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The Ultimate Caricature
Donald Trump, My Parents, and the Potential Last Act (and What an Act!) of Human History
Sometimes I dream in the sense of a nightmare about bringing my parents back to this all too strange world of ours to tell them about yes, of course, Donald J. Trump. They died long before The Apprentice even made it onto TV early in this century, so best guess though they also lived in New York, they undoubtedly had never heard of him.
My mother died in 1977 when Donald Trump was 31 and Jimmy Carter was president; my father in 1983 when Trump was 37 and Ronald Reagan was president. But nothing, not even Richard Nixon, could have prepared them for a Trump presidency, not once but (yes!) twice.
Mind you, my father was a salesman and, in that sense, he might have understood something about Trump, including his ability to sell himself to all too many of the rest of us so damn successfully, again not once but twice and if he has anything to do with it, maybe (but probably not) a third time, too. My parents could never have imagined, however, that the country which, at my moms birth, had Theodore Roosevelt as president and, in the years to come, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, among others, would have elected a madly self-referential ex-salesman with six bankrupt businesses in his past to the White House not once, but yes, again! twice.
I think my mother, a professional political and theatrical caricaturist, might have grimly laughed and then gone to her easel to turn him into her caricature of the ages. She would undoubtedly have caught his strange essence, as she did that nightmarish Trumpian figure of her moment (though he never had the same power to devastate our world), Senator Joe McCarthy.
And believe it or not, there is indeed some appropriate history here. Great powers and after the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended in 1991, this country seemed to be a great power like no other, possibly ever do come and go. Indeed, the going can be bizarre and disorienting. But when they come, it often seems as if they might be here forever and a day. And of course, in that now distant moment when the Soviet Union suddenly unraveled and China had not yet risen, the U.S. did appear to be The Great Power (and capitals and italics are indeed appropriate), the only one left on Planet Earth.
At the time, in fact, it felt as if this country might actually prove to be the Ultimate Great Power, the Greatest of All. Who then could have imagined that, not quite a quarter of a century later, the U.S. would, in its own fashion, have gone to the dogs, that it would be ever more and yes, we do need some new words to describe this increasingly stranger, more disturbing world of ours tariffyingly alone on an increasingly resentful and hostile planet? And mind you, Im not just thinking about countries like Brazil, India, and Switzerland that are deeply ticked off by Donald Trumps soaring tariffs and so much else. Who then could have imagined that we were already heading for the historical edge of what may prove to be the ultimate cliff of history? Who, then, could have imagined that Donald J. Trump that living, breathing symbol of ultimate decline would indeed become this countrys president, not once but yes, again (and again)! twice?
Honestly, in those nearly 25 years, how did the seemingly greatest power in history become something like an all-too-grim planetary laughing-stock or do I mean totally frightening-stock?
Of course, in a fashion my parents couldnt have imagined once upon a time, Donald Trump may be the ultimate Wait, what word or words am I searching for here? I wonder if it or they even exist. Hes almost too strange for the ordinary language were used to, while though who yet knows? its at least possible to imagine that he might prove to be the personification of the end of history. The last president, so to speak.
After all, though in my parents time humanity already had the ability to do this planet in, thanks to the atomic weapons that ended my fathers war, who would have imagined then that we humans had already come up with a second, slow-motion way to do the same thing Im thinking, of course, about climate change while essentially not noticing for decades. Nor could they have imagined that, once the long-term destructiveness of global warming became more apparent, the American people would elect a president dedicated to the very substances, fossil fuels, that are slowly transforming this planet into a giant fire hazard, heat condominium, and flooding nightmare first class.
The Final Act?
I mean, imagine this: even if the atomic weaponry that has spread to nine countries is never used again and dont count on that when the Russians and the Americans have only recently implicitly or explicitly threatened to employ just such weaponry, while the last nuclear treaty between those two countries is scheduled to run out in February 2026 (oh, and my country is also planning to invest another $1.7 trillion in modernizing its nuclear arsenal in the decades to come) the burning of fossil fuels, a slow-motion version of atomic warfare, has now become the heart and soul(lessness) of the potential devastation of planet Earth. After all, last November, Americans reelected a man who, in a fashion that could hardly have been blunter, ran his third campaign for president as a drill, baby, drill candidate. It was, in fact, his main election slogan. And since retaking the White House, he has indeed backed to the hilt the idea of increasing this countrys production of coal, oil, and natural gas. In fact, he only recently reached a tariff deal with the European Union in which he forced the EU to agree to purchase $250 billion worth of American natural gas and oil annually in the years to come. Who cares that U.S. energy exports to all buyers globally in 2024 added up to (and what a word to use in this context!) only $318 billion?
As John Feffer recently put it all too accurately, Trump uses tariffs like a bad cook uses salt. It covers up his lack of preparation, the poor quality of his ingredients, the blandness of his imagination. Its the only spice in his spice rack. Indeed, that couldnt be more on target, unless, of course, you start to think of climate destruction as a kind of spice, too.
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