There is a brief moment in Bob Woodwards new book about Trumpadminstrationen, ”the Fear of the lord” (Modernista), then it is easy to sympathize with Trump himself. When the news about the Assad regime in april 2017 used the nerve agent sarin against civilians reaches the White house he gets an outbreak. According to the Woodwards sources calling Trump up the then minister of defence, James Mattis and say, ”Let’s kill the bastard!”, alluding to the dictator Assad.
the Reaction is fully human. At the same time, it is not that anyone wants to storpolitiken are handled: an individual’s impulses shall not be the basis for stormakters strategies. Especially not when it comes to the world’s largest nuclear power. But it is the only moment in the book when the Trumps political whims emanating from a commitment in the suffering of others. Otherwise, everything revolves around him. How much of his policy rests on a deeper political line?
Woodwards depiction want to avoid the after effect, but still be outrageous. He does not concern things that made headlines during Trump’s campaign – the attack on immigrants and muslims, or threats against journalists. He wants to tell the story of the political game around the Trump in the White House corridors and has interviewed many people, not named employees. Woodwards desire in the writing comes from the desire to be a fly on the wall in the Room Where It Happens.
wrote in his review in dagens nyheter of the us edition, it is a bit hesitant method: either the Woodward – which he was not – or so he has taken literary liberties when he recounts the conversations that happened in private. But the story he distilled out of the tons of printed in-depth interviews draw a picture that has become clearer since the book was published: of an increasingly dysfunctional White house. Woodward wants to depict how it goes to hell. So it has been in his previous books: he loves to watch people willingly jump down in between the power millstones.
now, When I read about the book in Swedish (in an effective translation signed Gabriel Setterborg, and Kjell Waltman), it becomes even clearer that it wants to be the one closest to the literary story with a beginning, middle and end. It begins with Steve Bannon recruited from the alt-right site Breitbart and receive up Trumps derailed the campaign on the rails. It continues with how the linking of the new, mainly military experts to the administration, albeit from the right wing, but people with expertise. Soon to appear yet upplösningstendenserna. Trump turns out to be completely ignorant of international politics. And more surprising: he can not much about the economy. He did not understand what the national debt or the current account balance is, nor the difference between the industry sector and the service sector. When Trump does not get a hearing for their homemade economic notions of why trade agreements are bad – ”TRADE IS BAD”, he writes on a note – recruit he simply the only economist he can find that gives him the right, the marginalized, Peter Navarro, which had previously backed Hillary Clinton and many of Obama’s miljöreformer. Now replace the he feet again and become Trump’s chief economic adviser.
the Woodwards story begins like an episode of ”Yes, Minister”, but soon resemble ”the Madness of King George”. Trump is becoming increasingly moody, distrustful, alienate their kunnigaste employees and sitting at last alone in front of Fox News, hour after hour, with cell phone in hand. All the while the investigation of the possible contacts with Russia during the campaign, slowly spinning his web ever more around the main characters. It is the dramaturgical gratifying to put it up on the way. But we don’t actually know how it ends.
another story about Trump’s campaign and for the first time as president which almost no one writes. Books Woodwards ”Fear” or Michael Wolff’s ”Fire and fury” depicts the narcissism and nepotism. But few seem to be interested in the ideas behind it. Trump doesn’t seem to have any personal relationship to the story or the ideas world. He trust to their own impulses, as if he thought himself to be driven by the divine inspiration. Ideas have, however, such as Bannon and more in the outskirts of Trumps campaign – and in the alt-right movement, which got so much energy out of his election victory. And there are still these ideas that control Trumps politics, long after the Bannon himself been thrown out of the train. As his admiration for Andrew Jackson.
The first Trump hung up on the wall in the Oval office was a portrait of Jackson, who was president 1829-1837. A few weeks before the Bannon left the White house in August 2017, he beat a signal to the historian Walter Russell Mead. He has written several books on Jackson and Mead tells us about the call for webmagasinet Politico. According to Mead wanted Bannon to thank him – for he, through his research on Jackson provided the Bannon and Trump with key political arguments. Mead said avmätt that, although he researched about the Jackson, but not regarding themselves as ”jacksonian” – which seemed to surprise Bannon.
has been up and down. Previously it was pointed to his egalitarianism and defense of ”the common man” against big banks or his cleanup of corruption in the political system, which made him to the likeness of the warm, inclusive side of the populism that has a long tradition in the united states. But in recent years have other pages of Jackson’s political legacy attracted the attention more. So he was a military commander during the war of 1812, when the ”Negro Fort”, the refuge of runaway slaves in Florida, in 1816 was blown up in the air and 300 dog: survivor was executed on Jackson’s orders. During his time as president, he decided on the brutal expulsion of the ursprungsamerikaner west, when thousands starved or froze to death. He was a self-organization (around 300) and forbade the distribution to the southern states of the pamphlets which agitated against slavery. A different side of his ideology was the abolition of the U.S. central bank, which has been controversial since the time it has been founded. The aim was to limit the state’s use of economic instruments.
do you Want to have the warm solidarity with the ’common man’ against power, then you need to also take the second – the inherited racism, a more isolationist USA, and the idea that the state should be dismantled.
Bannons Jacksontolkning seems to look something like this: you want to have the warm solidarity with the ”common man” against the power, then you need to also take the second – the inherited racism, a more isolationist USA, and the idea that the state should be dismantled.
the lens becomes Trumps policy coherence. Underligheten in that those who claim to defend ”the common man” against the ”elite” consists of ministers and officials from the finansfirmor as Goldman Sachs, oljeförtaget Exxon or as Trump himself is fastighetsspekulanter, also seems logical from Jackson’s perspective. Him ”the little man’s defender” became wealthy planters. His opposition to a central state was in a high degree that he represented the old dream of the agrarian, rural the united states as the guarantor of individual freedom – even if it was based on a slavekonomi. Towards the end of Obama’s time in power, it was decided that Andrew Jackson’s portrait on tjugodollarsedeln would be replaced or complemented with a picture of antislaverikämpen Harriet Tubman. Last spring announced so Trumps finance minister Steven Mnuchin to the ”postponement of”.
But a välfriserad picture of Jackson is just one piece of the puzzle in the alt-right movement’s ideology. Today’s international right-wing extremist is, paradoxically, anti-internationalist. They hate, above all, the idea of the common bond between groups of people and nations. Operating ”klimatskepsis” then becomes understandable – it may simply not be the case that we face common threats and challenges. Decay is good.
Trump becomes more understandable if one is trying to analyze the historical ideas högerpopulismen is based on, which the political journalism only exceptionally seem to catch. From neo-liberalism, such as Bannon in other respects left behind, with the idea of ”the state” always, it is radically evil, how democratic it is. It should be mounted down as far as it goes: away with such things as environmental laws and climate policy. To beat the record of the closing down of the state apparatus from such a perspective look like a feather in the cap.
out of the White house. According to Woodwards book hung it together with Charlottesville. Trump was forced to back away from his initial statement that there were ”good people on both sides”, which in plain language meant there were ”good guys” among the violence-prone racists who marched under the slogan “the Jews will not replace us”. But Trump was persuaded by his then-stabssekreterare Rob Porter to deliver a speech in which he took the distance from the far-right extremism and condemned the KKK. Then regretted the president again, and thought he showed weakness by backing off. Bannon had all the time thought that the president would go on and win ”ordkriget”. The week after, it was Bannon who got to go. Also in the Trump White house, there were apparently limits.
Now try Steve Bannon instead one of the european högerpopulisterna for the EUROPEAN elections in may. He has repeatedly said that he wants to ”destroy the state from within”. Note that it is the democratic state he is talking about.
