Trump IS America
And it’s all your fault.
Donald Trump is exactly how us Europeans see the United States and Americans. That’s how we’ve seen them for decades. It’s like how old money sees new money. As an exaggeration of the American stereotypes, he’s just the kind of gold-plated plastic yahoo we love to belittle and laugh at. The king idiot. The blind leading the blind. Perhaps Americans don’t deserve the stereotypes, but perhaps they do. Let me explain.
The 20th was the American century. The United States won two World Wars, rose from a depression to become an economic power unlike anything in history, built a military so strong it defies belief and created an entertainment industry so powerful, that just about everyone in the industrialized world feels a little bit American. Their economic, military, cultural and political power is unrivaled by any empire in the history of mankind.
So, as the previous Masters of the Universe, us Europeans have had a bit of an inferiority complex. Our continent was destroyed twice in three decades, our economies fell and our influence dwindled as the last of the colonies gained independence. Europe, even united as one, became secondary to the power of the United States. After JFK and the moon landing the US was on the top of the world. But things were changing. After the Vietnam war, Nixon, The Simpsons and an endless barrage of sitcoms, Chuck Norris movies and fast food franchises, the image of the United States had severely deteriorated in the first world.
I was born in the mid-80s and despite my country being in the less desirable end of the European sophistication spectrum, I grew up in a world where we could still look at America and guffaw at their uncivilized antics like we were in the House of Lords.
What made us Europeans feel better about ourselves, being the lesser power of the West, was our feeling of cultural and intellectual superiority. I was born in the mid-80s and despite my country being in the less desirable end of the European sophistication spectrum, I grew up in a world where we could still look at America and guffaw at their uncivilized antics like we were in the House of Lords. This stereotype, we thought, may not have been entirely accurate, but that was the image the US portrayed of themselves. So the stereotype remained well into the 2000s.
Electing Obama almost crushed that stereotype. Maybe Americans aren’t who we thought they were. Maybe they could still be the beacon of liberty and progress they were in the 50s and 60s. At least one could think like that if they weren’t following American politics very closely. American backpackers around Europe took off the maple leaf patches on their jackets and snotty Frenchmen stopped accosting tourists about illegal wars and enhanced interrogation. America, it seemed, was getting its groove back. At least that’s how it seemed in Europe, where most of us weren’t following what was happening with American voter ID laws, local government, gerrymandering, congressional gridlock and the decline of the educational system. And even if one was following, Obama was still president and the movies and TV-shows coming from America seemed progressive.
Then, Trump started winning primaries and the old stereotypes came flooding back like pent-up emotions in a vicious argument. As Trump moved from victory to victory, it became clear to us that America was precisely who we thought they were, before Obama showed up with his cheekbones and his charisma and his suits that fit.
Trump is like an American sports car: his money and fame are the powerful, yet inefficient gas-guzzling engine that propels his rattling, brightly colored, plastic body fast on the straights and slow in the bends.
Trump embodies the American stereotypes: stupid, fat, loud, obnoxious, selfish, narcissistic, obsessed with money and fame and lacking any sense of style, class or sophistication. He objectifies women, bullies the weak, eats his steaks well-done and watches too much television. Trump is like an American sports car: his money and fame are the powerful, yet inefficient gas-guzzling engine that propels his rattling, brightly colored, plastic body fast on the straights and slow in the bends. His tan is fake, his teeth are bleached, his clothes don’t fit and his hair is ridiculous. His vocabulary is, to put it mildly, limited. He needs to be the best at everything all of the time and even when he fails miserably he claims it as a victory. He’s so preoccupied by his public image and his own precious feelings, that nothing else seems to matter to him at all. He’s obsessed with business, with buying and selling and making deals. He’s in love with tacky, tasteless interiors in the gaudy monstrosities of buildings he has the gall to slap his stupid name onto. Even his name is an obnoxious and unrefined American stereotype. Trump. Trump card. Trumped by Trump. Trump that bitch. A singe-syllable, abruptly ending fart noise that somehow manages to say “I’m the fucking best” while still being absolute shit.
Since I’m screaming in an echo chamber and I’m sure no Trump supporters will ever read this, I’d like to say something to any liberal Americans still reading. You’re complicit. So am I, probably, even as a European. With every episode of Honey Boo-Boo and Real Housewives we watch, with every McDonald’s meal we scarf down, with every Corvette and well-done steak we buy and every time we say shit like “he’s stupid and horrible but he’s entertaining”, we’re a little bit more complicit in the ongoing decline of the very idea of America.
Trump is a personification of how the rest of the world sees America and a concentration of negative stereotypes about Americans. He’s not new and neither are the stereotypes. You can’t blame the Russians for that.
