isolation and losing in
DONALD TRUMP'S AMERICA
by
HENRY A. GIROUX
__________________________________________
Henry
A. Giroux currently holds the Global TV Network Chair
Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural
Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship
at Ryerson University. He is the author of more than 50 books
including The Educational Deficit and the War on Youth
and Zombie
Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism.
Many of his essays, including The Spectacle of Illiteracy, appear
on his website at www.henryagiroux.com.
His interview with Bill
Moyers is must viewing.
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YOUR
COMMENTSDonald Trump has called Mexicans who illegally
entered the country rapists and drug dealers, defamed Fox News
host Megyn Kelly by referring to her menstrual cycle, and questioned
the heroism and bravery of former-prisoner of war Senator John
McCain. In what can only be described as unimaginable, Trump
urged Russia to hack Hillary Clinton's computer, and attacked
the Muslim parents of Capt. Humayan Khan, who was killed in
2004 by a suicide bomber while he was trying to save the lives
of the men in his unit. In addition, during a campaign rally
in North Carolina, Trump suggested that "Second Amendment
people" would take care of Hillary Clinton for picking
Supreme Court judges who favour stricter gun laws. The Clinton
campaign and many others saw this as a veiled endorsement of
an assassination attempt. These stunts were just the latest
examples of his chillingly successful media strategy, which
is based not on changing public consciousness but on titillating
and infantilizing it within a flood of shocks, sensations and
simplistic views. It is a strategy that only succeeds due to
the deep cultural and political effects of a savage form of
casino capitalism in our society — effects that include
widespread atomization and depoliticization.
Trump's
racist, xenophobic, and ultra-nationalist appeals find a welcoming
place in a society in which individuals are isolated due to
a range of economic and political conditions, including the
forces of precarity, poverty, mass inequality, uncertainty,
disposability and the dark shadows of authoritarianism. Within
this new historical era, finance capital rules, producing extremes
of wealth for the 1 per cent, promoting cuts to government services,
and defunding investments in public goods such as public and
higher education in order to offset tax reductions for the ultra-rich
and big corporations.
Under
such conditions, mass fear is normalized as violence increasingly
becomes the default logic for handling social problems. In an
age where everything is for sale, ethical accountability is
rendered a liability and the vocabulary of empathy is viewed
as a weakness, reinforced by the view that individual happiness
and its endless search for instant gratification is more important
than supporting the public good and embracing an obligation
to care for others. Americans are now pitted against each as
casino capitalism puts a premium on competitive cage-like relations
that degrade collaboration and the public spheres that support
it.
Within
this market driven ideology, an emphasis on competition in every
sphere of life promotes a winner-take-all ethos that finds its
ultimate expression in the assertion that fairness has no place
in a society dominated by winners and losers. As William Davies
points out, competition in a market driven social order allows
a small group of winners to emerge while at the same time sorting
out and condemning the vast majority of institutions, organizations,
and individuals "to the status of losers."
As
made clear in the much publicized language of Donald Trump,
both as a reality TV host of "The Apprentice" and
as presidential candidate, calling someone a "loser"
has little to do with losing in the more general sense of the
term. On the contrary, in a culture that trades in cruelty and
divorces politics from matters of ethics and social responsibility,
"loser" is now elevated to a pejorative insult that
humiliates and justifies not only symbolic violence, but also
as Trump has made clear in many of his rallies real acts of
violence waged against his critics, such as members of the Black
Lives Matter Movement. As Greg Elmer and Paula Todd observe,
"to lose is possible, but to be a 'loser' is the ultimate
humiliation that justifies taking extreme, even immoral measures."
Atomization,
anxiety, and loneliness are fuelled increasingly by a fervour
for unbridled individualism that exhibits a pathological disdain
for community, public values, and the public good. As democratic
pressures are weakened, authoritarian societies resort to fear
so as to ward off any room for ideals, visions, and hope, made
all the more difficult by the ethically tranquilizing presence
of a celebrity and commodity culture that works to depoliticize
people and legitimize a near sociopathic lack of interests in
others. The realm of the political and the social imagination
wither as shared responsibilities and obligations give way to
an individualized society that elevates selfishness, avarice,
and militaristic modes of competition to its highest organizing
principles.
Overcoming
the atomization inherent under casino capitalism means making
clear how it destroys every vestige of solidarity and co-operation.
Neo-liberal precarity, austerity and the militarization of society
inflict violence not just on the body but on the psyche as well.
America can do better. Democracy is in part about a society
in which caring for the other matters, creating the public spheres
in which empathy and justice inform each other, and imagining
a political system in which economic justice is central to unleashing
a politics in which hope becomes more than an empty slogan.
