Trump and the "civil war" within the US empire

We already have a fairly clear diagnosis of Donald Trump. The question now –assuming Trump does not manage to become a lifelong dictator– is: what comes next? The American empire is losing credibility in the world. And, internally, it shows growing difficulties in coexisting with itself.

The United States is a large and complex country, full of contrasts, with a brief but turbulent history. If we accept, as seems reasonable, that its days began with the arrival of the Mayflower pilgrims, in 1620, to the place they christened Plymouth (currently, Massachusetts), we must conclude that, from the beginning, it was a society at cultural war. The pilgrims –Puritan Protestants influenced by Calvinism– were fleeing the oppression of organized European religions and aspired to create a nation in direct contact with God. Fanaticism was their hallmark.

Allow me to tell a personal anecdote. At the beginning of this century, my wife and I took a trip through the southern US, through the so-called “Bible Belt”. On a road in Hopkins County (Kentucky) we saw a funny advertisement: Jesus and his disciples were toasting at the Last Supper with tea from a well-known brand. Hopkins is a dry county: as in many others, alcohol has been completely prohibited for over a century. We thought we understood the advertiser's joke. At dinner time (5 p.m.), we discussed the advertisement with the restaurant owner. And we asked her what she thought about the fact that Jesus, on that crucial night for Christianity, had blessed wine. The woman became indignant: “Are you telling me Jesus Christ was an alcoholic? I have never missed a religious service in my life, and I know for sure that at that supper tea was blessed, even though some malicious scribe later said it was wine.” We folded our sails. Useless to argue.

The anecdote is useful to illustrate two characteristic traits of what is commonly called “Deep America”: religiosity and ignorance.

A disturbing book recently published by Capitán Swing, La resaca

, by Jeff Sharlet –with the subtitle Scenes from a Parsimonious Civil War–, offers some clues about the internal conflict of the United States. In summary, it is a conflict between science and faith, or between prejudice and progress, or between nationalism and cosmopolitanism.

The industrial crisis initiated with the delocalizations, half a century ago, has accentuated the distrust of the "common and honest folk" towards the “elites”, and the contempt of these "elites" towards the “hicks” who consider themselves "common and honest folk".

Donald Trump is a result of the cultural war between the elites, generally urban, and the “rednecks” or “honnest common folk” (depending on the point of view), although the differences between both sides are not that simple.

Trump is rich, and American puritanism, with markedly Calvinist traits, believes in predestination, and, therefore, in the fact that God blesses his own with money. Trump is profoundly impious, like King David, God's great chosen. Trump is sexist and racist and loudly says the same thing that is said in many American homes and bars. Trump is what the “common folk” (or the "rednecks", as they wish) would like to be.

It will be difficult to convince the bulk of his electorate that Trump, moreover, has already gone a long way toward dementia. Because these voters also suffer from a notable collective paranoia: they feel that Black people, feminists, immigrants, and foreigners in general have stolen “their” country, the one they were taught in school with the prayer and the anthem, the one God chose as his favorite.

At the time, almost no one was able to guess that the arrival to the presidency of Barack Obama (a cosmopolitan Black man, whose middle name is Hussein, raised in Indonesia, a Muslim country) would accelerate the eternal cultural war. But it did. Obama, unintentionally, made many white Christians feel like “

victims

” of racism. The response of these “

victims” was Donald Trump.

In the abstemious county of Hopkins, which we spoke about earlier, Trump obtained 75% of the votes in the last election. According to the local press, the issue of race was decisive in the campaign. 92% of Hopkins' population is white.

The future of the American empire depends less on the rise of China than on the evolution of its “parsimonious civil war”.