A Divisive Speech

I am an observer of culture, this is what I see.

Last night I sat and watched Donald Trump speak to a joint session of Congress. Looking at the polling data it is clear that I am in the minority as I found much of what he had to say and the manner in which he said it repugnant.

According to the polls some 76% of the people who watched it approved of what he said and 68% said it made them feel hopeful. Of course the polls are not representative of the American people as a whole as only 20% of the people who tuned in identified as Democrats.

The warping and the twisting of truth and the political theatre were on full display last night. It was just last week when Emmanuel Macron interrupted Trump in an Oval Office meeting to tell him that his $340 billion figure on Ukraine was wrong. Two days later, in another Oval Office meeting, Trump repeated this falsehood to Keir Starmer, who also corrected him on the truth. You might have thought the speech writers for last night’s speech would have made the correction to this obvious lie by now, but no, once again the $340 billion number was put out there.

Hannah Arendt explains this for us in The Origins of Totalitarianism as she writes, “The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unbending infallibility; he can never admit an error.” Of course she didn’t write this about Donald Trump, she was referencing the totalitarian regimes of Hitler and Stalin, and yet this statement seems to fit Trump like a glove. What’s really disconcerting to me is that Arendt explains that these leaders, “have one concern which overrules all utilitarian considerations: to make their predictions come true.” I can see this in Trump as well.

When it comes to truth it’s clear it doesn’t matter to Trump, but what about his supporters? He was yying again about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio and portraying the immigrant population as people to be feared and suspicious of rather than people to be welcomed and loved. Positing deceptive numbers on the use of foreign aid as an excuse to pull back from helping vulnerable people around the world. Mocking other nations like Lesotho as if they don’t exist. Are people really OK with that?

Sadly, yes they are.

I believe truth matters, and that getting the factual information correct is the first step in pursuing truth. Once we establish facts then we can analyse and propose solutions to real problems, but if propaganda is all that matters then facts become irrelevant, even intrusive. Hannah Arendt writes how in totalitarian regimes there is a, “Demoralizing fascination in the possibility that gigantic lies and monstrous falsehoods can eventually be established as unquestioned facts, … and that the difference between truth and falsehood may cease to be objective and become a mere matter of power and cleverness, of pressure and infinite repetition.” She notes that part of the success of Hitler and Stalin was, “The fact that they were able to organize the masses into a collective unit to back up their lies with impressive magnificence, … .”

That’s what I saw last night, the masses backing the lies with standing ovations and applause.

A word of warning from Hannah Arendt, “The famous ‘Right is what is good for the German people’ was meant only for mass propaganda; Nazis were told that ‘Right is what is good for the movement,” and these two interests did by no means always coincide.” If you believe that Donald Trump is acting in the best interests of America you might have fallen for the propaganda.

I am an observer of culture. This is what I see.

As political as this piece comes across, it’s driven by theology. That’s my discipline.

The call to love your neighbour.

The call to love and care for the immigrant.

The call to love and care for the poorest and marginalised in society.

The call to put others ahead of yourself.

The common humanity that we all share together.

It was all missing last night.

In closing I turn to the words of Trappist monk, theologian, and writer, Thomas Merton, “If you want to help other people you have got to make up your mind to write things that some will condemn.”