“From this day forward, it’s only going to be America first”

Jan 20th, 2017 | By
Category: Notes and Comment Blog
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Andrew Rosenthal at the Times on Trump’s inaugural address.

There was no soaring rhetoric in his inaugural speech, no real effort to heal the wounds of the 2016 campaign, and really only one real, coherent defining theme for his coming administration – the only thing that counts is America.

On this day, he said, there will be “a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital and in every hall of power.”

“From this day forward a new vision will govern our land,” he said. “From this day forward, it’s only going to be America first, America first.”

It’s a hideous slogan, even without the pro-Nazi background. He might as well have shouted, “We need to be more selfish!” It’s a bullies’ battle-cry.

Trump’s vision of America on his Inauguration Day was as it has been throughout his campaign – dark and angry.

“For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost,” he said, shouting that the “establishment protected itself” at the expense of “struggling families across our land,” as though he himself were not a representative and beneficiary of that very establishment.

An extreme beneficiary of that very establishment, who benefits largely by cheating. A good many struggling families are struggling partly because he cheated them – out of tuition for his bogus “university,” out of money he owes them for work done or services provided, out of health insurance they will lose under his administration.

But like everything the new president has ever said, the speech was as much about him as about anything else. He declared his Electoral College victory (which was not nearly matched by the popular vote) to have been a movement “the likes of which the world has never seen before.”

Greater, of course, than Christianity, or Islam, or Hinduism. Greater than the Renaissance or the Reformation. More powerful than the revolutions that created and destroyed Communism. Greater, of course, than the establishment of this very nation.

The whole point of all of it was to produce the glory that is Trump.

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