In the aftermath of the US election results, I sought solace in the National Gallery of Art here in Washington, DC.
A special exhibition there highlights the shift in French art from staid, officially curated classical art to the freewheeling artistic movement that later became known as Impressionism.
The now-venerated Impressionists depicted regular people in everyday situations using brighter palettes and innovative brush techniques. Their subject choices celebrated French culture and the French countryside after the turmoil of the 1870 Franco-Prussian War and the destruction of the Paris Commune.
Sometimes history loves disruptors.
Donald Trump was the disruptor in the US election, while Kamala Harris was the institution-preserving, norm-defending, ethos-following status quo or establishment candidate.
From their choice, a majority of the Americans who voted suggested that they want disruption. They rejected the offer of “more of the same” from the professional and managerial class who make up the establishment.
But will Trump deliver the kind of disruption they seek? Will the disruption he’ll emphatically bring be the kind that benefits those who voted for him?
The policies Trump advocated for this election, and the ones he’s showing he’ll follow based on his cabinet nominees, will particularly hurt blue-collar Americans, the people who voted for him with such gusto.
Trump’s promised tax cuts will further exacerbate socioeconomic inequality by benefiting the monied and shortchanging the working class. When the wealthy tech and Wall Street types don’t pay their fair share of taxes, the public sector will become further weakened. This intentional defunding of the government sector will reduce services and benefits for those who most depend on them.
Eliminating some regulations, required permits, and perhaps even some government functions could be positive. But emasculating the administrative state by, for example, eliminating penalties for violating environmental protections will affect the vulnerable the most. “Reforming” the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, by removing subsidies will once again make healthcare unaffordable for many.
Hearing about the financial squeeze in which too many live, and their frustration with their diminished purchasing power, makes their vote for disruption totally understandable.
Trump’s threatened imposition of tariffs will be inflationary. They are regressive taxes that are especially tough for the already economically insecure. The costs of tariffs to American consumers and businesses will far outweigh the benefit of the few jobs brought back to US shores.
Deporting undocumented immigrants, many of whom work the hardest and longest hours in American society, will be debilitating for the US economy. The resulting shortages in the labour market will add to inflationary pressures. Those targeted for deportation will not only be recent arrivals, but will probably also include those who have been in the US for years. Families and communities will be pulled apart.
As happened with the federal right to abortion, rights such as access to contraception could be defederalised and handed back to the states to do as they wish. This would be part of the overall dismantling of the rule of law, at least in Republican-controlled states.
I appreciate why many Americans sought disruption. Months of canvassing showed me that people are struggling. They feel pessimistic about their own situation and that of the country. High grocery, housing and childcare costs hurt. People are cash poor. Too many survive from one paycheque to another. Too many have to buy food on credit, setting up endless cycles of increasing indebtedness.
Hearing about the financial squeeze in which too many live, and their frustration with their diminished purchasing power, makes their vote for disruption totally understandable.
When canvassing, many nostalgically recalled getting cheques “from Donald Trump” during his first presidency that helped ease their financial stresses. They felt that these cheques reflected his solid management of the economy.
I’d explain that these cheques were Covid-19 relief funds voted on by the US Congress and which Trump, ever the showman, made sure included his signature. His ploy worked.
Americans’ susceptibility to misinformation and disinformation this election cycle was particularly noteworthy. The extent to which Trump and his acolytes gaslit a large portion of the electorate into voting against their own economic interests is the biggest scam of all. Those who voted for him were hoodwinked into thinking he and his policies will help them.
Under a second Trump presidency, American society will become even more Hobbesian. The wealthiest will flourish. Corruption and greedy crony capitalism will be rampant. The economically vulnerable will increasingly be on their own. Capitalism’s worst excesses will be laid yet further bare.
With his nomination of pliable, ultra-loyal chaos agents as cabinet members, Trump is not just using shock as a tactic and eliciting strong sensations of outrage.
I spent election day handing out literature for the slate of Democratic candidates at a church-based polling station in southern Pennsylvania, an area I knew from canvassing and where most are Trump supporters. Many of those who voted there that day were people who work with their hands. Or folks who “shower after work”, as opposed to those who “shower before they go to work”, as the distinction gets made here in America.
Exchanges with two such workers captured my experience of the day: one brushed aside my offer of Democratic literature, barking “I have toilet paper at home”, while another gladly took the literature as he noted that he had “four women at home”.
If I were an Impressionist artist trying to paint part of the stream of regular Americans heading into and out of the polling station that day, three colours would dominate: the neon yellow and orange of the many construction workers’ T-shirts and jackets, along with the red of occasional MAGA caps.
Driving back to Washington, DC that evening as the sun sank across the soft, rolling hills of Pennsylvania farmland, I again saw yellows, oranges and reds. Twilight lasted endlessly that day as the sky blazed with shifting tones. It was spectacular. But perhaps it was also an ominous sky, one announcing that the world would be different when the sun rose over America the next morning.
A quote from Jules-Antoine Castagnary is part of the Impressionist exhibition at the National Gallery. He said: “They are impressionists in the sense that they render not a landscape but the sensation produced by a landscape.”
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History views disruptors and risk takers kindly – if their disruption leads to true progress, rather than the false sensation of progress.
With his nomination of pliable, ultra-loyal chaos agents as cabinet members, Trump is not just using shock as a tactic and eliciting strong sensations of outrage. By proposing such unqualified sycophants, Trump is throwing down the gauntlet. He’s going to fully and directly challenge and trash the norms, tenets and pillars of governance in the US.
The sensation of disruption is insufficient for Trump in his second term.
This time around, he wants to destroy the actual landscape. In bold, unflinching strokes. DM