How the new US president is bursting the Washington bubble
and annoying the nation’s hypocrites
For many decades, American journalists have deluded
themselves into the belief that they are unelected representatives of the
people. They are convinced that their profession places them above politics as
impartial, altruistic, compassionate and moral human beings – with the
responsibility to hold elected officials to account. The politicians accept
this media self-aggrandizement and play (and prey) on it. They massage the
journalists’ inflated egos, giving them access. Yet in many ways the
politicians control these journalists and shape their career trajectories.
Journalists, especially the Washington press corps, depend
on leaks for headlines. To cultivate good sources who leak to them vital
information, journalists have to treat those in power with care. If they annoy
them, they would be cut off from the leaks. Without leaks, the journalist would
have limited access to breaking news and headlines. Media in America do not
reward journalists for not producing headlines. They fire them. Thus,
journalist and politician in America indulge in a game of mutual deceit that
one is holding the other to account. Yet they are part of the same power
structure.
America’s political system is controlled by big money and
its iniquities are reproduced by the very structures of representative
government and “free” media. The propertied classes fund the universities and
think tanks that produce “knowledge”, they own/control the media that
regurgitate this “knowledge” and they fund the campaigns of politicians to gain
public office and then lobby them to placate their interests.
Thus, the academic in the university, the intellectual in a
think tank, the journalist in the media and the politician in congress or White
House or in the governor’s mansion are all servants of this largely white,
propertied patriarchal order. Its major instrument of power is not force but
consent achieved through control of education and ownership/control of the
weapons of mass propaganda. This has consolidated the concept of “American
values” which, apparently, they claim Trump is violating. But what actually are
these values and how has Trump violated them?
Is it Trump who exterminated Native Americans while the
nation enjoyed a free press, regular elections and “impartial” courts? Is it
Trump who enslaved black people for 90 years after independence, then kept them
under apartheid for another 100 years and now keeps millions of them in jails?
Is it Trump who introduced torture but called it “enhanced interrogation
methods”, kidnapped people from different nations and took them to illegal
detention facilities around the world but called it “rendition” or is it him
who has been murdering innocents in countries America has been bombing and
calling it “collateral damage?
Is it Trump who created the perception that black people are
criminals so much so that when asked to imagine a criminal 96% of Americans see
a black male? Wasn’t this campaign of vilification done by the “free media” in
service of power long before Trump came on the scene? Is it Trump who
consistently projected Muslims as terrorists even though since 9/11 more
Americans have died at the hands of local right wing, largely white, terrorist
organisations than they have died at the hands of jihadists? Who, other than
the American media, propagated this narrative?
American journalists have been complicit in these evils of
the America Empire. Each time America commits atrocities, they claim that these
violations are against American values and, therefore, proof of what America is
not. Yet when countries like China or Russia commit similar violations, the
same journalists present them as proof of who/what these countries are. This
jingoism (we are good and the others are bad or evil) has been the bedrock of
American media and academic presentation of others.
In fact Trump is the first American president to have the honesty
to admit that America kills people and, therefore, lacks the moral authority to
judge Russia and its president, Vladmir Putin. It seems to me that the only
crime Trump has committed is to refuse to play by Washington’s rulebook of
hypocrisy, self-deception and deceit that has characterised the alliance
between media and power in America. He has also refused to massage the inflated
egos of the Washington press corps and that is why he is under attack.
The America system has come under increasing stress lately
because of the inequities the media has for far too long ignored. While America
has sustained economic growth, this has only concentrated income at the top.
The income of the median household in America has not increased in real terms
since 1973. In fact the income of the top one percent is now equal to the
income of the bottom 90%. Most Americans have increased consumption through
accumulating debt rather than increasing their income.
This disconnect between the claim that America is a
prosperous society with the reality of stagnating real incomes of the poor and
middle classes and ever growing indebtedness has led to popular anger. In the
absence of a counter ideology to challenge the hegemony of unrestrained free
market fundamentalism, people are turning to demagogues – and there comes
Trump. Ironically, Trump is the ultimate representative of the wealthy, white
patriarchal order that rules America. He, therefore, cannot be a threat to it.
Trump has grown his political brand by articulating a narrow-minded
nationalism with overt racism and sexism. But he has done exactly what the most
successful American politicians have always done i.e. divert the anger of poor
white Americans from the system that has impoverished them by inventing pseudo
enemies in Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims and immigrants. But this has been the
practice of Americans politicians both Democratic and Republican, liberal and
conservative best illustrated by Ian Lopez in his book, `Dog Whistle Politics:
How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middleclass’.
The difference between Trump and other American politicians
is that he is not sophisticated in articulating the prejudices of his society.
This form, not the substance of his positions, is what has brought him into
conflict with the status quo. He has refused to play by the rulebook of coded
racial messages American politicians and media employ when dealing with these
issues. He has stripped the American system bare by holding a mirror before it;
and America doesn’t like the reflection. I think this is the reason everyone is
fighting him.
****
amwenda@independent.co.ug
****
editor@independent.co.ug
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