugene Burdick, published the novel, The Ugly American. The book was a Cold War era criticism of American diplomacy, in which the authors lambasted Americans abroad as ostentatious, pretentious, boorish, and loud. Whereas Soviet officials took pains to learn local languages and local custom, Americans were depicted in the book as ethnocentric, self-absorbed, and completely ignorant of local culture.
The novel rang true and made such a big impact that the Eisenhower administration immediately ordered an investigation into US foreign aid practices, and within just a few years Congress established both the Peace Corps and USAID as a direct result. And while the book itself has been largely forgotten, the term "ugly American" became a pejorative expression for offensive American behavior abroad.
In every single way imaginable, Donald Trump is the quintessential ugly American. He's a loud, gaudy, ignorant buffoon. A big, fat, dumb salesman, hocking gold sneakers and crypto scams, while bullying and extorting foreign leaders and giving nothing without getting something in return.
More so, Trump is the ugly American who embraces America's ugliness. In 2017, when told by Bill O'Reilly that Vladimir Putin couldn't be trusted because he was "a killer," Trump infamously responded "we've got a lot of killers. You think our country's so innocent?" Trump routinely extolls America's exceptional strength while depicting America as profoundly corrupt. I imagine this is the source of a lot of his "tells it like it is" mythos.
America was great once, according to Trump, but now is the world's biggest sucker. And the reason America is in such a terrible state is that we're being taken advantage of by people who are not American. It's the foreigners invading our once great nation that are the problem. It's the foreign nations we support through our aid and military protection that sap our strength.
Trump is a purely transactional being. He doesn't understand relationships that are not inherently transactional. He did buy all three of his wives, after all. So for Trump there is no upside to an appeal to altruism or unity. Every interaction is a calculation. A cost-benefit analysis where the only tangible benefit is the financial bottom line. It's why soft power as an idea eludes him.
In Trump's world there are no better angels, there are only winners and losers. In any given relationship if you're not taking advantage of the other guy they must be taking advantage of you. It's a cynical and lonely way to go through life, but such is your perceived reality when you've never been loved, or never loved another.
And here we get to the crux of it. Trump 2.0 feels so especially miserable because its all cruelty and no heart. It's all self-interest without self-sacrifice. It's all transaction, without even the language of hope. No more foreign aid. No more military assistance for Ukraine. No alliances without payment.
Trump is the ugly American, now forcing the rest of us to confront the ugliness of America, unfiltered, free of distraction or contradiction. If the United States was ever exceptional it is no longer.
Trump wants a return to the late nineteenth century. Before liberalism and internationalism corrupted his version of America. The wild America. The gilded America. The selfish America. The America that conquered the frontier and exclusively fueled its industries with its own natural resources. When America annexed territories and passed laws to deport Chinese and Mexican migrants. An America that was white and made no apology for its whiteness.
Yes, Trump is corrupt and stupid and many of his "policies" stem from these realities, but he is also ugly America incarnate. He is the America we omit in our histories and don't like to admit to when traveling abroad. He is pure id. He's the big stick minus the soft speak. He's our hate-filled violent nature. He is the assassins and mass murderers we pretend aren't fundamental to our national character and history.
We may not survive Trump. Either through a jump to authoritarianism or his own ineptitude leading to global thermonuclear destruction, Donald Trump may very well be our last democratically elected president. But if we do survive him it's critical that we see him for what he is, a reflection.
Whether we like it or not, Trump is very much American made. And if we do not face the ugliness he represents we will never reach beyond our rhetoric and become the exceptional country we always believed ourselves to be.
Comments