Trump can Still Redeem America. Here’s why and How

Liberal (isms) malpractice defined only by ideology - that of turning citizens into consumers and nations into mere commercial entrepots – reached its apogee in the United States. While the fuller efflorescence of this odious practice was arrived at in the ‘roaring nineties’ - after the end of the bi-polar competition between the US and the former USSR, the mis en scene (or the stage) was set much before that.

Historically, if a rough date and periodization may be culled and approximated, it may be after the 1973 war between Israel and Arabs, that brought about an oil ‘shock’, that is the year of ignominy. Post this period, the condition of political economy was one of high inflation and high unemployment – called ‘stagflation’.

For the sake of record, it was the US Fed governor, Martin Volker, his period being one of real central bank independence that stood up to politicians and accorded political economy and economics some semblance of sense, sensibility and proportion.

In the attendant melee, incubated an economist of great genius, Milton Friedman. Freidman was indeed an eminence grise, but his economic theories – that became a predicate for an economic philosophy called monetarism - were slavish in nature. This mental enslavement paradigm, in turn, set the stage for the wave of globalism later.

Finding its way into the corridors power – in the western world- late Margaret Thatcher and the actor turned politician Ronald Reagan, turned this this theory into policy. Supported vigorously later by another man of some economic heft, the late Alan Greenspan, a veritable genius too, but a warped one, and able marketers like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, the warped but facetiously compelling philosophy of monetarism became mainstream. Thus began the career of globalism.

But what has all this got to do with Donald Trump, his politics and legacy?

Everything.

Here’s why.

The ideology of monetarism, wedded to ‘free’ trade and allied to liberalism was not merely about economics; it was political -supremely so.  The political philosophy that underpinned this unholy trinity was to make citizens into consumers and nations into mere commercial entrepots and free trade zones. (Such was the brazen temerity of proponents of this political philosophy that they believed that its reification would be the solvent of interstate and intra state conflicts!).

In practice, this entailed free movement of capital, freer movement of peoples and freer trade. The thrust and gravamen of these neo liberal practices was to induce policy grids and mechanisms that aimed at capital and current account convertibility, gradual removal and phasing out of tariffs, and non-tariff barriers, lax immigration policies and so on. In other words, the real agenda was to catalyze the dissipation and ultimately the occlusion of national sovereignty, with citizens as passive consumers, citizenship as an artifice, and the free market ‘law’ of supply and demand as the arbiter of everything- love, family, relationships and even morality and ethics.

The United States - especially post the Cold War, and its ‘unipolar moment’- constituted the perfect ‘vehicle’ for this noxious agenda. Because of its unrivalled material and military capabilities, its size of the market -physical and financial, - its prestige and influence, the US was used as the Trojan horse for crystallizing and spreading this terrible and toxic agenda. An elite incubated in top Ivy league universities was created. This elite was designed to be drafted into top public policy positions of the United States. University academics that promoted this ideology were given prominence and obscure theories dished to unwary students.

An important element of this ecology was the so- called mainstream media in the US and elsewhere. The ‘average’ but unsuspecting citizen was made a victim of ‘false consciousness’. In any case, he or she, was too laden and burden with bread and butter worries to suss out and really understand the noxious agenda.

The material results of this were unrivalled volume of immigration into the US, the manufactured primacy of the theory of multiculturalism and its abuse, the hollowing out of industry in the US (which the late but brilliant Ross Perot referred to as the ‘giant sucking sound’), its migration elsewhere in the quest of profits and the rate of return, mere consumption as surrogate for meaningful employment.

There were social and other consequences too. The disappearance of blue collar work (with flipping hamburgers promoted as the ultimate meaningful activity), the use and misuse of opioids by the vulnerable and those affected by these policies, high suicide rates in the US , the normalization of flaccidity in the country, the loss of real jobs and thus meaning for people, the rise of ‘identity politics’ with gender themes as its carrying card, and the credit card as the badge of honor and citizenship, among other things.

Economically, this consumption mania, focus on the surreal and the ethereal led to a stupendously high current account deficit in the US. By necessity, this had to be funded by foreigners. (A mere glance at the ownership composition, for example, of American T bills, structure of ownership of many American bellwether firms and so on would be an accurate index of this).

The list is too vast and numerous to be delineated fully and entirety. But the themes adumbrated in this essay are the most prominent ones. All in all, as a country and as a nation, the US was hollowed out, and rendered into a ‘shell country’, with holdings within and without. This was what had become of the US- till a countervailing action, philosophy and politics. This was Trumpism. Ably, boldly and beautifully promoted by Donald Trump, Trumpism, pared to essence, constituted from a political philosophy perspective, a ‘rollback’ of toxic politics that had the US in a vise like grip.

The gravamen of Trumpism was, to view ‘politics and power as purpose’. In practical terms, Trumpism aimed to restore American power, purpose with the aid of policies that disrupted liberal fetishes and waywardness. The use of tariffs, boldly and beautifully acting as an insurgent in international relations, and disavowing fake and groveling diplomatic niceties and fake and even more groveling ‘political correctness’ were all aimed at restoring America to a time and space of respect, sobriety and proportion.

The corollary to this would, in the schema of Trumpism, was to undercut and overcome the disingenuous but compelling theories of liberal philosophers (John Rawls in a contemporary sense?). The gravamen of their theories was to undercut the nation as a coherent, natural unit of association, undermine familial bonds, undermine natural and cultural differences between and among peoples, dismember tradition and culture, and promote extreme individualism as the altars to be worshipped upon. From a policy perspective, central banks - with the US Fed at the apex, international institutions like the World Trade Organization, the IMF and the World Bank, use and abuse of capital flows across the world, among other things, all overlaid by US power and its institutions, were used as convenient instruments.

Trumpism aimed to reverse a (which all these noxious and tragic trends which were becoming material but artificial phenomena across the world. Trump sought to place time that was instrumentalized by liberal orgies to collapse in the present and viewed as merely a gratificatory period of impulses and instincts in its proper perspective.

Trump and Trumpism sought to reverse liberal fetishes of rendering society as only an agglomeration of atomized and lost (but different) individuals, bound together merely by market forces of supply and demand, with misuse of civil society and mere rule of law as the intervening variables to shape society.

Another allied but critical prong of Trumpism was to recreate and craft organic bonds of solidarity among his people, elevate ‘ordinary’ Americans status, and eliminate their pain and angst owing to liberal outlandishness. All this found expression in the ‘Make America Great Again’(MAGA) formulation and slogan to which affected Americans, responded in droves.

But alas, owing to bad, motivated, and partisan advice, Donald Trump and his political philosophy fell victim to a manufactured war on Iran. Its denouement has become a political issue that potentially undermines MAGA by turning its focus on ‘forever wars’ that are basically motivated and manufactured. But, while this constitutes a setback to restoring America to its pristineness and essence, all is not lost.

The 47^th president of the US must make an immediate course correction, reconnect with his MAGA base and focus solely and wholly on making America great again. While the rest may constitute mere corollaries, Trump’s starting point must be to calibrate domestic and thereby international political economy to a neo-mercantilist paradigm, the kind that redounds primarily to the welfare and well-being of Americans, and where other nations adjust, re-energize organic social and political bonds in America, elevate citizenship to its rightful place, check immigration into the US and craft policies that put Americans first. Central to this is the American presidency - an institution that had been reduced by liberals and their globalist compradors as an echo chamber and playground for their warped preferences.

To restore America, to craft a paradigm of power as purpose, to make real Americans feel and actually be owners of their own country once again, Trump must assume the presidency of the United States for a third time. While this may run into constitutional and political hurdles, but it would not be illegal. For the sake of his people and for America, which by extension would restore balance and equipoise all over the world, Donald J Trump must become president of America in 2028 again! There is no other way!