Trump Ascendant

So the most comprehensive border security bill is dead because Donald Trump opposes it.  Even though it gives the Republicans a lot of what they wanted and give progressives none of what they wanted.  But the Republicans in Congress still want the White House to do something about the border.  And until the White House does what they won't let the White House do, they won't allow funding for Ukraine, which is about to become a Russian province once again.  Washington is paralyzed and unable to get anything done because Republicans in Congress are helping Trump.

So who gets the blame for all this?

Oh, right, Joe Biden.

Why is this man smiling?

Mainly because in spite of all of the trouble he got America into during his "Presidency" and all of the chaos he's causing now, Trump is ahead in the polls thanks to cratering support for Biden among Democrats (especially Arab-Americans, American Muslims, and progressives pissed off at Biden for his support of Israel) and the enthusiasm among Republicans.  Trump and Trump supporters have done so much damage to the body politic that despite 91 indictments against him and effort to overthrow the government, public opinion is in his favor going int othe general election campaign.  Joe Biden can't continue the fight for the soul of America because he's already lost it.

What I find particularly amusing though, is the reaction of Europeans to how American government is failing, both interns of domestic and foreign policy but especially in foreign affairs and in its role as the "indispensable nation" everyone relies on and how they can't rely on America anymore . . . because no one can take America seriously anymore.

Excuse me?  No one ever could take America seriously.  After 250 years of slavery, manifest destiny, Mormon polygamy, Jim Crow, Prohibition (a policy Sir Winston Churchill laughed at as "uncivilized"), vulgar and tawdry popular culture, right-wing Christian nationalism, and predatory capitalism, how could anyone take this country seriously?

In fact, the stupidity and ignorance of Americans, as Paul Fussell once wrote in 1991, had "long been a topic of hilarity in Europe," and it is more so now.  And Fussell at the same time noted the significant dumbing of America that had produced our dumbed cultural values, producing "a nation in which tens of millions are so culturally and spiritually empty that their main way of defining themselves and achieving self-respect is to "go shopping," the values that only bring us things like white stretch limos . . . Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Leona Helmsley, and [crooked financiers Michael] Milken and [Ivan] Boesky."  And, Fussell added, Donald Trump.

While we still have white stretch limousines (which had gotten more vulgar in 33 years, as they are now based n sport utility vehicles instead of executive sedans), the Bakkers, Leona Helmsley, Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky have all fallen by the wayside, though the agendas they promoted - evangelical tomfoolery, tacky hotels, and Wall Street greed - have continued to thrive.  Donald Trump - the one figure in Fussell's polemic that survived the salad days of late-eighties vulgarity - embodies all three of those agendas.  His overall agenda is mainstream America's agenda.  Donald Trump is not just the once and future leader of America.  

Donald Trump is America.

And any Americans who have a problem with that had better leave the country before the Trump 47 administration closes the borders to emigration.