It’s always been obvious that because Trump doesn’t really understand anything and has no capacity to learn that he simply adopted the strategy of reversing everything his political predecessors ever did in order to appear to have an energetic positive agenda. I’ve always been surprised that there wasn’t more comment on this.
This analysis by Peter Baker takes a deeper look at this phenomenon in the context of this second term’s wrecking ball:
Fluoride was introduced into drinking water starting in 1945. The flu vaccine was first made available to the general public a year later. Fuel efficiency standards for cars were adopted in 1975.
Such innovations long ago became stitched into the fabric of American life, largely accepted by most Americans who came to rely on them or gave them little thought. That is, until President Trump and his team came along and began methodically rolling back widespread practices and dismantling long-established institutions.
It should come as no surprise that Mr. Trump would try to undo much of what President Joseph R. Biden Jr. did over the past four years. What is so striking in Mr. Trump’s second term is how much he is trying to undo changes that happened years and even decades before that. At times, it seems as if he is trying to repeal much of the 20th century.
Baker attributes this to Trumpian nostalgia for the world of his youth and a hazy belief that America was at its peak in the 19th century and I agree that’s part of it. Trump never really developed intellectually and clings to ideas that came to him 40 to 60 years ago. Some fragment he learned in high school or a segment he watched on Larry King in 1989 form the entire basis of his understanding of how the world works.
But I think it’s clear that as president he’s developed a shorthand for making decisions which simply comes down to: whatever they did, I will do the opposite. It’s the laziest possible way to make decisions and perfect for someone with a mind like Trump’s — all ego, no intellect.
The good news for him is that his henchmen and accomplices in 2.0 have long wanted to do exactly what he’s doing — reverse everything Democrats have done for the past 80 years or so. (And quite a bit of what Republicans have done as well.) But they have a real vision for the future as well, something that Trump only vaguely sees as a restoration of some Leave it to Beaver fantasy.
There are the tech-bros wanting to create an AI Valhalla on earth, the racist hatemongers wanting to rid the country of immigrants and put Black Americans back in the back of the bus, the “Christians” who want to dominate the country with their throwback, fundamentalist, patriarchy just to name a few examples. What they all have in common is a belief that the nation as we’ve known it must be blown to smithereens so that their enemies can never rebuild it the way it was.
That’s the project. Trump is just their tool. As he babbles about “the golden age of Trump” and fiddles with the White House rose garden, his minions hand him the royal edicts to sign that will make their dreams come true.
