Weâre Obsessed With Donald Trump. Thatâs Not a Bad Thing.
By the time The Donald set foot on that escalator  our world of news was already devolving into a set of 24/7 zombie-apocalypse events. Otherwise  he and his rants  his red face and strange orange comb-over wouldnât have made much sense at all. He would have been an unimaginable candidate before the media went into crisis  experienced what might be thought of as its own news inequality gap  and began refocusing on a few singular events of particularly resonant horror. These  in turn  regularly wiped away most of the rest of what was actually happening on this planet  while giving media units with smaller staffs and fewer resources the opportunity to put all their attention and energy into a set of eye-gluing  funds- and staff-preserving spectacles. As CBS Chairman Les Moonves put it bluntly during the 2016 presidential campaign  speaking of the focus on Trumpâs candidacy and antics  âIt may not be good for America  but itâs damn good for CBS.â¦ Iâve never seen anything like this  and this is going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. Itâs a terrible thing to say. But  bring it on   Donald . Keep going.â
It was  in other words  the perfect moment for a billionaire salesman-cum-conman-cum-reality-TV-sensation to descend that escalator.  Donald Trump  was neither a media mistake  nor an out-of-space-and-time experience.  He  was a man made for our unfounding media moment.
And this same way of thinking about  him  is applicable to so much else. As our unfounding father   he âs inconceivable without an American world that was already experiencing various kinds of incipient unfounding.
Whatever  he  might now be fathering   he  himself was the child  for instance  of a distinctly plutocratic moment. If we have our first billionaire in the White House  itâs only because by 2015 this countryâs democratic politics had devolved (with a little helping hand from the Supreme Court) into a set of 1 percent  or perhaps even .01 percent  elections.
Similarly  if this country hadnât been pursuing its never-ending war on terror so assiduously and unsuccessfully these last 16 years  while Washington was being transformed into a war capital  the national-security state was rising to prominence as a kind of shadow government  and the funding of the US military hadnât become the only truly bipartisan issue in Congress  Trumpism would never have been conceivable. In our American world  The  Donald âs tendency toward authoritarianism is often treated as if it were a unique attribute of  his . To believe that  however  you would have to overlook the growth in this century of a distinctly authoritarian spirit in Washington. You would have to ignore what it meant for the national-security state to be ever more embedded in our ruling city. You would have to forget about the American intelligence communityâs development of an historically unprecedented surveillance machinery aimed not just at the world but at American citizens as well.
The  Donald âs surprising decision to surround  himself  with âmy generalsâ in a fashion never before seen in Washington  even in wartime  was treated in a similarly anomalous fashion. And yet  given the Washington  he  entered  it was anything but. During the election campaign  candidate  Trump  referred to those same generals as ârubble â while deriding the losing wars they had been fighting for so long.  He  seemed in some way to grasp that this was a country and a citizenry increasingly being unmade by war.
Still  it took  him  next to no time as president to tack to where Washington had been heading since 9/11. As Iâve argued elsewhere   he  might better be thought of as our chameleon president: a Democrat who became a fervent Republican  a billionaire businessman who somehow convinced rural white-working class voters that  he  was their man  a former globalizer whoâs taken off like a bat out of hell after globalizing trade pacts of every sort.  He âs a man ready to alter  his  positions to fit the moment when it comes to everything except  himself .
By the time The Donald set foot on that escalator  our world of news was already devolving into a set of 24/7 zombie-apocalypse events. Otherwise  he and his rants  his red face and strange orange comb-over wouldnât have made much sense at all. He would have been an unimaginable candidate before the media went into crisis  experienced what might be thought of as its own news inequality gap  and began refocusing on a few singular events of particularly resonant horror. These  in turn  regularly wiped away most of the rest of what was actually happening on this planet  while giving media units with smaller staffs and fewer resources the opportunity to put all their attention and energy into a set of eye-gluing  funds- and staff-preserving spectacles. As CBS Chairman Les Moonves put it bluntly during the 2016 presidential campaign  speaking of the focus on Trumpâs candidacy and antics  âIt may not be good for America  but itâs damn good for CBS.â¦ Iâve never seen anything like this  and this is going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. Itâs a terrible thing to say. But  bring it on   Donald . Keep going.â
It was  in other words  the perfect moment for a billionaire salesman-cum-conman-cum-reality-TV-sensation to descend that escalator.   [TGT] was neither a media mistake  nor an out-of-space-and-time experience.   [TGT]   was a man made for our unfounding media moment.
And this same way of thinking about   [TGT]   is applicable to so much else. As our unfounding father    [TGT]  âs inconceivable without an American world that was already experiencing various kinds of incipient unfounding.
Whatever   [TGT]   might now be fathering    [TGT]   himself was the child  for instance  of a distinctly plutocratic moment. If we have our first billionaire in the White House  itâs only because by 2015 this countryâs democratic politics had devolved (with a little helping hand from the Supreme Court) into a set of 1 percent  or perhaps even .01 percent  elections.
Similarly  if this country hadnât been pursuing its never-ending war on terror so assiduously and unsuccessfully these last 16 years  while Washington was being transformed into a war capital  the national-security state was rising to prominence as a kind of shadow government  and the funding of the US military hadnât become the only truly bipartisan issue in Congress  Trumpism would never have been conceivable. In our American world  The  Donald âs tendency toward authoritarianism is often treated as if it were a unique attribute of  his . To believe that  however  you would have to overlook the growth in this century of a distinctly authoritarian spirit in Washington. You would have to ignore what it meant for the national-security state to be ever more embedded in our ruling city. You would have to forget about the American intelligence communityâs development of an historically unprecedented surveillance machinery aimed not just at the world but at American citizens as well.
The   [TGT]  âs surprising decision to surround   [TGT]   with âmy generalsâ in a fashion never before seen in Washington  even in wartime  was treated in a similarly anomalous fashion. And yet  given the Washington  he  entered  it was anything but. During the election campaign  candidate  Trump  referred to those same generals as ârubble â while deriding the losing wars they had been fighting for so long.  He  seemed in some way to grasp that this was a country and a citizenry increasingly being unmade by war.
Still  it took  him  next to no time as president to tack to where Washington had been heading since 9/11. As Iâve argued elsewhere   he  might better be thought of as our chameleon president: a Democrat who became a fervent Republican  a billionaire businessman who somehow convinced rural white-working class voters that  he  was their man  a former globalizer whoâs taken off like a bat out of hell after globalizing trade pacts of every sort.  He âs a man ready to alter  his  positions to fit the moment when it comes to everything except  himself .