Trump’s Rushmore Rant – & American Culture
- Ashok Dhillon
- Jul 10, 2020
- 10 min read
Updated: Jun 3
#339 It is almost 4th of July again, America’s Independence Day, and Donald J. Trump will do what he does best again: ignore the real problems facing the country; play divisive race politics by inciting white supremacy of the Confederacy; display his embarrassing ignorance about America, its history and its culture; and showcase his pitiful delusions of grandeur, by holding a political rally as he did at Mount Rushmore in 2020. There, he preened and posed in vain attempts to look and sound ‘Presidential’ in front of the carved busts of some of America’s greatest former Presidents, with the notable absence of one, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Trump’s fascination with power is well known, and his use of all manner of props to try and project that power borders on the comical - from his over-long ‘Red Power Tie’ (sooo 80’s); to plastering his name on everything he owns, including the helicopter and plane; the tendency towards glitz and exaggeration; his frequent, tasteless and inaccurate pronouncements of his wealth; and of course his multiple trophy wives and playboy-porn-star liaisons. All of these props have just one purpose, self-aggrandizement - and Mount Rushmore was no different.
Trump has always craved power and has always projected himself well beyond his real means. Now, as he grossly mismanaged the corona-virus pandemic, and his image, popularity and re-election prospects sank, he looked for a prop to boost his image, and decided to use the grandeur of the carved busts of former iconic American Presidents, by posing in front of them. The ridiculousness of the posturing is lost only on Trump and his hardcore supporters, but embarrassment and shamelessness has never stopped him before through a life notable for relentless self-promotion, even though riddled with falsehoods, setbacks and failures, as the man is incapable of introspection, and oblivious to the tastelessness, inappropriateness, and ‘un-presidentialness’ of his constant efforts at self-aggrandizement.
This Independence Day, and in the middle of a National Movement protesting historic, entrenched racial and social injustice, Trump chose the site of Mount Rushmore, situated on stolen scared land of the Lakota Sioux, with the busts of Presidents carved by Gotzun Borglum, a son of Danish Immigrants, and a one time high ranking member of the Ku Klux Klan, to rant about the ‘Radical Left’s War’ of ‘Cancel Culture’, and its imagined attacks on the greatness of America’s past history and culture. Apart from the wilful overlooking of the racial and social injustices roiling the country, and choosing the site and topic that enforced the idea of white domination, Trump did this while there is a surging pandemic plaguing America.
His administration’s epic pandemic failures have made ‘America The Most Infected’. The virus has stopped the economy dead; it has decimated jobs; and possibly contributed to the most significant social upheaval since the 1960's, of mass protests against police brutality and historically entrenched racism through the ‘Black Lives Matter’ (BLM) movement. But he ignored all that and focused on inciting division by ranting on the removal of monuments as indicative of a radical left movement to alter America’s history and culture.
As has been pointed out ad-infinitum, removing statues is not rewriting or erasing history, it is simply reassessing the lives of, and the veneration given to, some historical individuals in light of society’s current value systems. Of course, Trump does not care for such accuracies and semantics. His aim was solely to inflame anger and resentment in his core base – encourage the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ – the ‘them’ in this instance being fellow Americans. He stood in front of Mount Rushmore and did his best to incite a civil war, on the country’s Independence Day.
Inevitably, time brings about a re-evaluation of even the most ‘heroic’ (of their time) historical figures. Just like: at one time the Germans had adored Hitler; Italy had Mussolini; Russia had Stalin; and China had their revolutionary leader Mao Zedong. All of these ‘Great Men of History’ have had their positions reassessed to varying degrees in their own countries, as is inevitable in an advancing society. There is nothing wrong in reassessing a historical figure’s past actions in light of current values. Besides, a few (in terms of the general population) historical figures and events are a minor part of a country’s culture; they are - mostly its history.
The problem is that Trump is quite ignorant of America’s history (as he himself confesses, he does not read), and of American culture, of which he has had no interest whatsoever throughout his life. Trump’s and his speech writer’s only concern at the rally was the violent inciting of his ever-smaller hard-core base of like-minded white-supremacists, whose view of American culture is as stunted as his own, and just as colour-blind. Trump inaccurately ranted about the ‘Radical Left’ protesting violently and rampaging through cities (the fact is the protests were massive, across the country, inclusive and mostly peaceful), wanting to erase and destroy America’s great history by destroying the statues of heroes of the past, defacing Mount Rushmore, re-educating children, attacking America’s values, etc., etc. As is with most things Trump, the ‘Mount Rushmore Rant’ was wrong at almost every level.
Trump chose the largely peaceful protests of BLM as proof of the Left’s nefarious intent and attacks (which was false) and completely ignored the reoccurring deaths of unarmed innocent black men at the hands of a segment of callous and brutal police. He also chose to ignore the brutal repression of Black Americans, and the entrenched racism through America’s checkered and blood-soaked history. He and his speech writers chose to ignore the fact that the ‘American values’ that they claim the 'Radical Left’ is attacking, are in fact Liberal America’s values, enshrined in the Constitution - as the right to protest peacefully, the right to equal justice under the law, freedom and equality for all Americans, the freedom of the press, the separation of the State and Religion, etc., etc. In fact, they are all good liberal values of ‘The Left’.
As usual, Trump accused the ‘Radical Left’ of doing that which he and his administration, and his base actually do regularly: Mangling the Constitution; denying the right to protest injustice; denying the entrenched racism, currently and in America’s history; openly advocating and supporting white supremacy; threatening persecution and gun violence against dissenting American’s; attacking freedom of the press and calling the press the ‘enemy of the people’; and toxically mixing religion and politics (all of it very un-American). Their wilful blindness to Constitutional values and their wilful lies to bolster and justify their Constitution-busting actions, also extend to their interpretation of American culture. Their interpretation of ‘culture’ is all that boosts their white supremacist view of America, and in so doing, they ignore the realities of America, especially its famed liberal values, and its true culture.
It is obvious that America’s early culture is considered predominately ‘Western’, meaning English and/or European. That is true, of course, IF one totally ignores the fact that prior to the ‘Western’ people ‘discovering’ America, the indigenous people were already living in ‘America’, and ‘The Americas’ (including the Caribbean, Latin and South America) for thousands of years.
Nevertheless, ignoring the fact that America was home to indigenous people and their culture, as Trump and his supporters believe all things started when the ‘White’ people got to America, there is not much American in the discovery of ‘America’. It was ‘discovered’ by Christopher Columbus, an Italian, sponsored by the Spanish Royalty, his expeditions manned by European crews, and since its discovery, it was colonized by the Spanish, the English, the French, etc. American culture is considered ‘White & Western’. But is it strictly speaking American?
Not really. It’s predominately European. [This exercise is being undertaken to show the superficiality of Trump’s and his supporters’ parochial and narrow-minded view of their ‘America’].
The language most used in America is English, and Trump has considerable trouble with it (bringing to mind Prof. Henry Higgins’ statement from the movie, ‘My Fair Lady’ regarding the use of proper English - ‘in America they haven’t used it for years’). One should note that a Consensus in 2015 listed 350 languages spoken in America by its rather ‘bigly’ diverse immigrant population.
The common American cuisine would be considered European in origin (down to the iconic humble American pie, which is English), but of course in reality it is as diverse as its population, which is from all over the World.
Clothing is generally European - pants, skirts, shirts, coats, ties, hats and boots etc. In fact the most famous iconic bit of perceived ‘American’ clothing is the ‘jeans’, which was invented by the Latvian born, Jewish-American tailor Jacob W. Davis, who partnered with the German-American-Jewish Levi Brothers to mass produce and market them. The word ‘jeans’ comes from the city of Genoa, Italy, and the word ‘denim’ from Nimes, France, two places from where the fabric originated.
America’s most iconic architecture, be it the government buildings in Washington DC, or the plantation mansions of the deep-South, are primarily Greco-Roman-European in style.
America’s religion is considered to be Christianity, primarily, which was imported from Europe.
Early technologies, upon which ‘America’ was eventually built, including agricultural practices and later the mechanization of industry (the Industrial Revolution) were European and English. Capitalism started in North-Western-Europe and England and later was imported to America; and Adam Smith, the father of Modern Economics and Capitalism, was Scottish.
Arms and armament were European, which were only possible after the ‘borrowing’ of the critical technology of ‘gunpowder’ from the Chinese, without which all armies would still be fighting with swords, spears, bows and arrows. After World War II, hundreds of German (some Nazi) scientists were brought over by the US Government to work in America, and were key in helping America develop the nuclear bombs, and the rocket technology that ultimately took American astronauts to the moon (particularly the German scientist Wernher Von Braun, whose knowledge and expertise in rockets was key).
As all of the above ‘culture’ is also generally common to other countries - today, ‘American culture’, as perceived around the World, is more identified with that which is considered more uniquely American, such as its movie and music industries. In that, Hollywood’s influence and predominant position in the world of movies is indisputable, as is America’s music which is blues, jazz, pop, country & western (hillbilly), blue grass, and last but not least, rock & roll, with the exception of classical music, which is of course all European.
Hollywood and the movie business have been overwhelmingly influenced by American Jewish impresarios, as has most of the live theatre industry (such as Broadway). Almost all the influential American composers and musicians, responsible for most of the famous pop music, and musicals, which were known as the ‘American Song Book’, which greatly influenced American life for decades, even to the current times, were almost exclusively Jewish and Black Americans. Therefore, ironically, America’s entertainment industry which is most ‘American’ culturally is also overwhelmingly ‘Left, Liberal, and Democrat’.
It is probably safe to say that hillbilly music, later called country & western, and later yet, just country music, and blue grass, has its roots in European folk music with a hint of blues. But blues, jazz and rock & roll are definitely American to the world’s ears, with of course the obvious origin and influence of African music. Laying that aside for the moment and for the purposes of this commentary, blues, jazz, and rock & roll are about as American as one can define ‘American’, and almost all of it is predominantly Black American (just ask the most iconic British bands of the 1960s, which were all heavily influenced by Black American music, particularly the blues, rhythm & blues, and rock & roll). Even Elvis was most influenced by Black American music, particularly blues, rhythm & blues, and of course gospel. Today, what America is most famous for in the World, is its Black American music. At one time ‘country music’ was possibly the most well known American music around the World, but later it is relatively safe to say that blues, jazz, pop and rock & roll became globally, America’s most famous music. And today, rap and hip-hop are the most influential, and they are indisputably Black American.
So, as much as Trump wants White America to represent the culture of America, it is really the Jewish and Black Americans that have arguably been most influential in creating the true ‘American Culture’, the rest is predominantly European import. In addition, if one looks into the realm of sport, which also dominates so much of American life, again, whether its football, baseball, basketball or track and field, they are extensively influenced by Black Americans, without whom America would not have the level of skills that it has in its professional or Olympics sports, and the global reputation that goes with it.
Everything that Americans are most proud of as American, their capitalist economy, their food, clothing, language and their way of living is all imported, and tweaked to become American.
Immigrants have made America what it is today. What is most uniquely American, the entertainment industry, is primarily the product of Jewish and Black American talents, efforts and ingenuity (ironically those two communities were also the Americans most persecuted, apart from indigenous Americans). They as a people gave America it’s most iconic ‘culture’, and the rest is history. But, what would Trump, the lifelong money and power grubber, know about any of this, he was never interested in ‘American culture’, or any culture for that matter.
All Trump was ever interested in was wealth, fame and power, and he has lied and self-promoted all his life to get to it. But even there, Trump is a minnow when compared to the true titans of American industry; and as President, he is perhaps one of the most reviled in history, within the majority of America, and certainly internationally. His Presidency is a litany of failed efforts from the ‘Wall’, to North Korea, to China, Iran, Afghanistan, and now the COVID-19 pandemic, where America leads the World in infection cases and deaths. He is considered around the World as Putin’s stooge, and every dictator’s ‘groupie’. So yes, Trump could not have won his re-election in 2020 without inciting hate and divisiveness, and pitting Americans against Americans. He certainly tried hard to do that with his Mount Rushmore rant on ‘Cancel Culture’. -
Trump’s Rushmore Rant – & American Culture - July 10, 2020
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