New American Gothic

Make no mistake. This was a gleeful victory celebration for the pair of D.C. comics who currently reside in the White House. At the same moment that the Joker and Catwoman were holding up the human spoils of their Campaign of Cruelty and Fear, ICE agents were terrorizing at least a thousand other children by arresting several hundred of their parents, who were working for low wages at a poultry processing plant in Mississippi.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Trump family had invested in chicken futures that very morning, betting that the price of drumsticks will soon be skyrocketing for the lack of undocumented foreign workers in the nation's factory farms. That, besides their banal celebration of the latest gun mayhem, could have been another cause for their macabre grimaces in this now-iconic photo.

For those of you who haven't been keeping up on the news, the baby in the picture is the orphaned son of two of last week's victims of the Walmart massacre in El Paso, Texas. Little Paul had been released from the hospital before the Trumps' victory tour, but was summoned back for use as a prop after still-admitted patients refused to meet with the couple. The two other adults in the photo are Paul's aunt and uncle, perhaps invited to pose so as to quash speculation that the Trumps might even be applying to adopt or foster the child out of a sense of guilt.

I suppose it could have been worse. Melania could have been wearing the same Mussolini-inspired "I Really Don't Care" jacket she wore on a previous trip to Texas, when she visited incarcerated immigrant children who'd been ripped away from their parents on orders of the Trump administration. At least, unlike many of them, little Paul of El Paso isn't being housed or even trafficked ("placed for adoption") by the for-profit agency owned and run by Education Secretary Betsy De Vos's fundamentalist Christian family foundation.

The El Paso hospital picture is about as close to a maternal statement as Melania is willing to go. She holds the baby in the same way that a newly-crowned beauty queen holds her bouquet of roses. Donald could be giving the triumphant thumbs-up not only to celebrate the victory of Trump-inspired freelance gun violence, but to signal that he's very proud of his wife for winning the Miss MAGA pageant. It's an even greater honor than winning one of his Miss Universe titles, back when he still owned that particular meat market franchise.

At long last, Melania has evolved from mere arm candy to spokeswoman for a fascistic version of feminism. She is so liberated that she gets her own arm candy trophy, in the form of a helpless little baby. 

Luckily, both little Paul and his aunt and uncle are bona fide US citizens in Texas, which until only recently in the history of global imperialism had been part of Spain-invaded Mexico. It was briefly an independent republic before it became a state, post-US invasion/annexation. The shooter who attacked Hispanic-looking people in the El Paso Walmart perhaps was unaware of the historic fact that Texas was populated by Hispanics and Indian aboriginals long before the white folk refugees and migrants (and yes, a few fugitives and criminals) ever took it in to their heads to begin settling there in droves, especially in the 19th century.

The keyword is "Fact." Trump and his post-fascist fellow travelers don't need any stinking facts to arrive at their own special Truths. They abhor facts. Even the  kinder, gentler, and increasingly senile white supremacist presidential contender Joe Biden let the cat out of his own right-wing bag last week when he announced that "We choose truth over facts."

The denial of both present reality and history are tenets of faith in right-wing populism, which according to historian Federico Finchelstein is nothing less than the direct post-World War Two offshoot of the fascist totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, which lost their legitimacy after the Nazi genocide and Allied/Soviet victories. 

Fascism never died. It has simply evolved into new forms. It has always been a worldwide phenomenon, despite the discovery by the corporate media conglomerate that far-right nationalism is a sudden worldwide phenomenon fueled by oligarchs and their think tanks and media outlets. The current form, as exemplified and amplified by Trump and explained by Finchelstein, operates within more or less democratic systems even as it belittles, challenges and damages these same systems. What all the right-wing/post-fascist populist iterations have in common is their devotion to cruelty, their gospel of fear of foreigners (xenophobia), their hatred of the Enlightenment and liberalism, and their strongman-type leaders who purport to act for "the People" and against so-called invaders and elites: the "Anti-People." 

As Finchelstein quotes the late Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, "most abominable of all, they promote idiocy."

The way to fight this idiocy is not, as many Democratic centrists like Biden simplistically propose, a return to the same "moral" neoliberal austerity agendas that helped to bring Trump to power. Coupled with their own cruel and idiotic resistance to policies like Medicare For All, debt forgiveness, guaranteed affordable housing and living wages, their neoliberal program not only ensures the survival of Trumpism, it willingly conspires with Trumpism. It also hastens the death of the planet through polluting militarized capitalism run amok.

Of course, the idiocy exemplified by the baby-holding photo proudly posted by Melania herself is also very cunning, designed as it is to provoke liberal outrage. This mass outrage in its own turn allows the Trumps to portray themselves as the victims, in fake solidarity with the very same left-behind people they oppress with their antisocial policies, but who've been taught to identify with the true oppressors and to direct their hate and fear to immigrants and other powerless manufactured enemies.

This technique is what the late Christopher Hitchens described as "co-opting populism in the service of elitism" in his critique of former Trump pal Bill Clinton.

Centrists falsely conflate Trump's right-wing populism with Bernie Sanders's left-wing populism, which is really nothing more radical than FDR-style liberalism.  New Deal programs have been under relentless duopolistic attack since the end of World War Two. Democrats, using the propaganda of #Russiagate, actually employ the same "Us Vs.Them" rhetoric as Trump and his fellow-travelers. In draining democracy of every last ounce of its emancipatory potential, these centrist technocrats abandon actually-existing people every bit as cruelly and effectively do their right-wing Republican counterparts. 

All they have to offer us are the grimaces frozen on their faces. They put the dental back in presidential. What is modern electoral politics, after all, but the shiny veneer covering up all the rot?