There is howling in the streets. Or is it rapture? The messiah has been resurrected. He has seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Visions of immense destruction, the Four Horsemen galloping across the horizon, across the Mexican border to be sure, fire and fury ravaging the land. He gazed into the abyss, the abyss thus gazed into him.
Phantoms swarm as the dull thumping of YMCA by the Village People echoes around the valley through which he travels; his destination – the Capitol. His caravan of followers rattles behind, zealously brandishing their red caps for all to see. They can see the light too; they have been chosen. He is draped in these celestial white robes, barring a red tie which is taut around the sagging flesh of his neck. The whiteness of these robes, two sizes too small, are interspersed with patches of damp, sweaty orange, and a distinct odour, that of chip fat, or ‘Trump victory cologne’, follows his trail. He is an elderly figure, liver-spotted hands, a slight limp in his gait. He has returned to save his people from the coming darkness. “Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war. (aside) They’re great dogs, let me tell you, probably the greatest ever.”
The second coming of Trump is upon us, there’s no doubt about that. In what will be known in the history books as the beginning of the end of the USA as we know it, the convicted felon re-enters the White House this week. The inauguration took place with all the ceremony of a cremation, festooned with all the trappings of a dying Republic. The billionaire oligarchs took the front seats, out of the shadows: Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and co., still as reptiles, salivating, forked tongues occasionally flickering, eyes agog. Joe Biden showed face, duly hummed along, cognitively unaware of events, unable to fathom a legacy now shattered. He sat alongside his fellow grandees, the political elite, the high and mighty, each of whom, in their own way, contributed to this sordid spectacle. The Trump familial coterie turned out too, freshly botoxed, ready to go again. This inauguration was lots of white, ever so shiny teeth, smiles all round, feverish sycophancy. These people are genuinely startling.
The orange-complexioned man at the centre of events seemed uncharacteristically morose given the circumstances, as he grumbled on about the greatness in store, his lower jaw hanging for prolonged periods: control of the Panama Canal, "a lot of action" on the January 6 prosecutions, regressive hardline immigration policies, renaming the Gulf of Mexico, renewed oil drilling, the death knell of climate action. All of this took place in the same room which four years before was being ransacked by horned insurrectionists drunk on anarchy. This wasn’t so much an inaugural address as it was the mumblings of someone who appeared quite bored and, at times, robotic. Here he was, sticking to the script, repressing the urge to roll out the greatest hits, to ad lib his way into an armed conflict, emit a tirade on China, tolerating within himself the little man making guttural noises and rude gestures towards his lined-up predecessors. In terms of content, there was a level of policy detail to what was being said which was absent from the 2017 inauguration. Last time, the whole four-year affair was very much smoke and mirrors; mudslinging machinations which portrayed an elite level of incompetence. This time it could be very different; the dress rehearsal is over. Despite the dancing buffoonery and the parodical third-person narration which defined much of Trump’s campaign, there is now coupled to this thing an understanding of the American bureaucracy which has dangerous potential.
Whilst it is too early to assess the extent that Trump is willing to go in pursuit of immortality (or is it?), the evidence thus far suggests he is very much up for the fight. Of course, this is a war which will naturally involve the ‘deep state’, hordes of vampires and cannibals; these guys won’t be pushovers, far from it. The new official portrait released this week emits the same macho ‘fight, fight, fight!’ energy, albeit, equally, the sceptical glare of a man scrutinising his makeup in the mirror. The political reality is that Trump has achieved the significant feat of having won all of the presidency, senate and congress – the so-called ‘governing trifecta’. In addition, unlike some of his immediate Democrat predecessors, he also has a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. This power is real. These are the kind of tropical conditions which allow authoritarianism to flourish.
Ultimately this thing ends in embalming fluid and a gold-encrusted mausoleum at Mar-a-Lago, amidst the accompanying wildfire. There will be a gaping void when this blonde wig departs the stage; there always is with these cult of personality figures. Just take Stalin, Mao etc. The power struggle for succession is already afoot. It is the richest person in the world, Elon Musk, who is positioning himself adjacent to Trump, throwing out verbal hand grenades from his Cybertruck. His existence constitutes that of a hungry parasite, gorging on hate and bigotry from behind the keyboard. Following the inauguration, he was accused of directing a Sieg Heil salute towards supporters; he responded by calling the criticism a “tired” attack. Brandishing these kinds of obscene credentials will go far in a working environment like this one. Blooded under Peter Thiel and the high priests of Silicon Valley, Vice President JD Vance constitutes another possible candidate who meets the criteria: white, male, wealthy, amoral. Of course, we can’t forget the family men either – this is, after all, a mob enterprise. Other nutters will emerge out of the woodwork when the time comes.
Maybe this is what happens when you take the idea of America to its extreme point. Maybe Donald Trump is the culmination, the inevitable narcissistic climax, of a story which has been carved around the notion of the radical, sovereign individual who changes the world on his own. At its foundations there exists a religious fervour in America, supplemented by the thermodynamics of a rapacious capitalism and stained by the blood of genocide and mass expropriation. These are the constituent parts, the raw materials of a national identity that cannot abide its own past, cannot abide its decline. These susceptibilities allow someone like Trump to stake a claim, assert his own truth, one which is immersed within the collective hysteria of a notion of exceptionalism that, in reality, no longer exists.
Bringing this up to 2025, maybe this is the endemic which follows forty years of neoliberal doctrine, its path dependency, sifting and pilfering every layer of the social fabric, attaining its hegemonic aspect, uninhibited. Maybe this is what happens when wealth becomes concentrated in too few hands, when inequality reaches its fever pitch; messiahs take to the stage promising salvation, a vengeful Captain Ahab takes the helm. Maybe this is how fascism comes into existence. Only time will tell.
