To varying degrees everyone lives with a fear of death and, in one manner or another, attempts to deny death’s finality. In the case of Donald Trump, all those steel and granite edifices emblazoned with his name have long struck me as evidence of a terror of extinction. Their presumed endurance is intended to at least assure him of a symbolic immortality. And the achievement of symbolic immortality is also, I’d submit, the underlying motive behind his decision to run for the presidency; an office for which he has no discernible vocation but which guarantees him a place in history.
A pronounced extinction anxiety is what afflicts the majority of Trump’s supporters as well, and it’s precisely this anxiety that — coming from his personal angst? — he recognized and addressed. I’m speaking of the white population’s declining preeminence in America and of the existential dread it has stirred in much of that demographic.
The major consequence of the white American’s dread has been, of course, a heightening racism which, further energized by Trump’s blatant denigration of Muslims and Mexicans, played the decisive role in his election. Racism is born of the impulse to transcend a finite existence. We can talk about economics, about crime rates and about Islamic terrorism, and they are significant factors. But, to dwell on them, obfuscates the reality that racism is rooted in the wish to feel superior to other humans in the judgment of a higher power, in, most especially, the wish to own an exceptionalism that implicitly signals a fitness to survive one’s death in a rarefied afterworld. Presenting an effortless way to define, separate and elevate our identities, differences in color or culture afford those ill-equipped to otherwise distinguish themselves, an opportunity to claim that fitness.
For so many white Americans, the prospect of relinquishing their purchase on supremacy, and of surrendering the divine approbation that they’d like to believe attends it (a concern deeper than a loss of jobs per se), made Trump an ideal candidate.
Politically surfacing at a dire moment — during the first presidency of a black man! — Trump cast himself as a white savior and, in doing so, secured what amounts to a religious allegiance among his followers; an allegiance that blinds them to his monumental deficiencies.
But if globalization (manifested by mass migration and racial intermingling) is the phenomenon that’s produced our current circumstances, it’s been a done deal for a while now. As difficult as the fact of death and the reactions that fact causes makes such a possibility, globalization needs to be embraced. The resistance to it that Trump embodies (along with comparable figures in Europe where Caucasian dominion is similarly threatened) can only be destructive to everyone. His strategies to reestablish white precedence are not merely empty of substance and futile, they are dangerous. For one illustration: His pledge to reboot the all but obsolete coal industry, and revive the status of a remaining handful of white miners, by summarily rejecting measures to combat climate change is likely to have a catastrophic impact on the planet’s future inhabitants, including, ipso facto, the miner’s progeny.
I could, to be sure, enumerate countless more examples. But Trump’s dearth of virtues as a leader and the jeopardy in which, in so many respects, he is placing us are, at this point in time, well-known to anyone with the capacity to regard him objectively. It may have been innocuous when it was confined to real estate, but a President Trump’s immortality project is putting civilization itself in peril.
ADDENDUM
Responses to reactions the foregoing prompted.
To the reader who wouldn’t vote for Hillary either:
I could never relate to the problem so many people had with Hillary. All politicians are, by definition and necessity, deceitful. (Yeah, Bernie included.) Hillary was, at least, sane, intelligent and experienced, and her policies were for the most part the right ones. If we ignore climate change, and if we resist the inevitable browning of America, a dystopian future is a foregone conclusion.
John McCain [whom one correspondent identified as an exception to the above characterization of all politicians] is an extraordinary man and I acknowledge his many virtues. I will, however, never forgive him for committing what amounted to an act of treason by putting the likes of a Sarah Palin on his ticket. I know he’s since called that a “mistake.” But the fact that he was capable of such a mistake diminishes him.
.And to the person who applauded Trump’s castigation of Colin Kaepernick for being “unpatriotic”: If we remember what makes this country unique, then we ought to be able to recognize that availing oneself of the option it affords us to “take a knee” in order to protest an injustice is just as valid a way to honor its flag, its anthem and the sacrifices of its military as the placing of a hand over the heart.
Levin is a writer of short fiction as well as general commentary, with multiple published collections. He is also a prominent jazz writer. See the About and Front pages.
Called by Nat Hentoff “a writer from whom I always learn something,” Robert Levin is a jazz critic whose work focuses on free jazz. Writing since the 1950s, he has contributed to Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, All About Jazz and Downbeat. He’s the coauthor of two books on free jazz and has penned more than 100 liner notes for major labels like Blue Note. They include albums by John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. His criticism and memoirs reflect long-standing, first-hand engagement with the musicians and movement he documents.