Trump's Inauguration Speech Makes It Clear He Wants the US to Go Backwards

Karl Marx famously wrote in the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce” Listening to Donald Trump’s inaugural address, it is difficult to avoid the feeling that what the US president the first time around was farce and that tragedy is the direction in which the US is headed now.

On his very first day in office, Trump signed some 200 executive actions, memoranda and proclamations reflecting his intention to implement policies that will ‘Make America Great Again’. A great number of these actions have sought to carve out new directions for the America he envisions, but many are simply to roll back decisions and actions of previous administrations, especially that of Joe Biden.

What was striking in the Trump address was his burning desire to recreate an America of the past – richer, more powerful and  respected around the world. Though he did not say it – he did make ritual reference to African Americans, Hispanic and Asian Americans – he would prefer a country that was whiter.

That was the country of his youth, when, after World War II, America reigned supreme. The relative prosperity of the US in the 1950s and 1960s was probably the highest in its history. The period was characterised by significant economic growth, rising incomes and an expanding middle class.

The opening lines of Trump’s inaugural speech are a lament for that era:

“From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world”.

“Our sovereignty will be reclaimed. Our safety will be restored.”

“America will soon be greater, stronger, and far more exceptional than ever before.”

But he also referred to another United States, the one of the 19th century which used force to expand its boundaries. It is no accident that the only president he invoked (besides those present at the inaugural) was William McKinley (1897-1901). He said that the name of the highest mountain in the US, Mount Denali, would go back to its older ‘Mount McKinley’. He added that McKinley “made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent – he was a natural businessman.”

But McKinley is also known to be one of the great imperialist presidents of the US. It was in his term that the Spanish-American war took place and the US acquired Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. Under him the US annexed Hawaii. He justified his actions on the need for the US to gain new markets to absorb its agricultural and industrial output saying that that this was needed for economic stability back home. McKinley also invoked the idea of Manifest Destiny, suggesting that it was American duty to spread its democracy and civilisation globally. And he did all this on the basis of public pressure, support, and indeed, enthusiasm for his imperial agenda.

Trump did invoke Manifest Destiny, but in the context of the journey “into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.” Among those applauding in the rotunda audience was Elon Musk whose plans include just not a Mars landing, but a settlement on the planet.

A sentence that has gone unnoticed by commentators further invoked the McKinley connect: “The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation – one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, build our cities, raises our expectations, and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons.”

More directly, he spoke of not only renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the ‘Gulf of America’, but also insisted that it was the US which gave the Panama Canal “to Panama and we’re taking it back.”

Left unsaid, as of now, are Trump’s plans to acquire Greenland and Canada.

Towards the end of his address, he looked back at the America of “farmers and soldiers, cowboys and factory workers, steel workers and coal miners, police officers and pioneers” who “laid down the railroads, raised up the sky scrapers, built great highways, won two World Wars…”

This was the America of the 19th and early 20th century. Nowhere in his inaugural speech was there a real vision of the future, based on current American achievements on semi-conductor design, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, information technology, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing, digital economy, biotechnology, automation and robotics.

All we had was an invocation to the past when the US dominated the petroleum industry. The message to them was to drill without fear of climate change consequences. The Green New Deal would be ended, as well as the electric vehicle mandate. The US would return to  the era of petrol-driven automobiles. “We will build automobiles again at a rate that nobody could have dreamt possible just a few years ago.”

Trump can be pardoned for terming his as being “the most consequential election in the history of our country” and of his belief that the country is “rapidly unifying behind our agenda.” The reality is that while he had a significant win, it was by no means a victory that can be termed as any kind of a mandate. In terms of popular votes, he got 77.73 million votes while Kamala Harris got 77.50 million. This was the smallest margin of victory in the popular vote for a president in decades.

Which means he will face significant domestic resistance to the more controversial of his moves. Howsoever dominant he is over the Republican party, its Congressional majority is wafer thin. Howsoever Trump may rail against the “radical and corrupt establishment,” American institutions remain resilient and strong.

But the larger challenge in returning to the past lies in the world itself which has changed since his golden age of the 1950s and 1960s. America’s fiscal situation makes it difficult for it to replicate the era when it launched the Marshall Plan to bail out Europe and provided massive financial assistance to countries like India.

The problem for Trump and his supporters – when they look at what they see as a chaotic world outside the US – is that America itself has been responsible for much of the disorder. Its Vietnam war, the wars in Iraq and the so-called Global War on Terror created a mayhem of destruction around the world. This has engendered a degree of caution, even in the mind of Trump.

The Trump world must now deal with a Global South which is no longer willing to blindly accept US or any other big power leadership. This has been evident in the votes on Ukraine and Gaza in the UN General Assembly. Indeed, many third-world countries are quite willing to live outside the US embrace and carve their own path to development. And they have the powerful example of countries like China who have broadcast their own exceptionalism in the last two decades. They are also conscious of the issue of climate change which is hitting them the hardest.

Trump repeatedly invoked the mantra of making America great again and of launching the new golden age. But the reality is that the US is already the world’s richest nation and most formidable military power. Just where Trump’s backward glance will take it is something that remains to be seen, but if his plans succeed, the US could be heading for both a tragedy and a farce.

Manoj Joshi is a Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.