5 Things Trump Made Great Again

medium119309390A two-month stocktaking of Trump’s second presidency may be the only way to assess both the caterwauling and crowing over alleged new lows and dizzying highs since Trump became US president for a second time.Five line-items from Trump 2.0’s performance review that have indisputably been made great again, for good or ill.Nepo babies & kings | Notice that in the past month, Zelenskyy has secured an audience with two European monarchs, Charles III of Britain and Philippe, king of the Belgians. Zelenskyy has met both Charles and Philippe before, in the three years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. However, the recent royal audiences were different.They came within days of Zelenskyy being despatched from White House “like a stable boy”, to use French senator Claude Malhuret’s blunt words to describe the globally televised Oval Office humiliation of Ukraine’s president by Trump. Time was when mediaeval kings performed the laying on of hands for commoners, in an act believed to cure disease. Now, a grip-and-grin for the cameras is meant to serve as balm for wounded dignity.Then there was that mock-up of a Time magazine cover. Released by White House, it showed a golden crown on Trump’s head and bore the ebullient words “Long live the king”. Opinions varied on what it all meant. Was it a tease, a way to rile up the solemn brigade that believes in rule of law and that fusty thing called the Constitution of the US republic? Or was it a nudge to America to bow down before the glory and majesty of its very own sun king? Whatever the intention, Trump has given ballast to a system specialised in nepo babies. After all, a hereditary monarchy is a genealogical lottery that doesn’t require merit.Trump or not, monarchy may be coming back into fashion anyway despite appearing to have run its course at the end of the last century. How else to interpret growing support in Nepal for the restoration of its 240-year-old monarchy?Pride in Europe | Not PIE (in the sky) but chest-thumping, tank-building talk from countries across the continent, no matter whether they are in, out or never joined EU. Even neutral Switzerland is to have a new defence minister who’ll draft the country’s first national security strategy and who advocates more defence cooperation with the Nato military alliance and EU.Norway, which twice voted ‘no’ — in 1972 and 1994 — to joining the supranational organisation, is now eyeing EU with favour. And Britain is inching closer to the bloc it narrowly voted to leave in 2016, formally exited in 2020 and which its politicians have reviled for the greater part of the last decade.Europe is racing to provide itself with conventional and nuclear cover as it digests the bitter bolus spat out by Trump’s America — you’re on your own.Risk of nuclear Armageddon | From Warsaw to Seoul, dependence on Washington is increasingly seen as a weakness by countries that put their security in US hands since 1945. This has triggered a charged debate, as in South Korea and Poland, over domestic development of nuclear weapons. France’s Macron has said he’ll ask European allies about including them under the French nuclear umbrella.In Poland, domestic political divides have literally gone nuclear, in public. President Andrzej Duda has pooh-poohed PM Donald Tusk’s suggestion that “profound change of American geopolitics” requires the country to develop its own arsenal. It would “take decades”, says Duda, who is supreme commander of Poland’s armed forces.Duda was appointed by the RW opposition PiS party and has vetoed much of Tusk’s reform agenda but he does agree with Tusk on the need for some nuclear protection should Russia emerge stronger from Ukraine peace negotiations brokered by Trump. Duda recently called for US to transfer nuclear weapons to Polish territory as a deterrent against Russia. However, JD Vance has said he would be “shocked” if that happened.Beards pooh pooh Trump | Trump is said to detest facial fungus in others (even hesitating over whether to pick the hirsute Vance as his running mate) but he presides over a country that’s increasingly embracing the beard. His cabinet is a case in point: Vance, who became the first bearded VP since 1909; commerce secretary Howard Lutnick; FBI director Kash Patel and Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr.In Feb, New York Yankees stunned American major league baseball when it ended a strict nearly 50-year ban on beards. There’s a growing perception that beards are markers of power, or at least a more masculine projection of it. What may not please Trumpworld is the realisation that Americans can’t compete with the Canadian record for the living male with the longest beard — one Sarwan Singh of British Columbia.‘Patrimonialism’ & writers like Octavia E Butler | Political scientist Francis Fukuyama is one of several thinkers reviving the term “patrimonial” to describe ongoing attempts to take the American state back to a pre-modern era. Then, govt was an extension of the ruler’s household and resources were distributed at will to family, friends and allies.Two 1990s novels by late science fiction writer Octavia E Butler are being read with feverish enthusiasm because they’re uncannily prophetic about this moment in time. The first, set in Los Angeles in 2025, shows a world reeling from effects of climate change and deadly fires. The second, set in US of 2032, shows a country run by Christian fundamentalists, while the president touts a MAGA slogan as well as an agenda to return America to a golden age.