America Is Naked

Is Donald Trump a departure from the American mainstream, or is he the mainstream itself? Is he the destroyer of the “liberal, rules-based international order,” or is he an iconoclast exposing the system’s true nature? Trump won, and how America will appear now remains a big question. Will it show itself as it really is, or will it again be obscured behind a veil?

Political elites of the entrenched American establishment — the “Deep State,” as Trump refers to it — hate Trump. These political elites are of both parties. Although they may seem separate, the two parties comprise a “single party” which is anti-Trump. The reason behind this party’s hatred for Trump is that he acts as as a mirror for America, exposing an image of the nation that the “single party” doesn’t want anyone to see. The “single party” isn’t pleased at the idea that anyone will reveal its real face.

In the well-known fable, a king orders the tailors in his kingdom to craft him a set of unparalleled new clothes. At first, none of their designs please him. Finally, a crafty artisan convinces the king that he’s sewn the most magnificent clothes of all. In reality, there are no clothes, but the king’s entourage agrees that the new garments are indeed without parallel. The king proceeds to appear naked before the people. A child, still without any fear, blurts out the truth, saying, “The king has no clothes.” This is what Trump has done to “single party America,” and this is why he’s earned their hatred.

America wants everyone to believe that it is an “exceptional nation,” that if it weren’t for America, everything would take a turn for the worse, and that as such, the United States is indispensable. As patron of the liberal, rules-based international order, America’s continued occupation of the top spot is to world's benefit. There’s good and bad on earth: The bad might change, but America is always good. This is how America’s gears turn. The American mainstream media are the foot soldiers of this fiction. Their duty is to ensure the world sees everything through an American lens. This illusion forms a blindfold, for their own people first, and then for the people of other nations. It’s a fictitious, deceptive, underhanded system.

However, this fiction, running in parallel with globalization, has ultimately brought America great harm. It’s like a film with high production value but low box office sales. Neoliberal globalization, rising as a unifying theme, has resulted in “crumbling globalization.” Economically, politically, culturally, morally — in every sense — everyone is falling apart, America is falling apart, Europe is falling apart.

Globalization’s explosive wave of destruction affects everyone somehow or another. For Trump supporters, it has cost the U.S. the emergence of a rising China as a peer. The U.S. wants no peers; everyone else should be smaller. Globalization was attractive while everyone else was small, now it’s unseemly. Welcome to Trump’s world of a “Great America” and “small states.”

In an article published in Washington-based journal The Atlantic on Dec. 4, 2024 titled “America’s Lonely Future: What Happens When the Nation Takes a Zero-Sum Approach to the World,” David Frum argued just how bad Trump is for Americans and the world.

Frum, a neoconservative Republican, asserts that Trump is the first U.S. president to reject the world view shaped by the Great Depression, World War II and the Cold War. Trump’s second coming is the rejection of an outlook that sees the U.S. as the generous protector of the liberal world order and “the center of a network of international cooperation — not only on trade and defense, but on environmental concerns, law enforcement, financial regulation, food and drug safety, and countless other issues.” In other words, Trump is an enemy to everything people consider American. And to Trump, everything people consider American is an expensive fraud.

America’s facilitation of Israel’s genocide in Palestine exposed what the supposed liberal, rules-based world order really is. Due to U.S. vetoes, the international legal system -– including the United Nations — has been unable to prevent Israel from committing genocide. With its unconditional support of Israel, the U.S. showed that there are exceptions to international law. While doing all this, it tried to simultaneously broadcast the image that it placed great importance on humanitarian law.

In Trump’s view, America has no need to hide behind costly liberal dogmas. America is powerful enough to take whatever it wants, however it wants. Neither U.S. rivals nor U.S. allies should benefit from these dogmas for free — they should pay their share. Trump is America unmasked. He is the product of 250 years of American political culture. There is nothing unnatural about America, in its rawest form, appearing as Trump.