Church ... family ... police ... military ... the national anthem ... Trump trying to call on all the tropes of 1950s-era nationalism. The goal of this speech appears to be to force the normalization of Trump on the terms of the bygone era his supporters are nostalgic for. #SOTU
The fun part is, Trump doesn’t actually embody any of the values he’s harkening back to. Faith? He panders to the religious far right but claims he’s never even asked God for forgiveness. Family? He has flouted his marriage vows with porn stars and is accused by multiple women
of sexual harassment and worse. Law enforcement? Sure, he is leading the culture war against NFL players who kneel to oppose police killing black civilians, but he and House Republicans are also waging war on federal law enforcement.
And as for the military, Trump’s seeming eagerness to flirt with war with North Korea can’t be heartening. Trump is putting on a show; allowing his base to reminisce about an Ozzie and Harriet past they don’t even really value anymore based on their support for his “values.”
He offers a promise to bring back the past, but no vision for the future. And strangely, his version of “family values” excludes the families of immigrants.
Bottom line: the first half of Trump’s #SOTU speech was pure pabulum: GOP family values boilerplate that the party traded in for demographic rage and reality show vulgarity by backing him. The second half was the dark matter Trumpism actually represents:
Anti-immigrant, backward looking, anti-innovation, and anti-progress. And of course his base loved every minute of it.
