YES, he’s back. And his second inaugural address, uncharacteristically mild in its delivery but predictably vile in much of its content, served as partial reminder of what the next four years portend for the United States and its imperial interests.
Last November, Donald Trump became the first contender since Grover Cleveland in the 19th century to score non-consecutive presidential victories.
Much of the blame for this twin atrocity can be attributed to the Obama and Biden administrations, which respectively facilitated his ascendancy by clinging to neoliberal imperatives in the wake of the global financial crisis, and then failed to learn lessons from their 2016 follies to avert a second coming.
In his farewell speech, Joe Biden sought to echo Dwight Eisenhower’s famous diatribe against the power of the military-industrial complex by verbally targeting the tech oligarchs.
In both cases, however, the question would be: if you were so perturbed by these phenomena, why did you not do anything about them while you held power?
Without directly taking credit, Trump on Monday mentioned in passing the previous day’s ceasefire in Gaza, citing the release of hostages as an achievement. It is widely accepted that pressure from the incoming US administration was crucial to sealing the deal. And anyone with an ounce of humanity can only welcome the halt of daily Israeli military killing sprees and the possible suspension of barriers to aid that are believed to have claimed upwards of 70,000 lives in 15 months, mainly those of women and children.
The ceasefire is to be welcomed, even though Benjamin Netanyahu has pretty much declared that it will only be temporary. The second phase of the truce, scheduled after 40 days, remains a tentative prospect.
Meanwhile, in his guise as a property magnate, Trump sees the rubble in Gaza as a positive prospect. He also remains dedicated to a Saudi-Israeli deal as a key supplement to the Abraham Accords achieved in his previous stint, but he may well be less invested in the token nod to a now passé ‘two-state solution’ that Riyadh might feel obliged to insist upon as a quid pro quo.
Here comes the beginning. And possibly the end.
Trump’s incoming oratory was clearly intended to insult his immediate predecessor, seated nearby (Donald did not bother to turn up when Joe took the oath four years ago), and other ex-presidents present. To her credit, Michelle Obama chose not to accompany her disappointing husband. And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez refused to “celebrate a rapist”.
Trump hasn’t been criminally convicted on that particular charge, although his predilections are hardly a secret. Among his claims to fame is the fact that a felon has returned to the White House in a country where many of those convicted on similar charges aren’t allowed to vote even after they have served their prison sentences. Most of the more serious cases against Trump were abandoned after his election, but the charge of paying hush money to Stormy Daniels stuck, and guilt was established even though no penalties were pronounced.
This character is now the chief executive of the most powerful nation the world has ever known, accompanied by a bunch of equally immoral underlings attracted from Fox News or the US Congress.
On the very first day of his inevitably blighted leadership, Trump has cracked down on ‘undocumented’ immigrants (some of whom have been in the US for decades, contributing to its blighted economy). He has declared an emergency on the southern border, as well as an energy emergency that involves drilling for more oil and gas. The associated contributions to the climate catastrophe are both incalculable and unmentioned, even though Los Angeles is still smouldering.
There’s much more, of course — including a pledge to take back the Panama Canal, and to rename the Gulf of Mexico after the biggest bully in the region. Greenland and Canada were not in this instance mentioned as targets of expansion, but Elon Musk erupted in extraterrestrial joy when Trump brought up the idea of planting the Stars and Stripes on Mars.
It remains to be seen whether that, and several other tall claims by Trump, reach fruition, but presidential pardons have flowed freely from both the outgoing and incoming presidents, focusing on the Biden family and associates in the first case, and Jan 6, 2021 culprits, who sought to thwart democracy, in the second.
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity,” William Butler Yeats warned more than a century ago. Like many other alerts, it has gone unheeded.
What Trump failed to fit into scripted speech went into the longer and typically bizarre extempore peroration in the overflow room at the inauguration. He won’t come to his senses because he doesn’t have any. And what tomorrow may bring for the US and the world remains unwritten.
Published in Dawn, January 22nd, 2025
Leave a Reply