Though the US is now directly involved in the conflicts of the Middle East, the roots of the troubles lie deep in history, far pre-dating the US itself. Beyond doubt, though, the Far Right mindset and the neoliberal economy that America in general and Donald Trump in particular have brought to bear on the world’s affairs add fuel to the flames – and are threatening to kill us all. Fortunately there are alternative voices.
Disconcertingly, every now and again Donald Trump says something I agree with. As in the following from an interview with the Advocate in 2000 when he was first thinking of running for president:
“One of the key problems today is that politics is such a disgrace, good people don’t go into government.”
And, of course, as he has done his best to demonstrate, bad people do.
Also, in his first inaugural speech as President in 2017 Trump said:
“What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.”
In this he seemed to be fulfilling the American dream of democracy, as envisaged by Abe Lincoln, no less, after the battle of Gettysburg in 1863:
“Government of the people, by the people, and for the people”
In his first inaugural address as President in 2017 Trump seemed to echo the wisdom of some real or imaginary indigenous American chief:
“And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the windswept plains of Nebraska, they look up at the same night sky, they fill their heart with the same dreams, and they are infused with the breath of life by the same almighty Creator.
Indeed, he said:
“We are one nation – and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams; and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny.”
Wonderful stuff! Here truly is a man of vision, with beneficence that embraces all humanity. In particular, when he first accepted the Republican nomination for presidential candidate in July 2016, he said:
“As your president, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology.”
And he continued with the theme of oneness and of all-encompassing largesse in January 2025, in his inaugural speech for his second term as president:
“We will move with purpose and speed to bring back hope, prosperity, safety, and peace for citizens of every race, religion, colour, and creed.”
Thus he permitted himself to identify with one of America’s or indeed of the world’s greatest ever moralists and reformers:
“Today is Martin Luther King Day. And his honour — this will be a great honour. But in his honour, we will strive together to make his dream a reality. We will make his dream come true.”
All is not what it seems
But of course, with Trump, all is not what it may seem. He is among much else a master of mirage, the archetypal shape-shifter. So he can be good cop and bad cop all in one. One sentence in his 2017 inaugural speech illustrates the point precisely:
“We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world but – we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first.”
With this in mind:
“Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families. We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength.”
In particular:
“All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. We will reinstate my Remain in Mexico policy. And I will send troops to the southern border to repel the disastrous invasion of our country.”
By such means, he said:
“We Will Make America Strong Again. We Will Make America Wealthy Again. We Will Make America Proud Again. We Will Make America Safe Again. And, Yes, Together, We Will Make America Great Again. Thank you, God Bless You, And God Bless America.”
And in his inaugural speech in January 2025 when he assumed the presidency for the second time he continued where he left off:
“Our top priority will be to create a nation that is proud, prosperous, and free. America will soon be greater, stronger, and far more exceptional than ever before.”
For of course, beneath the high-flown and sometimes almost Christ-like sentiments, lies an archetypal representative of the Far Right. And the Far Right does not seek to embrace all humankind. Rather the opposite. The Far Right of whatever hue is tribal. It’s us and them.
Truly to realise the vision of Martin Luther King we need to move beyond politics, and certainly to move beyond political rhetoric that has very little to do with what is actually done. We need to shift the global Zeitgeist. Specifically (as I discussed in my blog “The Bedrock Principles of Morality”, May 8 2025) we need to cultivate a morality, a mindset, that is rooted in the well-nigh universal moral principles of compassion, humility, and a sense of oneness, and of values that are not merely material.
For as Karl Marx observed, societies are shaped to a critical extent by their economy, and the economic doctrine that now dominates the whole world is that of neoliberalism – of which America is its birthplace and its leading exponent. Neoliberalism is an extreme form of capitalism – capitalism purged of moral or ecological restraint: an all-out, global, preferably no-holds-barred (“deregulated”) competition for material wealth and power, conducted as ruthlessly as can be managed. It is of course subject to the law – but the global neoliberal to a large extent can choose whose laws to follow, and in all cases the law has become conditional, and indeed negotiable – and who has the power to enforce it? Competitiveness now is the principal virtue and, says Trump:
“I hate losers”
— which, alas, in a world dominated by the super-rich, means most of us.
“My kind of people”
In the neoliberal world might is right and truth is what the most powerful people say it is. So it is that neoliberalism is the natural economy of the Far Right, and Donald Trump is its global exemplar. There is no humility, no self-doubt. There is no sense of oneness – certainly no sense of oneness in the manner of Martin Luther King, with whom Trump had the temerity to identify. For as King said in a speech in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1967:
“If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.”
Of course, unlike Trump, King meant what he said. Such sense of oneness as there is among the Far Right, and such compassion as there is, is reserved for what might properly be called the “tribe”. And the “tribe” in practice is what a recent former president, George W Bush, worse than whom at the time it seemed impossible to get, called “my kind of people”; and for George W and Trump and their ilk, “my kind of people” are conservative, self-centred, sublimely self-righteous, and above all rich. And they play golf. If you belong to such a tribe, the world is at your feet. If not — beware! To be sure, when it’s convenient, the tribe may indeed include “citizens of every race, religion, colour, and creed”, for although Far Right tribes are very often racist, sexist, antisemitic and/or Islamophobic, that is not quite a condition of service. Tribal thinking has it though, to quote George W again, that “You are either with us or against us!” If you’re not of their kind or on their wavelength, either because you don’t want to be or because you are not rich enough, then as our very own home-grown Trump-style disciple-wannabe Nigel Farage has lately warned environmentalists, you had better pack your bags and make alternative arrangements pdq.
However: in reality, no such tribe has ever had the world entirely to itself. Always there are rival tribes, all competing as ruthlessly as it takes to become or remain top dog. All mistake their own venality for some noble, divinely inspired mission: MAGA; the resurrection of the USSR or indeed of Peter the Great; some sybaritic vision of Heaven; Zion. All mistake the buzzing of bees in their respective bonnets for voices from on high. Short of scorched earth and genocide none of the competing factions can ever win decisively, and so the world seems doomed to perpetual strife: between societies and – often even more fiercely –within societies.
But, besides being foul, perpetual strife is not affordable. The collateral damage is enormous (though there’s profit in reconstruction!) and while the conflicts rage all serious attempts to make the world a better place are put on hold. So it is that competitive tribalism, whether overtly Far Right or in some other guise, hastens the world’s descent into oblivion. Those who claim victory in the Earthly conflicts will inherit a landscape of rubble and of toxic seas and rivers and a raging climate, from which there can be no recovery; or not at least for creatures that are not halophiles and thermophiles or any other kind of extremophile. For all Trump’s fantasies, can Gaza, now – ever – realistically, be restored? The pain and the memory of it will never go away of course – but can the territory itself ever really be habitable again?
To be continued: Click here for part 2
This article first appeared in Colin Tudge’s The Great Re-Think.
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