Trump, the insecure

His slogan of making America great again only names his fears and disconnect with the world

THE CENTRAL THEME of Donald Trump’s campaign, his inaugural address and his actions since assuming the presidency is to Make America Great Again. When politicians speak of greatness, they usually mean power. They tend to speak of it with persistence precisely when they have a sense of losing power. Sometimes it is nostalgia for a lost self; sometimes it is for lost privileges. This was true of the British in the later stages of their empire. They built their imposing imperial monuments, like the Viceregal Lodge, following the First World War, when the end of the empire was clearly fated. The wall Trumps wants to build on America’s southern border, if built, will be the product of the same great anxiety and the same sense of loss.

One of the things that was remarkable about Mahatma Gandhi is that he was never drawn to the thought that the nation had to be great. It was part of his objection to the British Empire. By the 20th century, it could not imagine itself as anything other than great. It projected itself in self-aggrandising hyperbolic terms, which critics like George Orwell and E.M. Forster recognised as increasingly hollow. Gandhi did not wish nationalists in India to be enamoured of this form of identity. He wanted a politics that operated in a lower key, whose rhythms, as it were, could be expressed on the veena and which did not require the thunder of marching bands.

Trump’s version of greatness, like most others, needs to mount itself on the backs of internal and external enemies, who, in this case, are mostly figments of an again anxious imagination — Mexicans, immigrants, Muslims and people from selected countries with sizeable Muslim populations. None of these are real threats to America. Trump may not be a deep racist, sexist or xenophobe — because it is difficult to tell what is deep in him — though there is certainly evidence enough to suggest that he is drawn to all these things. But the aspiration to greatness makes him focus on these groups. That is why talk about making America great is so dangerous.

It relies on simple and pernicious distinctions.