Listless, Uninspired and Robotic: Trump's Vision of a "Golden Age of America" Rings Hollow

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/lucian-k-truscott-iv/112736/listless-uninspired-and-robotic-trump-s-vision-of-a-golden-age-of-america-rings-hollow

Listless, Uninspired and Robotic: Trump’s Vision of a “Golden Age of America” Rings Hollow
by Lucian K. Truscott IV | January 21, 2025 - 6:33am

— from Salon

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If you were looking for a theme for the new Trump presidency, he gave us one: “A new golden age of America,” which for me, anyway, invoked images of the Trump Tower lobby’s mix of knick-knacks and 80’s “luxury” writ large. It’s all he can do, really — sell an alleged idea like real estate. It’s the biggest, it’s the tallest, it’s got more floors, it’s the most expensive, it’s got more gold leaf, and as we know from Donald Trump’s past, a likelihood of bankruptcy, therefore, looms.

That’s the problem with bragging: you set expectations so high, there is no possible way to meet them. Ten million deportations? Gone — poof! Drill, baby, drill? The oil companies have already drilled so much we’ve got more than enough oil, and he can’t add to U.S. fossil fuel production without significantly driving down the price of gas and oil and hitting his billionaire donors where it hurts: their wallets.

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The whole thing stank of “you can’t make this up,” because of course it was all completely made up of lies and exaggerations and the grand Trumpian tradition of me me me me me. Someone on MSNBC said the speech stood out because inaugural addresses are supposed to be about the country and what the new president is going to do for its people, but this one was, of course, about one thing and one thing only, and that is Donald Trump.

Thank God he has Air Force One again. That means he’s going to fly off to play a lot of golf. Every day that man spends golfing is a good day for America. The guys he plays golf with need H-1B visas to hire low-cost engineers to run their companies and pad their pocketsful of billions, and the golf courses where he plays need H-2B visas so they can put the gloss of legality on all the undocumented immigrants who mow the fairways and trim the Azaleas and mix the whiskey sours and grill the steaks and swab out the toilets at clubs, many of which still have restrictions on membership of Jews and Blacks and women.

That is the America Donald Trump was talking about this afternoon, the one he wants to take us back to, the America where, like the audience in the Capitol Rotunda, is safely white, coiffed and well-behaved to the point of somnambulance. It's the America in which we will live for the next four years.

Prepare yourself. It’s going to be a long and very dull slog.