Trump’s new culture war sounds a lot like his old one
But Trump rolls on with his culture war, a strategy he has chosen to take as two unforeseen crises weigh on his reelection efforts: the coronavirus pandemic and the national uprising of racial reckoning after the video-recorded death of a Black man, George Floyd, with his neck under a Minneapolis police officer’s knee.
Trump lost his initial polling bump after the pandemic began when he talked too long at daily briefings and let the real experts talk too little. He finally stopped holding the daily briefings but continued to give out information that was contradictory or downright false, such as his recent insistence that “99%” of virus cases are “totally harmless.” I wish.
Similarly, his belligerent, militaristic approach to the mostly peaceful protests over police conduct has inflamed more than it has eased public anxieties.
So, as his July 3 speech at Mount Rushmore signaled, he has fallen back into his comfort zone, which is to make other people uncomfortable.
“In our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance,” he claimed. “Make no mistake: this left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution.”
Mercy! Who, I want to know, has been in charge of our great country’s government while this horrendous assault was going on?
Oh.
To many of us longtime observers, it sounded like a rehash of his “American Carnage” inauguration address, an exposition of dystopian horrors that didn’t sound to me like our “Land of the Free.”
But it rang true to many who, quite legitimately, chose Trump because they felt betrayed or left behind by both parties. Only Trump seemed to be talking candidly about the issues they really cared about: immigration, opioid addiction and the declining status of lesser-educated white men, just for starters.
Regardless of their color, I sympathize with those for whom our system has failed. Unfortunately, President Trump now appears to be failing them too. Instead, he is reviving culture war tropes as if he were still running against an incumbent who was not himself.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
(c) 2020 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
