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2020
Contributors A to J
Jeffrey Demsky

Covid-19 in the Age of Trump: A Virus for the American Century and Republic

Jeffrey Demsky

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1Covid-19 in the Age of Trump: A Virus for the American Century and Republic

  • 1 Simon Leng, While My Guitar Gently Weeps: The Music of George Harrison, Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard (...)

In homage to Dr. Mukwege
 
All things must pass. None of life’s strings can last.
—George Harrison1

Introduction

  • 2 Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni, “The President’s Shock at the Rows of Empty Seats in Tulsa,” June (...)
  • 3 Proclamation on Suspension of Entry as Immigrants and Nonimmigrants of Persons who Pose a Risk of (...)
  • 4 Nayan Shah, Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Berkeley: Univers (...)
  • 5 Debra Ellen Blakely, Mass Mediated Disease: A Case Study Analysis of Three Flu Pandemics and Publi (...)
  • 6 Christopher Bader, Fear Itself: The Causes and Consequences of Fear in America, New York: New York (...)
  • 7 Joshua Busby and Jonathan Monten, “Has Liberal Internationalism Been Trumped?” Chaos in the Libera (...)
  • 8 For related discussions see Mark Harrison, Contagion: How Commerce has Spread Disease, New Haven: (...)

2Donald Trump discovered in Covid-19 virus a cudgel for wielding his trademark racism and xenophobia. Shortly after the contagion appeared, he scapegoated China, branding the contagion “Kung Flu”2 and banning Chinese entry into the US.3 Admittedly, such steps are familiar to American history. During the late nineteenth century, and again during the early 1920s, political leaders curtailed Chinese immigration owing to public health concerns.4 It is also possible that the president recalled from his childhood the 1957 “Asian Flu” that killed over one-hundred-thousand Americans.5 The wider point is that President Trump views Covid-19 through a eugenics-based lens, one fearful of perceived unsanitary foreignness, encapsulated by his 2018 “shithole countries” remark.6 This isolationist tendency bodes poorly for the post-1945 liberalized global order that successive generations of Americans helped build and maintain. Whether directed at China or elsewhere, the president’s nativism is the opposite impulse to this cooperative tradition.7 Indeed, the Age of Trump scorns multilateralism, explaining the president’s decision to withdraw the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Paris Climate Agreement, Iran Nuclear Deal, and, in the midst of a pandemic, the World Health Organization.8

  • 9 Dale Tomich, “The Order of Historical Time: The Longue Durée and Micro-History,” Almanack Guarulho (...)
  • 10 See for example William Walker, The Rise and Decline of the American Century, Ithaca: Cornell Univ (...)
  • 11 Stephen J. Whitfield, “The American Century of Henry R. Luce,” Revue LISA/LISA e-journal, January (...)
  • 12 Alisher Faĭzullaev, Symbolic Insult in Diplomacy: A Subtle Game of Diplomatic Slap, Boston: Brill (...)
  • 13 As quoted in Florian Bieber, Debating Nationalism: The Global Spread of Nations, New York: Bloomsb (...)
  • 14 Ibid., 191.
  • 15 Edward Fishman, “The World Order Is Dead. Here’s How to Build a New One for a Post-Coronavirus Era (...)

3Why do these slights matter? In line with Fernand Braudel’s discussions of structure and mentality,9 I observe President Trump attempting to decouple the US from the ideals and institutions that constitute the American Century.10 Publisher Henry Luce first articulated this construct in 1941 to signify, among its many meanings, American global leadership.11 NATO is an American Century body, as are the World Bank and those agencies supporting the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. What connects these groups, and others like them, is their shared belief that promoting economic integration and democratic values are the best safeguards against totalitarianism. Donald Trump, however, does not care about this. He praises despotism while snubbing and shoving his allies.12 Nationalistic chauvinism is central to his brand. “You know what I am,” he asked a rally crowd in 2018. “I am a nationalist. OK? I am a nationalist.”13 That same year, addressing the United Nations General Assembly, he assailed a “global bureaucracy” intent on damaging “America’s sovereignty.”14 Trump’s anti-status quo raking is not just rhetorical. His administration’s refusal to develop a robust Covid-19 response plan, or participate collectively in searching for a cure, suggests that the once-fabled American Century may become an unwitting pandemic victim.15

  • 16 Gerardo Martí, American Blindspot: Race, Class, Religion, and the Trump Presidency, Lanham, MD: R (...)
  • 17 Gavriel Rosenfeld, “Digital Anti-Semitism: From Irony to Ideology,” Jewish Review of Books, 36, 20 (...)
  • 18 Vegas Tenold, Everything You Love Will Burn: Inside the Rebirth of White Nationalism in America, N (...)
  • 19 Mike Cole, Trump, the Alt-Right and Public Pedagogies of Hate and for Fascism: What Is To Be Done?(...)

4As Covid-19 infections swelled in the US, President Trump deflected responsibility. He promoted eugenics claims that “race mixing” causes disease.16 Such twentieth century yarns are surprisingly common in contemporary American discourses, especially online forum. Racialized Internet memes and cartoons, from Pepe the Frog to Ben Garrison’s drawings, facilitate vibrant “trolling,” a modern hate speech form.17 Resurgent public bigotry reveals an important point about the American social environment. Specifically, it demonstrates that anti-globalist and anti-immigrant discussions from the 1920s never fully faded. Instead, after World War II, they became side conversations to more dominant discourses promoting multiculturalism. However, American bigotry is back en vogue. Contemporary “tiki-torcher” chants about Jews link directly to slurs that Henry Ford and George Lincoln Rockwell once bandied.18 “Build that wall” sloganeering likewise connects present day malcontents to earlier KKK anti-immigration messaging.19 The annals of American racist history appear to beckon Donald Trump’s Covid-19-inspired disruptions. Labeling the “Chinese” virus as emblematic of all that is wrong with globalism more broadly, he has a potent truncheon for bludgeoning both the American Century and republic.

  • 20 Michael Berenbaum, After Tragedy and Triumph: Essays in Modern Jewish Thought and the American Exp (...)
  • 21 David MacDonald, “First Nations, Residential Schools, and the Americanization of the Holocaust: Re (...)

5Why are Age of Trump supporters so hostile to these inheritances? Several factors explain the change, perhaps most importantly the Cold War’s end. During the four-decades-long impasse, Americans learned that their nation defended democratic freedoms against the looming seep of Soviet totalitarianism. Across cultural and political discourses, this dichotomy helped domestic producers articulate the “tales of pluralism, tolerance, and human rights that America tells about itself. 20However, twenty-first century citizens living in in the Cold War’s shadow, especially those hailing from immigrant or other marginalized communities, find such triumphant narratives non-relatable. Those people that do remember this gloried past likely also recall why the US government has not been able to claim foreign policy righteousness since the Vietnam War period.21 In this regard, Donald Trump’s cynical visions merely reflects the realities of the times during which he has lived. This conjuncture is precisely the reason that his detached responses to the Covid-19 pandemic require probative analysis. The crisis set into sharper focus both the isolationist and authoritarian future that he envisions, as well as clarifying the pasts that brought us to this point.

Part One: 9/11, the Iraq War, and the Seeds of Trumpism

  • 22 Patricia Weitsman, Waging War: Alliances, Coalitions, and Institutions of Interstate Violence, Sta (...)
  • 23 Ibid., 24.
  • 24 Robert Jervis, “Understanding the Bush Doctrine,” Political Science Quarterly, 118, 2003, pp. 365- (...)
  • 25 Liesbeth van der Heide, “Cherry-Picked Intelligence. The Weapons of Mass Destruction Dispositive a (...)
  • 26 Elizabeth Brownell Balestrieri, “Abu Ghraib Prison Abuse and the Rule of Law,” International Journ (...)

6NATO has only mobilized its troops under their “collective defense” commitment one time, following the September 11, 2001 attacks. Operation Enduring Freedom, a nearly fifteen year war against Al Qaeda and Taliban forces, affirmed the American Century’s power. Central to this arrangement is coalition building, and, indeed, Turkish, Italian, German, Canadian, French, British, and American commanders banded together for the fight.22 However, this affirming story about NATO punishing those responsible for 9/11 soon faced unlikely contest. Only eighteen months after the terrorist acts, the US military, ostensibly acting with its allies, but essentially operating on its own, began a second campaign.23 Operation Iraqi Freedom was an elective war, against a familiar enemy, fought to prosecute the “Bush Doctrine” of preemptive aggression.24 However, this dueling war narrative thinned public support for the ongoing Afghanistan deployment. It was also confusing. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. Moreover, despite Bush administration claims, Iraq possessed no “weapons of mass destruction.”25 Just one year after the invasion started, set against the backdrop of the Abu Ghraib sadism snapshots, an intensifying chorus of critics demanded to know what exactly the US military was doing in Iraq.26

  • 27 Gary Jacobson, “Referendum: The 2006 Midterm Congressional Elections,” Political Science Quarterly(...)
  • 28 Jeffrey Gross, “Boyish Play and Manifest Destiny: The Transition from Civilizer to Killer in Ameri (...)
  • 29 See Daniel Lieberfeld, “Teaching about War through Film and Literature,” PS: Political Science and (...)
  • 30 Alan Gibbs, Contemporary American Trauma Narratives, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014, (...)
  • 31 Douglas Durkin, The Magpie: A Novel of Post-War Disillusionment 1923, Toronto: University of Toron (...)
  • 32 Joseph Tighe, “All Quiet on the Western Front: A Phenomenological Investigation of War,” Critical (...)
  • 33 Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004, 24, 381.

7By 2006, a menagerie of detractors, from Barack Obama to Hugo Chavez, “Peace Mom” Cindy Sheehan to reality television figure Donald Trump, denounced the action. American voters also punished President Bush. That fall, Democrats won control of Congress and the power to halt the war’s funding.27 Hollywood pictures similarly dramatized the nation’s loss of mission faith. The Hurt Locker (2009) and American Sniper (2014) tell complicated tales about what American soldiers did in freedom’s name.28 Resembling Vietnam War-era stories like The Deer Hunter (1978) and Apocalypse Now (1979), the Iraq-themed films teach domestic audiences that grand calls about upholding democracy are vacant.29 Ordinary folks bear war’s traumatization. In turn, they gain the authority to determine what their fight was about.30 Contemplating World War I, Canadian author Douglas Durkin makes this point in The Magpie.31 German novelist Erich Maria Remarque, and American writer Dalton Trumbo, do so as well.32 For audiences receiving such wistful tales, whether recollecting World War I or more recent fights, the lore imbues civilians with soldiers’ disillusionment about their deployments.33

  • 34 Terence Mc Sweeney, The 'War on Terror' and American Film: 9/11 Frames per Second, Edinburgh: Edin (...)
  • 35 Nan Levinson, War Is Not a Game: The New Antiwar Soldiers and the Movement they Built, New Brunswi (...)
  • 36 Matthew Ware Coulter, The Senate Munitions Inquiry of the 1930s: Beyond the Merchants of Death, We (...)

8Some heroic stories from the post-9/11 warring era exist. Seal Team Six (2012) and Zero Dark Thirty (2012) both depict just fights. However, these film document actions against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, reflecting the imaginative differences between the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.34 Nonetheless, for Americans fatigued by either operation, they invariably wanted both finished. Looking back at this period from the Age of Trump, the outlines of nascent isolationism are perceptible. Interestingly, this anti-globalist lean triggered unlike groups.35 Anti-war voices despised President Bush’s “doctrine.” In 2008, they eagerly supported Barack Obama’s limited foreign policy visions. However, the gun-owing nationalistic crowds that eventually formed Donald Trump’s base had their own misgivings about the Iraq War. If unlikely, these two camps formed the opposing points on a shared continuum. Namely, both believe “merchants of death” arguments that claim politicians and corporate business interests entangle the US government in needless wars.36 If unintended, the foreign policy Bush Doctrine, developed to explain why an oil-man president and his oil-man vice president invaded an oil-rich nation, opened much larger domestic policy cracks.

  • 37 Zerlina Maxwell, The End of White Politics: How to Heal our Liberal Divide, New York: Hachette Boo (...)
  • 38 Shelly Tenenbaum and Robert Ross, “Who Rules America?” Teaching Sociology, 34, 2006, p. 396.
  • 39 Richard Russo, “American Work,” in Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Natio (...)
  • 40 As quoted in Elvin Lim, The Lovers’ Quarrel: The Two Foundings and American Political Development, (...)
  • 41 Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017, 418.
  • 42 Mairead McArdle, “Biden Says ‘10 to 15 Percent’ of Americans ‘Not Very Good People’ While Slamming (...)
  • 43 Adam Enders et al., “Why Do People Believe COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories,” The Harvard Kennedy Scho (...)

9Seizing this political opening is Donald Trump’s most audacious feat.37 Although he is an Ivy League-educated billionaire, who personifies what sociologist C. Wright Mills termed the nation’s “power elite,”38 his non-affluent supporters see him as someone who uses that privilege to disrupt the club from within. Trump’s anti-globalist bombast revives “forgotten America,” those families that the American Century left behind.39 Barack Obama termed this crowd, “bitter […] clinging to guns or religion or antipathy to immigrants and trade.”40 Hillary Clinton branded the group “deplorables,”41 while Joe Biden sees “not very good people.”42 Such characterizations may, or may not, be apropos. They are also beside the point. Along with President Trump, this cohort senses treacheries and foreignness lurking behind their misfortunes. In such fraught times, even a seemingly-non-partisan issue like repulsing Covid-19 riles them. Moving into the November 2020 election, President Trump will likely exacerbate these divisions. His “Kung Flu” fearmongering is just one prong of this political maneuver. Far more vital, Trump must convince aggrieved voters that Covid-19 is actually a fraud, nothing more than a media-driven “planned-demic” that figures like Bill Gates and George Soros engineered in order to suspend Americans’ rights.43

  • 44 Thomas Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why It Matt (...)
  • 45 Jack Holmes, “American National Pride Is at a 20-Year Low. It Should Be, and It Must Be,” Esquire, (...)
  • 46 Helen Branswell, “Polio’s Last Act,” Scientific American, 306, April 2012, p. 63.
  • 47 Daniel Jolley and Karen Douglas “The Effects of Anti-Vaccine Conspiracy Theories on Vaccination In (...)
  • 48 Mick Mulvaney, “Remarks before the 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference,” February 28, 20 (...)
  • 49 Kate Linthicum, “In ‘God, Guns and Trump’ Country, Simmering Doubts about the President,” Los Ange (...)

10None of this talk is good for the American Century, or the United States of America. Trumpist “fake news” narratives encourage citizens to doubt the positive value of governmental experts and institutions.44 This disbelief is common in the US, with a recent Gallup public opinion poll reporting that citizens’ pride in their government is at a twenty-year low.45 One thing is clear. We are a long ways past the 1950s, when Donald Trump was a child, the era when Americans gratefully lined up to receive government-sanctioned polio vaccines.46 Instead, contemporary President Trump and his anti-vaxxer bands deride public health professionals.47 They characterize Covid-19 sanitary measures as a media-driven “hoax,”48 claiming the virus’ potency is “blown out of proportion to damage Trump.”49 I am arguing, however, this “sword” might cut both ways. Politicizing the virus as a reelection issue complements Donald Trump’s languages of victimization, conspiracy, and anti-establishmentarianism. Attacking Covid-19 as a liberal-globalist ploy is also an effective culture war lever. The result may yield a potential witches’ brew for democratic-conditioned people, as the president’s machinations have the potential to lurch the nation toward dictatorship.

Part Two: Covid-19 and the Decline of the American Republic

  • 50 H. R. Haldeman and Joseph Di Mona, The Ends of Power, New York: Times Books, 1978, 82–83.
  • 51 Samuel Issacharoff, “Democracy’s Deficits,” University of Chicago Law Review, 85, 2018, pp. 486-48 (...)
  • 52 Christian Fuchs, Digital Demagogue: Authoritarian Capitalism in the Age of Trump and Twitter, Lond (...)
  • 53 Borzou Daragahi, “Why the George Floyd Protests Went Global,” Atlantic Council, June 10, 2020, <ht (...)
  • 54 Donald Trump, “Rose Garden Speech,” June 1, 2020, White House, Washington DC, <https://www.c-span. (...)
  • 55 John Allen, “A Moment of National Shame and Peril—and Hope,” Foreign Policy, June 3, 2020, <https: (...)

11Viruses breed more than disease. Contagion stokes fear, scapegoating, and violence. Donald Trump prefers this chaos, indeed, he sows it. It is not a new ploy. Forty-five years ago, Richard Nixon plied his own “madman” strategy.50 He reasoned then, as President Trump does today, that accelerating social turmoil enhances the executive’s sway during the reconciliation period. Trump’s innovation is angling toward dictatorship as a method for ending the disruptions that he manufactures. This potential has been hiding in plain sight. Donald Trump abhors democracy.51 He despises the shared-powers framework and labels the free press “enemies of the state.”52 Public criticisms of his uneven pandemic response, which morphed into related social equity protests,53 has only intensified his tyrannical impulses. A breach to the nation’s constitutional fabric occurred June 1, 2020, when the president, in his own words, stood readied to deploy “thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers” to “dominate” spaces for public speech and assembly.54 Indeed, directly following these remarks, Secret Service agents deployed chemical irritants to roust a public gathering nearby the White House. National commentators, from Harvard University professors to retired Marine Corps generals, characterized the mayhem as a potential “slide into illiberalism.”55

  • 56 Alan Abramowitz, The Great Alignment: Race, Party Transformation, and the Rise of Donald Trump, Ne (...)
  • 57 “Poll: Trump Approval Rating Hits 50 Percent for First Time in Almost 2 Years,” The Hill, March 24 (...)
  • 58 Stephen Knott, Lost Soul of the American Presidency: The Decline into Demagoguery and the Prospect (...)

12How did the US reach this nadir? The path is surprisingly direct. Donald Trump has always been unpopular and polarizing.56 During the 2016 presidential election, several million more voters cast their ballots for his opponent. Since that period, Trump’s approval rating rarely tops the fifty-percent mark in national polling averages.57 His discordant management style provoked a congressional impeachment, only the third such process in American history. This nastiness is the backdrop against which onlookers should situate any potential anti-democratic turn. The president’s wildness betrays his urgency—facing uncertain times—to discover a path toward continued power. Bashing China will not be enough. President Trump must find additional culprits. This is why he pivoted militarily against social justice protestors. In resurrecting his (Nixonian) “law and order” persona, he can over-project his presidential authority and hide his weak Covid-19 response. Just a few months before Election Day, branding public dissent as treason and threatening to militarily occupy sovereign states might also provide a window into his future demagoguery, should his reelection bid fail.58

  • 59 Alex Altman, “Divide and Conquer: How Trump’s Tactics Help His Run for the Presidency,” Donald Tru (...)
  • 60 Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton penned an essay encouraging such steps. See “Send in the Troops,” New (...)
  • 61 Ian Parker, “Memesis and Psychoanalysis: Mediatizing Donald Trump,” Post Memes: Seizing the Memes (...)
  • 62 Darrell West, Divided Politics, Divided Nation: Hyperconflict in the Trump Era, Washington DC: Bro (...)

13Throughout his professional life, Trump has plied a Romanesque divide and conquer strategy.59 During his presidency, however, this scheme has faltered. He has not conquered anything and his antics have only unified his opponents. To his credit, like Julius Cesar before him, Donald Trump’s senate is mostly cowed. Republican Party senators rely on Trump-supporting districts for their own votes. This is why a majority of the body speedily acquitted him during his impeachment trial. It helps explain why most senators have ignored the president’s domestic militarization.60 Savvy politicians that they are, they likely recognize that Donald Trump is no Cesar. His is a bumbling and stumbling push toward autocracy, one driven by careening rather than calculations.61 Recklessness, however, makes Trump’s disruptions no less dangerous to the American Century and Republic than Cesar’s plotting in Rome. Although the president’s approval ratings languish below fifty percent, they rarely drop below the forty percent range. This is Donald Trump’s reelection dilemma. It is also, however, his opponent’s potential ruling burden. Even if a candidate bests him electorally, nearly-half the US is Trump Country, supporters readied toward public disruption should the president nod in that direction.62

  • 63 Joseph Blocher and Darrell Miller, The Positive Second Amendment: Rights, Regulation, and the Futu (...)
  • 64 Nancy Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Ass (...)
  • 65 For “alt right” definitions see Bharath Ganesh, “The Ungovernability of Digital Hate Culture,” Jou (...)
  • 66 Cecilia Kang and Sheera Frenkel, “‘PizzaGate’ Conspiracy Theory Thrives Anew in the TikTok Era,” N (...)
  • 67 Bill Ivey, Rebuilding an Enlightened World: Folklorizing America, Bloomington: Indiana University (...)
  • 68 J. David Goodman, “In West Texas, Lingering Distrust in Government as the Virus Spreads,” New York (...)

14Donald Trump knows how to activate this base. He relies heavily on what he terms “his second-amendment people,” a lightly-veiled threat that his followers possess the firearms to override ballot box results.63 He also courts the so-called Q-anon crowd, individuals that a follow an eponymous Internet figure fighting an alleged “deep state” cabal of anti-Trump bureaucrats.64 Q-sourced innuendo inspires wider public discussions on various “alt right” platforms, which also propagate Trump’s Covid-19 anti-narrative.65 In 2016, this echo chamber spread especially dangerous skullduggery, as the “Pizzagate” panic revealed the grave intersections between Orwellian chat-room nonsense and real-life terror.66 Prodded by fake online stories that Hillary Clinton supervised a pedophile ring in the premise’s basement, a heavily armored rabble-rouser discharged several rounds of ammunition into a Washington DC pizzeria.67 That no basement existed, and, of course, no malfeasance was ongoing other than the assailant’s felonies, misses the wider point. Donald Trump does not have to masterfully orchestrate social disorder. The fires are already smoldering, on both socio-political fringes, kindled by citizens’ steady distrust of politicians and institutions.68

  • 69 Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump, New York: Free Press, 2019, 190-191.
  • 70 Alison Dagnes, Super Mad At Everything All the Time: Political Media and our National Anger, Cham, (...)
  • 71 For example see John Bennett, “Trump Suddenly has a Bigger Problem Than his Plummeting Poll Number (...)
  • 72 Stephen Strang, Trump Aftershock: The President's Seismic Impact on Culture and Faith in America, (...)
  • 73 Garnett Graff, “A Complete Guide to All 17 (Known) Trump and Russia Investigations,” Wired, Decemb (...)
  • 74 Susan Glasser, “History According to Trump: The President and the 1917 Pandemic That Wasn’t,” New (...)
  • 75 Laura Barron-Lopez et al., “‘People Can’t Ignore It Anymore’: Across the Country, Minorities Hit H (...)
  • 76 Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience: Massive S (...)

15As president, Donald Trump micro-targets Q-anon devotees.69 For example, Q is the seventeenth letter in the English alphabet. Just as other numbers have importance in Judeo-Christian traditions, this community reveres seventeen. Trump mentions the figure frequently.70 He fits the number into a standard anecdote about visiting Washington DC “seventeen times” prior to his winning the presidency.71 During the “Russia” investigation, he attacked the seventeen prosecutors72 that apparently opened seventeen different cases against him.73 Trump’s Covid-19 rhetoric unrelentingly sounds this silent whistle. Time and again, he misspoke, referencing the “1917” pandemic, or stumbling into Covid-17 misnomers.74 Such malaprops served furtive political purposes. They also injected crassness into public discourses, minimizing the seriousness of the human losses, exposing the reality that Americans did not suffer this contagion evenly. Members of non-white and non-wealthy communities know that the virus is no fantasy.75 They also require no stealthy numerology to recognize that Donald Trump is not speaking to them. This is the point where Covid-19 has laid bare the liberalized mythology fundamental to the American Century and republic. Donald Trump’s boastful indifference to citizens’ public health, and his later decisions to visit violence upon the afflicted, is no less a threat to the nation’s social contract than the Great Depression or World War II.76

  • 77 Martha White, “‘There’s No One Coming to the Rescue:’ Millions of Americans Go Hungry as the Pande (...)
  • 78 Andrew Restuccia and Paul Kiernan, “Toppling of Statues Triggers Reckoning over Nation’s History,” (...)
  • 79 Mitch Landrieu, In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History, New York: Penguin (...)
  • 80 Mike Schneider, “‘White Power’ Video —and Trump Re-Tweet—Reveals Tensions in Florida Retirement Co (...)
  • 81 Suzanne Mettler and Robert Lieberman, Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy, Ne (...)

16As the national economy ground to a halt, those people already frustrated with the government’s non-existent safety nets recognized that their survival instead required familial, religious, and neighborhood alliances.77 Covid-19 unloosed an angst across these communities that sparked related critical scrutiny of the nation’s history and its memorialization. Contemporary change agents have targeted iconic statues—George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt—employing vandalism to reify their opposition to an arc of white male oppressiveness that spans the Virginia Colony to the Age of Trump.78 At the same time, Donald Trump’s overwhelmingly white supporters push back against the iconoclasm. How does subverting one set of heroes, they wonder, in favor of another, achieve fairness? Why must all Americans revere Martin Luther King Jr, but forget about Robert E. Lee?79 Perhaps, such racialized debates will reinvigorate, and not eviscerate, the American republic.80 Partisanship, of course, is not unique to the Age of Trump. Dating back to the republic’s first days, with the Citizen Genêt affair, American democracy is a combative and messy narrative.81

  • 82 Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 9th ed., New York: Avon Books, 1969, 235.
  • 83 Neil McLaughlin, “Nazism, Nationalism, and the Sociology of Emotions: Escape from Freedom Revisite (...)
  • 84 Andrew Higgins, “Putin Says US is in ‘Deep Internal Crisis,’” New York Times, June 14, 2020, <http (...)

17I am not, however, sanguine that Age of Trump acrimonies comport to this tradition. Rather, in line with Erich Fromm’s insights about how and why democratic systems falter, I observe two opposing factions—pro and anti-Trumpers—strengthening their respective polarities at the center’s expense.82 As with Fromm’s observations about such processes destroying the Weimar Republic, the dueling Trump blocs are irreconcilable, save their shared desire to “escape” the ruling order.83 For example, as long as Donald Trump remains the lawfully-elected American president, anti-Trumpers will repudiate him as illegitimate. They clamor for their first amendment guarantees of public dissent and assembly, but maintain weaker commitments to the governance required to exercise those rights. Accordingly, President Trump’s supporters value maintaining public order at the expense of free speech and assembly, if necessary through state-perpetrated acts of violence. Such combinations produce only furor, begetting more discontent, a pattern that strikes me as one scenario under which President Trump might knee-cap the nation into tyranny. Trump may well have covert helpers nudging him toward this end. Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin, a confidant that Trump respects, recently forecast “nothing good” for American society until its government “controls its deep internal crises.”84

  • 85 Burak Bekdil, “Turkey and NATO: From Loveless to Hateful Marriage,” Begin-Sadat Center for Strateg (...)
  • 86 Douglas Kellner, “Donald Trump as Authoritarian Populist: A Frommian Analysis,” Critical Theory an (...)
  • 87 Mary Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man, Londo (...)
  • 88 Elizabeth Mika, “Who Goes Trump? Tyranny as a Triumph of Narcissism,” The Dangerous Case of Donald (...)

18Democratic structures and authoritarianism can co-exist. In current times, Hungary, Poland, and Turkey, all NATO members, model this hybrid government.85 Of course, none of these nations has much history managing free societies. This is not the situation in the US, which renders potential Trumpian autocracy all-the-more awkward. In fact, the American shared powers system remains strong. Both Congress and the Supreme Court continue to exercise their constitutional prerogatives. Free press activities are intact; citizens can travel unimpeded. They can worship and marry unfettered by the state; purchase firearms, alcohol, and marijuana. The US economy is the world’s strongest, as is its armed forces. What threatens this prosperity, returning to Fromm’s analysis about democracy yielding to authoritarianism, is President Trump’s inclination toward narcissistic self-destructiveness.86 This is not a far-fetched concern, as Mary Trump, the president’s niece and a clinical psychologist, warns. “Donald’s […] ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be.”87 As his reelection approaches, and public criticism of his leadership intensifies, I am wondering if Donald Trump faces another existential precipice, because this time his self-hurt might injure the nation.88

  • 89 Angela Stent, Putin’s World: Russia against the West and with the Rest, New York: Twelve, 2019, 32 (...)
  • 90 Heidi Blake, From Russia with Blood: Putin’s Ruthless Killing Campaign and Secret War on the West, (...)
  • 91 Andrew Higgins and Andrew Kramer, “Russia Denies Paying Bounties, but Some Say the US Had It Comin (...)
  • 92 Vladimir Frolov, “Russia Rejoices over Trump’s G7 Readmission Offer,” The Moscow Times, August 22, (...)
  • 93 Bart Jansen, “Mueller Sounded an Alarm on Russian Meddling in the 2020 Election,” USA Today, July (...)
  • 94 Trevor Hughes and Lindsay Schnell, “‘This Is Not a Dictatorship!’: Portland Protesters Push Back H (...)

19Criticism of his unserious Covid-19 response especially threatens Donald Trump’s carefully fashioned persona as a capable manager. If this mask of self-deception shatters, the risks of personal sabotage rises. Many onlookers, domestic and globally, do not want these illusions to tear. This is where the Trump-Russia bond might produce a boost to Trump’s political fortunes, but a death knell to the US government. Russia will lose the most from a Trump reelection defeat. From their perspective, he is a wonderful ally, destabilizing NATO and enabling Russian global influence.89 Trump tolerates Russian security agents poisoning expatriates living in NATO lands;90 he dismisses intelligence reports that Taliban fighters received Russian bounties to murder American servicemen.91 The president also champions re-admitting Russia to the G-7 without penalty for their Crimean annexation.92 Vladimir Putin recognizes this value. As long as the American president is a Russophile, the post-1945 transatlantic partnership cannot proceed. Just as Russian-based hackers helped Trump’s 2016 campaign, they will likely do so in 2020.93 This raises the possibility, however, for Trump’s again winning power under soiled auspices, against the majority will of the American people, posing the empirical question of how the republic can proceed.94

Conclusion

  • 95 As quoted in Mark Runco, Creativity: Theories and Themes: Research, Development, and Practice, Lon (...)
  • 96 Harry Stevens, “The Crisis That Rocked Washington: America’s Response to the Coronavirus,” Washing (...)
  • 97 Mary Trump writes, “If he [Donald] is afforded a second term, it would be the end of American demo (...)
  • 98 J. Richard Stevens, Captain America, Masculinity, and Violence, Syracuse: Syracuse University Pres (...)

20Pablo Picasso once observed, “Every act of creation begins with an act of destruction.”95 Covid-19 in the Age of Trump confirms this insight as a political maxim. In terms of its destructive power, the pandemic mutated into a political virus that damaged America’s global position and domestic stability.96 Left unknown, however, is what new entity will emerge from this ruining, especially if both Covid-19 and the Age of Trump continue. Centuries-long democratic institutions will not necessarily disappear during a second Trump term. However, four additional years of presidential lawlessness, domestic militarism, and antipathy to free speech may ultimately prove fatal to the republic’s structures.97 American Century bodies like NATO face similar existential dilemmas. Despite President Trump’s boorishness, the partnership still functions. For how much longer is the unknown question. The Hellenic League eventually dissolved. The sun set on Britain’s empire and the Iron Curtain rusted. Whether “Captain America”98 hegemony wanes quickly or gradually is an interesting question for future study. For this essay’s focus, however, gauging the decline’s pace is less important than confirming that the diminishment is ongoing and unfinished.

  • 99 Ernest J. Wilson, “Hard Power, Soft Power, Smart Power,” Annals of the American Academy of Politic (...)
  • 100 Anna Sauerbrey, “Trump and Merkel Hate Each Other: So What?” New York Times, June 1, 2017, https:/ (...)
  • 101 “EU Lawmakers Want Action Over ‘Continuing Deterioration of Democracy in Poland,” Reuters, July 16 (...)
  • 102 Joanna Plucinska and Idrees Ali, “U.S.-Polish Fort Trump Project Crumbles,” Reuters, June 10, 2020 (...)
  • 103 Leo Shane III, “Withdrawal of U.S. Troops from Germany a Key Subplot of Trump’s Meeting with Polis (...)

21In foreign policy terms, American commitment to “hard” military power will likely remain unchanged.99 Trump’s motivation for weapon stockpiling is unclear. Prior American leaders followed this path as an anti-Russian deterrent. This is not the case with President Trump, and, to be fair, the Cold War ended twenty-five years ago. Instead, Trumpian military aggrandizement and saber-rattling is likely another device for enforcing his whims. His recent decision to withdraw nearly ten thousand American troops from German bases reflects this impulse. Trump loathes German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the dislike is mutual.100 Trump’s troop adjustment likely aimed to punish her. Leaders who praise Donald Trump, however, can win American hard power support. Indeed, in Germany’s neighboring nation, Polish President Andrzej Duda, a populist-styled cultural warrior with anti-democratic leanings, has lavished Trump with kindness.101 At one point, Poles contemplated renaming a military fortress after him.102 It is perhaps not surprising that following his draw down in Germany, Trump quickly indicated support for re-deploying the units into Poland.103

  • 104 Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Soft Power,” Foreign Policy, 80, 1990, pp. 153-171.
  • 105 Justine Coleman, “Trump Mulled Selling Puerto Rico, Former Aide Says,” The Hill, July 12, 2020, <h (...)
  • 106 Tracy Wen Liu, “China’s Second Wave of Coronavirus Censorship Is Here,” Foreign Policy, July 7, 20 (...)
  • 107 Thomas Colson, “Trump Says the European Union was ‘Formed in Order to Take Advantage of the United (...)

22Such flatter foreign policy segues to related discussions of future American “soft” power. Soft power is a flexible term.104 It galvanizes when nations host international conferences, technology summits, or sporting events. Leading the world’s fight against Covid-19 was a “soft” power opportunity for Donald Trump. He is a master at television communications who could have used the White House as a stage for showcasing the breadth of American wherewithal. However, Donald Trump brushes-off soft power, a temperament he also displayed in his lackluster response to Puerto Rico’s weather-battering.105 If predictable, President Trump’s aloofness squandered a potential bounty. The Chinese government’s mishandling of the outbreak, namely their suppressing data about the contagion’s vigor, damaged hundreds of nations.106 The president could have easily assembled a broad partnership, lined up against China, burnishing his statesman credentials and western values more broadly. Instead, Trump brooded. He re-envisioned stalwart American allies as his personal competitors, spinning a global pandemic crisis into a nationalistic competition.107

  • 108 Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein, “History and the Social Sciences: The Longue Durée,” Fer (...)

23Other governments recognize Trump’s antagonism, and have followed suit. This curious point of reciprocated xenophobia strikes me as a fitting place to end my essay. Indeed, currently, the European Union, Canada, Japan, Mexico, and others bar American citizens from entering their states. Returning to Braudelian language, this activity roils the composure of the post-1945 American longue durée. Moreover, Donald Trump’s disruptions do not require the patience of ‘geographic’ time to interpret. Instead, the unknown question is whether his antics signify a new epoch, or instead reflect what Braudel terms “explosion with the sound of newness […] but does not last long after first flame.”108 Americans will settle the matter of whether the Age of Trump proves transitory or tyrannical in November. However, irrespective of this result, nothing indicates that the nation will soon best Covid-19, regain its international stature, or mends its domestic wounds. This muddle is the Age of Trump’s most enduring legacy. “Making America Great Again” ultimately involved Donald Trump jingoistically branding a virus, substituting internal repression for public health actions, and ensuring through his coarseness that more than just oceans separate the US from the world.

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Notes

1 Simon Leng, While My Guitar Gently Weeps: The Music of George Harrison, Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard, 2006, 75.

2 Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni, “The President’s Shock at the Rows of Empty Seats in Tulsa,” June 21, 2020, <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/us/politics/trump-tulsa-rally.html>, accessed on June 23, 2020.

3 Proclamation on Suspension of Entry as Immigrants and Nonimmigrants of Persons who Pose a Risk of Transmitting 2019 Novel Coronavirus. White House, January 31, 2020, <https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-suspension-entry-immigrants-nonimmigrants-persons-pose-risk-transmitting-2019-novel-coronavirus/>, accessed on July 7, 2020.

4 Nayan Shah, Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001, 21.

5 Debra Ellen Blakely, Mass Mediated Disease: A Case Study Analysis of Three Flu Pandemics and Public Health Policy, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006, 105.

6 Christopher Bader, Fear Itself: The Causes and Consequences of Fear in America, New York: New York University Press, 2020, 120.

7 Joshua Busby and Jonathan Monten, “Has Liberal Internationalism Been Trumped?” Chaos in the Liberal Order: The Trump Presidency and International Politics in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Robert Jervis et al, New York: Columbia University Press, 2018, pp. 49-60.

8 For related discussions see Mark Harrison, Contagion: How Commerce has Spread Disease, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012, 248.

9 Dale Tomich, “The Order of Historical Time: The Longue Durée and Micro-History,” Almanack Guarulhos, 2, 2011, p. 53.

10 See for example William Walker, The Rise and Decline of the American Century, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018; Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century, London: Taylor and Francis, 2017; Walter LaFeber, Richard Polenberg, and Nancy Woloch, The American Century, 7th ed. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2013.

11 Stephen J. Whitfield, “The American Century of Henry R. Luce,” Revue LISA/LISA e-journal, January 2004, <http://journals.openedition.org/lisa/917>, accessed June 22, 2020.

12 Alisher Faĭzullaev, Symbolic Insult in Diplomacy: A Subtle Game of Diplomatic Slap, Boston: Brill Nijhoff, 2018, 9.

13 As quoted in Florian Bieber, Debating Nationalism: The Global Spread of Nations, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020, 190.

14 Ibid., 191.

15 Edward Fishman, “The World Order Is Dead. Here’s How to Build a New One for a Post-Coronavirus Era,” Politico, May 3, 2020, <https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/05/03/the-post-coronavirus-world-order-230042>, accessed June 18, 2020.

16 Gerardo Martí, American Blindspot: Race, Class, Religion, and the Trump Presidency, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2020, 55, 241.

17 Gavriel Rosenfeld, “Digital Anti-Semitism: From Irony to Ideology,” Jewish Review of Books, 36, 2019, p. 16.

18 Vegas Tenold, Everything You Love Will Burn: Inside the Rebirth of White Nationalism in America, New York: Nation Books, 2018, 104.

19 Mike Cole, Trump, the Alt-Right and Public Pedagogies of Hate and for Fascism: What Is To Be Done?, New York: Routledge, 2018, 25, 44.

20 Michael Berenbaum, After Tragedy and Triumph: Essays in Modern Jewish Thought and the American Experience, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990, 41-42.

21 David MacDonald, “First Nations, Residential Schools, and the Americanization of the Holocaust: Rewriting Indigenous History in the United States and Canada,” Canadian Journal of Political Science, 40, 2007, p. 997.

22 Patricia Weitsman, Waging War: Alliances, Coalitions, and Institutions of Interstate Violence, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014, 99-103.

23 Ibid., 24.

24 Robert Jervis, “Understanding the Bush Doctrine,” Political Science Quarterly, 118, 2003, pp. 365-388.

25 Liesbeth van der Heide, “Cherry-Picked Intelligence. The Weapons of Mass Destruction Dispositive as a Legitimation for National Security in the Post 9/11 Age,” Historical Social Research, 38, 2013, pp. 286-287.

26 Elizabeth Brownell Balestrieri, “Abu Ghraib Prison Abuse and the Rule of Law,” International Journal on World Peace, 21, 2004, pp. 7-11.

27 Gary Jacobson, “Referendum: The 2006 Midterm Congressional Elections,” Political Science Quarterly, 122, 2007, pp. 1-24.

28 Jeffrey Gross, “Boyish Play and Manifest Destiny: The Transition from Civilizer to Killer in America and Abroad,” South Atlantic Review, 2008, 73, 2008, p. 64.

29 See Daniel Lieberfeld, “Teaching about War through Film and Literature,” PS: Political Science and Politics, 40, 2007, pp. 571-574.

30 Alan Gibbs, Contemporary American Trauma Narratives, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014, 162.

31 Douglas Durkin, The Magpie: A Novel of Post-War Disillusionment 1923, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974.

32 Joseph Tighe, “All Quiet on the Western Front: A Phenomenological Investigation of War,” Critical Survey, 16, 2004, p. 51 and Ed Dauterich, “Johnny Got His Gun” and Working Class Students: Using Rhetorical Analysis to Intellectualize Pacifism,” Peace Research, 42, 2010, p. 129.

33 Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004, 24, 381.

34 Terence Mc Sweeney, The 'War on Terror' and American Film: 9/11 Frames per Second, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014, 36.

35 Nan Levinson, War Is Not a Game: The New Antiwar Soldiers and the Movement they Built, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014, 90-91.

36 Matthew Ware Coulter, The Senate Munitions Inquiry of the 1930s: Beyond the Merchants of Death, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997.

37 Zerlina Maxwell, The End of White Politics: How to Heal our Liberal Divide, New York: Hachette Books, 2020, 178.

38 Shelly Tenenbaum and Robert Ross, “Who Rules America?” Teaching Sociology, 34, 2006, p. 396.

39 Richard Russo, “American Work,” in Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation, edited by John Freeman, New York: Penguin Books, 2017, p. 58.

40 As quoted in Elvin Lim, The Lovers’ Quarrel: The Two Foundings and American Political Development, New York: Oxford University Press, 2014, 195.

41 Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017, 418.

42 Mairead McArdle, “Biden Says ‘10 to 15 Percent’ of Americans ‘Not Very Good People’ While Slamming Trump’s Divisiveness,” National Review, June 5, 2020, <https://www.nationalreview.com/news/biden-says-10-to-15-percent-of-americans-not-very-good-people-while-slamming-trumps-divisiveness/>, accessed June 17, 2020.

43 Adam Enders et al., “Why Do People Believe COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories,” The Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review, 1, 2020, pp. 1-12.

44 Thomas Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters, New York: Oxford University Press, 2017, 211.

45 Jack Holmes, “American National Pride Is at a 20-Year Low. It Should Be, and It Must Be,” Esquire, June 15, 2020, <https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a32869364/american-national-pride-new-low/>, accessed June 22, 2020.

46 Helen Branswell, “Polio’s Last Act,” Scientific American, 306, April 2012, p. 63.

47 Daniel Jolley and Karen Douglas “The Effects of Anti-Vaccine Conspiracy Theories on Vaccination Intentions,” PLoS ONE, 9, 2014, p. 89177.

48 Mick Mulvaney, “Remarks before the 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference,” February 28, 2020, Gaylord Convention Center, Fort Washington MD, <https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4857785/mick-mulvaney-calls-coronavirus-media-hoax-day>, accessed July 13, 2020.

49 Kate Linthicum, “In ‘God, Guns and Trump’ Country, Simmering Doubts about the President,” Los Angeles Times June 27, 2020, <https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-06-27/in-god-guns-and-trump-country-the-pandemic-and-protests-are-deepening-the-cultural-divide>, accessed June 30, 2020.

50 H. R. Haldeman and Joseph Di Mona, The Ends of Power, New York: Times Books, 1978, 82–83.

51 Samuel Issacharoff, “Democracy’s Deficits,” University of Chicago Law Review, 85, 2018, pp. 486-487.

52 Christian Fuchs, Digital Demagogue: Authoritarian Capitalism in the Age of Trump and Twitter, London: Pluto Press, 2018, 216-220.

53 Borzou Daragahi, “Why the George Floyd Protests Went Global,” Atlantic Council, June 10, 2020, <https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/george-floyd-protests-world-racism/>, accessed July 1, 2020.

54 Donald Trump, “Rose Garden Speech,” June 1, 2020, White House, Washington DC, <https://www.c-span.org/video/?472684-1/president-deploy-military-states-halt-violent-protests>, accessed July 8, 2020.

55 John Allen, “A Moment of National Shame and Peril—and Hope,” Foreign Policy, June 3, 2020, <https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/03/trump-military-george-floyd-protests/>, accessed June 17, 2020.

56 Alan Abramowitz, The Great Alignment: Race, Party Transformation, and the Rise of Donald Trump, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018, 148, 172.

57 “Poll: Trump Approval Rating Hits 50 Percent for First Time in Almost 2 Years,” The Hill, March 24, 2020, <https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/489340-poll-trump-lands-50-percent-approval-for-first-time-in-two>, accessed July 10, 2020.

58 Stephen Knott, Lost Soul of the American Presidency: The Decline into Demagoguery and the Prospects for Renewal, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2019, 213-215.

59 Alex Altman, “Divide and Conquer: How Trump’s Tactics Help His Run for the Presidency,” Donald Trump: The Rise of a Rule Breaker, edited by Time Magazine, New York: Time Books, 2016, 18-24.

60 Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton penned an essay encouraging such steps. See “Send in the Troops,” New York Times June 23, 2020, <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protests-military.html>, accessed July 12, 2020.

61 Ian Parker, “Memesis and Psychoanalysis: Mediatizing Donald Trump,” Post Memes: Seizing the Memes of Production, edited by Alfie Bown and Dan Bristow, Goleta, CA: Punctum Books, 2019, pp. 355-356.

62 Darrell West, Divided Politics, Divided Nation: Hyperconflict in the Trump Era, Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2019, 176-177.

63 Joseph Blocher and Darrell Miller, The Positive Second Amendment: Rights, Regulation, and the Future of Heller, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018, 149.

64 Nancy Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019, 27, 74.

65 For “alt right” definitions see Bharath Ganesh, “The Ungovernability of Digital Hate Culture,” Journal of International Affairs, 71, 2018, 36, 39.

66 Cecilia Kang and Sheera Frenkel, “‘PizzaGate’ Conspiracy Theory Thrives Anew in the TikTok Era,” New York Times, June 27, 2020, <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/27/technology/pizzagate-justin-bieber-qanon-tiktok.html>, accessed July 1, 2020.

67 Bill Ivey, Rebuilding an Enlightened World: Folklorizing America, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018, 99-101, 114.

68 J. David Goodman, “In West Texas, Lingering Distrust in Government as the Virus Spreads,” New York Times July 5, 2020, <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/04/us/coronavirus-texas-lubbock.html>, accessed June 29, 2020.

69 Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump, New York: Free Press, 2019, 190-191.

70 Alison Dagnes, Super Mad At Everything All the Time: Political Media and our National Anger, Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, 205.

71 For example see John Bennett, “Trump Suddenly has a Bigger Problem Than his Plummeting Poll Numbers,” The Independent, June 26, 2020, <https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election/trump-2020-election-poll-coronavirus-protests-rally-a9587826.html>, accessed July 3, 2020 and “Unpacking The QAnon Conspiracy Theory,” All Things Considered, National Public Radio, Washington DC, August, 4, 2018, <https://www.npr.org/2018/08/04/635668346/unpacking-the-qanon-conspiracy-theory>, accessed May 23, 2020.

72 Stephen Strang, Trump Aftershock: The President's Seismic Impact on Culture and Faith in America, Chicago: Charisma House, 2018, 141.

73 Garnett Graff, “A Complete Guide to All 17 (Known) Trump and Russia Investigations,” Wired, December 17, 2018, <https://www.wired.com/story/mueller-investigation-trump-russia-complete-guide/>, accessed July 2, 2020.

74 Susan Glasser, “History According to Trump: The President and the 1917 Pandemic That Wasn’t,” New Yorker, April 30, 2020, <https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/trump-and-the-1917-pandemic-that-wasnt>, accessed July 14, 2020.

75 Laura Barron-Lopez et al., “‘People Can’t Ignore It Anymore’: Across the Country, Minorities Hit Hardest by Pandemic,” Politico, July 8, 2020, <https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/08/racial-disparities-coronavirus-political-divide-353226>, accessed July 9, 2020.

76 Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience: Massive Scale Testing, Tracing, and Supported Isolation as the Path to Pandemic Resilience for a Free Society, Cambridge, MA: Safra Center, 2020, 6. <https://ethics.harvard.edu/files/center-for-ethics/files/roadmaptopandemicresilience_updated_4.20.20_0.pdf >, accessed May 19, 2020.

77 Martha White, “‘There’s No One Coming to the Rescue:’ Millions of Americans Go Hungry as the Pandemic Destroys Lives,” NBC News, July 7, 2020, <https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/theres-no-one-coming-to-the-rescue-millions-of-americans-go-hungry-as-the-pandemic-destroys-lives/ar-BB16spQT>, accessed July 11, 2020.

78 Andrew Restuccia and Paul Kiernan, “Toppling of Statues Triggers Reckoning over Nation’s History,” Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2020, <https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-seeks-to-protect-monuments-from-vandals-with-tougher-sentences-11592922449>, accessed July 4, 2020.

79 Mitch Landrieu, In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History, New York: Penguin Book, 2019, 161.

80 Mike Schneider, “‘White Power’ Video —and Trump Re-Tweet—Reveals Tensions in Florida Retirement Community,” Time Magazine, July 1, 2020, <https://time.com/5862333/the-villages-florida-politics-trump-white-power/>, accessed July 9, 2020.

81 Suzanne Mettler and Robert Lieberman, Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2020, 43-50.

82 Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 9th ed., New York: Avon Books, 1969, 235.

83 Neil McLaughlin, “Nazism, Nationalism, and the Sociology of Emotions: Escape from Freedom Revisited,” Sociological Theory, 14, 1996, p. 242.

84 Andrew Higgins, “Putin Says US is in ‘Deep Internal Crisis,’” New York Times, June 14, 2020, <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/world/europe/putin-interview-united-states.html>, accessed June 22, 2020.

85 Burak Bekdil, “Turkey and NATO: From Loveless to Hateful Marriage,” Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies 760, 2018, p. 1.

86 Douglas Kellner, “Donald Trump as Authoritarian Populist: A Frommian Analysis,” Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism, edited by Jeremiah Morelock, London: University of Westminster Press, 2018, pp. 71-82.

87 Mary Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man, London: Simon & Schuster, 2020, 17.

88 Elizabeth Mika, “Who Goes Trump? Tyranny as a Triumph of Narcissism,” The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 35 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, edited by Brandy Lee, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2019, p. 289.

89 Angela Stent, Putin’s World: Russia against the West and with the Rest, New York: Twelve, 2019, 326-330.

90 Heidi Blake, From Russia with Blood: Putin’s Ruthless Killing Campaign and Secret War on the West, London: William Collins, 2018, 305.

91 Andrew Higgins and Andrew Kramer, “Russia Denies Paying Bounties, but Some Say the US Had It Coming,” New York Times, July 4, 2020, <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/world/europe/russia-bounties-putin-afghanistan.html>, accessed July 12, 2020.

92 Vladimir Frolov, “Russia Rejoices over Trump’s G7 Readmission Offer,” The Moscow Times, August 22, 2019, <https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/22/russia-rejoices-over-trumps-g7-readmission-offer-a66981>, accessed June 10, 2020.

93 Bart Jansen, “Mueller Sounded an Alarm on Russian Meddling in the 2020 Election,” USA Today, July 25, 2019, <https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/07/25/robert-mueller-warned-2020-russian-election-interference-what-happened-2016/1827616001/>, accessed June 17, 2020.

94 Trevor Hughes and Lindsay Schnell, “‘This Is Not a Dictatorship!’: Portland Protesters Push Back Harder Against Trump, Federal Agents, USA Today, July 22, 2020, <https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/07/22/portland-protests-grow-larger-after-trump-sends-feds/5483028002/>, accessed July 22, 2020.

95 As quoted in Mark Runco, Creativity: Theories and Themes: Research, Development, and Practice, London: Academic Press, 2014, 142.

96 Harry Stevens, “The Crisis That Rocked Washington: America’s Response to the Coronavirus,” Washington Post, July 19, 2020, <https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/07/19/coronavirus-us-failure/>, accessed July 22, 2020.

97 Mary Trump writes, “If he [Donald] is afforded a second term, it would be the end of American democracy.” See Too, 17

98 J. Richard Stevens, Captain America, Masculinity, and Violence, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press 2015, 28.

99 Ernest J. Wilson, “Hard Power, Soft Power, Smart Power,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 616, 2008, pp. 110-124.

100 Anna Sauerbrey, “Trump and Merkel Hate Each Other: So What?” New York Times, June 1, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/donald-trump-angela-merkel-nato.html>, accessed July 22, 2020.

101 “EU Lawmakers Want Action Over ‘Continuing Deterioration of Democracy in Poland,” Reuters, July 16, 2020, <https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-poland/eu-lawmakers-want-action-over-continuing-deterioration-of-democracy-in-poland-idUSKCN24H1Z1>, accessed July 22, 2020.

102 Joanna Plucinska and Idrees Ali, “U.S.-Polish Fort Trump Project Crumbles,” Reuters, June 10, 2020, <https://www.reuters.com/article/us-poland-usa-defense-forttrump/us-polish-fort-trump-project-crumbles-idUSKBN23H36P>, accessed July 11, 2020.

103 Leo Shane III, “Withdrawal of U.S. Troops from Germany a Key Subplot of Trump’s Meeting with Polish Leader,” Military Times, June 23, 2020, <https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2020/06/23/withdrawal-of-us-troops-from-germany-a-key-subplot-of-trumps-meeting-with-polish-leader/>, accessed July 14, 2020.

104 Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Soft Power,” Foreign Policy, 80, 1990, pp. 153-171.

105 Justine Coleman, “Trump Mulled Selling Puerto Rico, Former Aide Says,” The Hill, July 12, 2020, <https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/506968-trump-mulled-selling-puerto-rico-former-aide-says>, accessed July 15, 2020.

106 Tracy Wen Liu, “China’s Second Wave of Coronavirus Censorship Is Here,” Foreign Policy, July 7, 2020, <https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/07/china-virus-censorship-death/>, accessed July 15, 2020.

107 Thomas Colson, “Trump Says the European Union was ‘Formed in Order to Take Advantage of the United States,’” Business Insider, July 15, 2020, <https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-says-european-union-formed-take-advantage-united-states-2020-7>, accessed July 19, 2020.

108 Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein, “History and the Social Sciences: The Longue Durée,” Fernand Braudel Center Review, 32, 2009, p. 174.

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Jeffrey Demsky, « Covid-19 in the Age of Trump: A Virus for the American Century and Republic »Revue LISA/LISA e-journal [En ligne], Mélanges en hommage au Pr. Dr. Denis Mukwege, mis en ligne le 20 août 2020, consulté le 29 mars 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/lisa/12816 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/lisa.12816

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