High Noon: Trump, Harris and America on the Brink by Don Watson

Author:Don Watson [Watson, Don]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Inc.
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The crowd chanted, “We love Trump,” as he took his seat. UFC wrestlers fight behind a wire fence. The spectacle could not be less like the old WrestleMania. It is ugly and bloody. In the front row, Trump leaned forward as one man pulled his opponent’s arm out of its socket. Later as the dislocator left the ring, Trump pulled him in close for a few words. He stood and pumped his fist, and they shouted – as they do – “USA! USA!” As he left, they played Kid Rock’s “American Bad Ass.”

I went up the escalator that Trump rode down on 16 June 2015 when he declared he was running for president. Steve Bannon, who became his campaign chair, said the moment reminded him of the opening sequence in Leni Riefenstahl’s film Triumph of the Will. “That’s Hitler!” he thought.

Triumph of the Will begins with a plane – we’re to believe the Führer is aboard – descending through the clouds to the towers of Nuremburg, where his followers wait in orderly but tremulous arousal. It’s a reasonable presumption that anyone who sees a connection between the film’s portrayal of Hitler descending like the saviour from Teutonic heaven and Trump’s ride down the escalator is unmoored. But the film’s ethereal opening might capture something of the “spiritual” or “religious” sensation Trump rally-goers seem to experience. And it is true that during the 2016 campaign, a suspicion of Riefenstahl – if not of Hitler – surfaced every time the Trump helicopter descended and Trump strode from it to greet his fans.

Early in July, Steve Bannon gave an interview to David Brooks, the New York Times columnist who describes himself as a “classical liberal,” though he might just as well be called an embarrassed Republican (or anachronism). Bannon is a right-wing revolutionary, who claims to be influenced by an unlikely variety of writers, from Christopher Lasch to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. When he spoke to Brooks, he was about to begin a four-month jail sentence for not complying with a subpoena from the House Committee investigating January 6 at the Capitol. He was outwardly unconcerned. What sort of revolutionary isn’t prepared to go to jail? Even if it’s only four months, and the low-security establishment he’ll be held in is not exactly Devil’s Island.

“The left didn’t have what it took because of the cultural issues and the issues of race,” Bannon said. “All that madness that they’re embedded in. They had to have open borders. They had to have D.E.I. [diversity, equity and inclusion] … They don’t understand that the MAGA movement, as it gets momentum and builds, is moving much farther to the right than President Trump. They will look back fondly at Donald Trump. They’ll ask: Where’s Trump when we need him?”

Bannon reminded Brooks that MAGA had done three things that had never been done before. It removed a sitting House speaker for the first time in history. It removed Mitch McConnell, the “most powerful Republican … in fifty years.” Then it removed “the entire RNC.

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