Contextual History and Donald Trump
Context gives birth to History
Hernán Cortes was an evil, vile racist who subjugated the Aztec people because he was an evil, vile racist.
The white slave owners of the South were evil, vile racists who chained generations of African slaves because they were evil, vile racists.
Donald Trump is an evil demagogue who manipulated the GOP (aNd rUsSiA) to gain power because his voters are evil bigots who hated Obama.
Making this critique is easy. You can say, “Fuck those people,” like a good person of the present day. People have built their careers around saying “Fuck Trump.” It’s that easy.
But what if it wasn’t that easy? What if things got more complicated?
What if slave owners, Hernán Cortes, Christopher Columbus, and Donald Trump were all byproducts of the system they existed in?
Spain demanded that every drop of wealth be wrung from the New World like a sponge. The politics, economics, religion, and systems of the time demanded exploitation. Men like Hernán Cortes were just around to do it.
If not Cortes, someone else would have encountered the Nahuatl and the Aztecs. Someone else would have razed them to the ground and extracted every bit of wealth from them. If someone came along who didn’t want that, who didn’t want to treat the Aztecs like cannibal savages, they would have been replaced by someone who would have.
The Spanish crown wasn’t funding an anthropological expedition.
When someone did try to write about the Nahuatl, their history, language, and culture, the Crown would try to snuff it out. (The Florentine Codex)
The world of the 1700s and 1800s demanded cheap agricultural goods. They wanted cheap tobacco, cotton and sugar. If someone didn’t want to exploit African slaves and decided to treat their workers humanely and pay them, they would’ve gone out of business. The kind human who tried to be human would’ve been replaced by a monster.
Racism and bigotry didn’t come first. The horrific atrocities did. The racism came as a justification later.
I use Hernán Cortes and slave owners as examples. They are products of the system and conditions that existed during their lives. This doesn’t exonerate them. The system demanded monsters and atrocities, and these men stepped up and committed them.
What it does is offer a broad view and a more complex explanation of those people and their times.
When historians look at Jeff Bezos, they will see a greedy fucker. A greedy fucker that stepped in and exploited his workforce for every penny he could. If he doesn’t, someone else will. If a CEO doesn’t ship manufacturing overseas to save costs, they’ll step down, and someone else will.
People exist within systems that influence them.
How does any of this relate to Donald Trump? How did the system influence Trump?
If Donald Trump and his rhetoric had come at a time when we trusted and had faith in our government, would he have succeeded?
If Donald Trump had come at a time when we wanted level-headed, well-spoken politicians, would he have succeeded?
If Donald Trump had come at any other time, would he have been elected? I doubt it.
You can claim that Trump rose to power because of racism, sexism, and general bigotry. You can bury your head in the sand, ignore all the symptoms, and keep saying “vote blue no matter who,” as if that will solve anything.
You can deny reality, but you can’t deny the consequences of denying reality.
No one in our political upper class faces serious consequences.
As of the writing of this video, if you search “politician jailed,” you’ll get results for Washington State Senator Jeff Wilson taking a gun to Hong Kong. Of course he’s going to jail and facing serious consequences, he’s in a foreign country with a gun. But he is a state senator.
In my piece, Our Skewed View of Government, I wrote about the numerous politicians caught violating the STOCK Act. In 2021, 78 politicians were caught violating stock trading laws to benefit themselves and their wallets.
The site govtrack.us tracks legislative misconduct.
If you read down the list of charges and misconduct, it sometimes ends with a resignation. You leave, and no one follows up. Sometimes a report will be referred to the Justice Department, but that outcome isn’t common.
As I learned from my Skewed View of Government piece, fines are often waived or dodged. This means that congressmen and women who knowingly commit a crime often get away with it, ready to commit it again.
Former Minnesota Senator Al Franken was accused by seven women of sexual harassment. We have a photo of one of these instances. Al Franken was pressured to resign by his fellow Democrats.
(Now people are backtracking and saying that Franken shouldn’t have resigned. Their reasoning amounts to “Orange Man is worse.” I guess sexually harassing several women doesn’t matter in Congress.)
Roy Moore was accused several times of serious sexual misconduct, but no criminal charges were brought up, and he ended up winning a defamation suit. He tried to run again after he was accused, but failed.
Our political elite doesn’t face consequences for their crimes.
When Donald Trump promised he would lock up Hillary Clinton, it’s understandable why people started to get on board. When Donald Trump promised to drain the swamp that was the American federal government, people got excited.
Compared to pseudo-libertarian platitudes, neocon saber-rattling, and the usual establishment hacks, Trump was an exhilarating breath of fresh air. Compare Trump to people like Jeb “Please clap” Bush and Ted Cruz. Donald Trump birthed a whole genre of impressions that crossed party lines. Nobody really does a Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, or John Kasich impression.
This will undoubtedly make people uncomfortable.
This explanation can’t be pinned on Republicans, Qanon, or muh bigotry. It implicates everyone, Democrats and Republicans. Democrats also had a hand in creating our current political climate. They are also a part of the status quo and establishment.
It means acknowledging our broken, corrupt government and the role the political elite played in destroying it. It means acknowledging that we desperately need something new, and chanting “Vote blue no matter who!” or “Trump 2024” won’t fix things. Furthermore, it’ll just keep making things worse.
It means there’s no easy road out.
People voted thinking that Trump would be a panacea. They believed that he would take office and start draining the swamp.
That’s not possible. No single presidential candidate will be a silver bullet to the corrupt beast that is the Federal government.
If you want meaningful change checking a box on a ballot won’t cut it.
None of this exonerates Trump.
Trump is still a human being with agency and free will.
This doesn’t excuse his terrible presidential performance, his embarrassing post-presidential behavior, or his zealous fan base. What it does do is offer a more intelligent insight into his recent political career through a historical method I find intriguing.
Until my next piece, this has been Michael Vincent Hawthorne.
I would like to say thank you to YouTuber DJ Peach Cobbler. His videos on Smedley Butler and the Aztecs influenced this piece, and I borrowed a couple of examples from him.
