Wealth, Glamour, And Fame - The Soggy Dream Of Diversity Is Done And Gone And America Is Back

There has never been anything shy about Donald Trump, a man of fame, fortune, glitz, and glamour.  A man of Hollywood, Las Vegas runways, and New York.  A tummler, a vaudevillian, squire of starlets, lover of beauty, display, and excess.  The first truly American president, a middle-brow aficionado of junk food, flashy cars, and showy women - a man like the rest  of us. 

Of course his arrival in Washington upset the applecart. Kamala Harris, a woman of color who represented diversity, equity, and inclusivity, the new America, the collaborative, congenial, communal America was supposed to be in the Oval Office, not this lowlife buffoon and his coterie of Barbies. 

Black and brown people were to have filled the seats of government.  The disabled, the sexually different, the forgotten, and the misbegotten were to be in residence, representing the vast, multifaceted American plurality. 

Progressives watched the transformation of the White House - going from a convention of the many into a cabal of the few - white, straight, and wealthy; patriotic, optimistic about America, and enthusiastic about everything.  Naysayers could only feel dismay, anger, and frustration.  It wasn't supposed to turn out this way.

'This way', however, was a chimera, a dreamworld of fanciful idealism.  As in Australian aboriginal culture, when a dream was dreamed, it would become reality. This one did not. All it took was one man, the new President of the United States to say, 'bullshit', to defrock, unclothe, and bare the chicanery.  

America, despite the howling blandishments of the Left was not a satanic place and was far from the racist, selfish, and dismissive country pictured.  It was a shining city on a hill, the beacon of prosperity, ambition, and exceptionalism.

 

More importantly it was the crass, bourgeois, middle-brow, graspy country the French had always suspected. America had no storied history, no imperial past, no cultural preeminence, no foundational glory.  It was a nation of rubes, bass boats, gunracks, malls, fast food, plus sizes, and all the glitz and glamour any one country could manage.  

There was nothing sophisticated about it, no inherited royalty, no kings and courtiers. Only a safe harbor Chippendale elite, a Rittenhouse Square, Vineyard, and second home in Biarritz faux aristocracy. 

The real America was Walmart - not a metaphor for American life but the real thing.  Shopping there was not just for value but for belonging.  We The People felt at home with greeters, aisles of everything under the sun.  It felt good and comfortable to be in a place of prosperity and plenty, not just in fabled political folklore.  

Diversity?  Who wants anything to do with the inner city, a vile place of irresponsibility and dysfunction? Or migrant farm workers? Or fey gay men and tough girl Bernal Heights bitches? Nobody. 

Donald Trump is what Americans want. They want his arm candy, his yachts, his mansions, his estate at Mar-a-Lago, his billions, his silk suits, his pure, unalloyed Americanism.  Decades ago Americans were enthralled by Camelot, the Kennedy White House, that sophisticated, Robert Frost, Pablo Casals, high-toned, gracious imitation of European taste and culture; but that was from watching too many Edwardian soap operas, tantalized by something so far out of reach that it was adored.  No one from Biloxi or Ames would ever have the interest or patience to sit through a Casals cello concerto or tear up over a Puccini aria. 

The Trump White House is a Bible-thumping, flag-waving raucous jamboree of white America.  Everything resonates with his constituency.  When Elon Musk ransacked the bureaucracy, shut the doors of the most irrelevant and wasteful agencies and sent their minions packing, Americans cheered.  The DOGE priority was not simply to reduce the size of government, but to make a point - individualism, free enterprise, the spirt of the Old West, the captains of industry, and the good burghers of the prairie were back. 

Populism, the political philosophy of Donald Trump, has a particularly middlebrow cast.  It isn't so much that 'ordinary' Americans are given their due, brought more fully into the socio-economic mainstream, listened to and acknowledged; but that popular culture itself is acknowledged as the American way.

America has always been a soap opera country, and for years the arrogated coastal elites have sneered.  Yet the best of these serial dramas are no different from the plays of Tennessee Williams.  They both deal with jealousy, envy, pride, ambition, vengeance, love, and coruscating hate.  

The best Turkish soap operas are masterpieces of plot, characterization, setting, environment and suspense.  Because of their form and their familiarity, they are relegated as low culture, but they are nothing of the sort.  They are simply easy ways into ordinary lives. 

There is nothing to be ashamed of, says Trump, about these simple preferences and pleasures.  Our nation was borne of simple people with simple tastes and modest ambitions, so why should it be any different now?

As far as the yachts, arm candy, glitz and glamour are concerned? The out-of-reach desirables of the masses?  Of course they are part of the bargain.  One may be living a flour sack, trailer trash life, but without the miraculous possibility of diamonds as big as the Ritz, where would we all be?

'They are Americans, too', insist progressives who have spent their lives trying to create little enclaves of diversity in an otherwise uniform country - one with a universal ethos, respect for the past, patriotic, and proud.  Yet the street culture of the ghetto, so limned and championed by the Left as a vital expression of the black experience, is an antisocial miasma.  There is no harmony or good will there. 

The old Italians, Irish, Poles, and Jews who came to America a hundred years ago quickly embraced the ethos of their new country, became populist Americans quickly and easily, lost their accents, attitudes, and assumptions.  The pasta, kielbasa, latkes, and Guinness remained, but they were Americans to the core.  They wanted yachts, arm candy, mansions, and wealth like everybody else. 

Diversity is one big chimera - a false notion, a sham, an overblown political fantasy.  No country has championed divisiveness, and all have encouraged integration, cultural solidarity and patriotism.  The strength of nations has nothing to do with race, gender, or ethnicity. 

So, accept the inevitable - America is, was, and always be a bourgeois, middle-brow country, proud of its populism and simple tastes.  Let newcomers fold into this soft, welcoming, fabric, not remain separate, angry, and resentful.