MAGA—Make America Great Again—is the slogan for Donald J. Trump’s ultimate con job on America. It implies that America, once great, has lost its greatness and that Trump can restore it. It implies that destruction of that greatness, interrupted by the presidency of George W. Bush, occurred during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
Behind the slogan is an inchoate view of America envisioning demographic and political chaos produced by non-white immigrants, legal or not, and residents, citizens or not, of color. Trump is no political scientist, but he is susceptible to the pervasive influence of racism and sensitive to trends in America’s political environment.
Trump has been a lifelong racist. In the 1970s, in his mid-20s, he was found guilty of racial discrimination in apartment rentals. He admitted no guilt in the settlement and a few years later was found to have returned to discriminatory practices. In 1989, at the age of 43, he took out full-page ads in four New York papers calling for the return of the death penalty and the execution of the five black men accused and convicted of rape and attempted murder in Central Park. Although they were later exonerated and successfully sued the city for $41 million (in 2014 dollars; $58 million in 2026 dollars), Trump persisted in calling for their execution for murder although the victim survived.
These two episodes more than 25 years before Trump’s first term in office revealed who Trump is. His racism is clear. His violation of the law is clear. His disregard of a settlement with the government is clear. His disregard of a court’s finding is clear. His disregard of fact is clear. Everything which Trump did then he does now, and everyone should have known he would never do differently. What is also clear is that at least a third of the American population shares or tolerates Trump’s racism, disregard of the law, and indifference to facts. As I have written in other blogs, this third will remain an abiding threat to American democracy.
Trump was rotten from the start. I skip the psychodynamics of his relationship with his mother when he was very young and its effects on his attitudes toward and trust of women. By the time he was 13, he was already so undisciplined and misbehaving that his parents sent him to a military school. His conformity to its requirements did not improve his character; it trained him to camouflage his impulses and his motives, and to con or dominate his contemporaries. The result: no friends from those or later days, only convenient associates in transactional relationships. (As a dog and cat lover, I note that he has never had pets—lucky for them. As a narcissist, Trump lacks the empathy for pets, as he lacks it for people, and would resent pets attracting attention and thus diluting or diverting attention from him.)
As a student, Trump was a flop, mediocre at best. His claim to have scored a perfect 1600 on his SATs is just his usual lying braggadocio. His claim to have graduated first in his class at Wharton Business School—admission secured by family connections—has no documentary support; in fact, he graduated (because of family influence?) without honors. Moreover, in “testimony to Congress, Michael Cohen revealed that, under the direction of President Trump, he had sent letters to Trump’s high schools, colleges and the College Board (creator of the SAT), threatening them with legal action and jail time if they ever released Trump's academic records” (Forbes, 14 Apr ’24). Obviously, Trump has reasons to conceal his academic records.
Trump learned his racism at home. Growing up in a country as non-white minorities are nearing majority status in the country—expected tipping point is 2045—, he resented or feared their racial domination, just as slave owners feared black uprisings, and whites fear second-class status—white displacement, if not replacement—, with their loss of political control. His legal loss in discriminatory housing rentals suggested the power of minorities under the law. Trump hates America for the threatening prospect of a non-white-majority populace.
Trump learned his anti-intellectualism in his schools. His academic inability to perform at more than an average level of attainment wounded his ego. He resented those more capable than he and, even more, the standards which judged him mediocre at best. His choice of career required no academic distinction, but the New York social world of elites educated at elite schools expected more cultural, intellectual, and social sophistication than he, an ignorant bully, could muster or hope to muster. Although he aspired to join its social circles, they excluded him; his success as a developer, as measured by money and fame (really, notoriety), did not gain him entry or acceptance. Perceiving the importance and influence of well-educated people and their resistance to him, Trump hates America because of them and their institutions of learning, which enjoy worldwide reputations for academic achievement, and set standards of cultural and intellectual excellence which he perceives as both reproaches and restrictions.
In retaliatory reaction, Trump has waged war on those institutions which cultivate excellence in their fields—witness his attempted perversion of the Kennedy Center. He is attacking the acme of American education, its research colleges and universities. He is reducing staffing, funding, and programs at government agencies and universities conducting research in the physical and social sciences, health and medicine, and education. He is undermining public and private institutions which have made notable contributions, among others, to reducing pollution, increasing solar and wind energy, discovering new drugs, and improving medical treatments. He is impeding businesses from incorporating advanced technologies which these institutions have fostered. He is distorting the information presented at national parks, museums, and monuments to accord with a simple-minded, white-skinned version of American history. Far outdistancing the background count of traditional American anti-intellectualism, Trump hates America for its accomplished thinkers and performers in all fields.
Because Trump feels threatened by those with expertise, he selects ignorant and incompetent advisers—witness Pete Hegseth, Robert Kennedy, Jr., and Kash Patel—and rejects informed and capable experts. He fears them contradicting or correcting him, thereby exposing his ignorance and incompetence. Thus, before his literally ill-considered attack on Iran, he did not consult or heed either DoD or DoS experts. Moreover, because of his lack of consideration of others—I go beyond his lack of empathy here—and this reliance on coercion, he could not conceive of Iran’s resistance, its resort to retaliatory attacks on regional allies and bases, and its ability to counter American military supremacy by the obvious-to-experts closing of the Straits of Hormuz. This conjunction of his dominant characteristics reflects the Greek belief that character is destiny.
Fundamental to Trump’s hatred of America is his hatred of American democracy. Think of it as having not one, but two, axes. The horizontal axis is political equality; every person has the same rights under the Constitution and the rule of law. The vertical axis is opportunity (always enhanced by education) to be, as the Army once put it, the best that you can be; opportunity sorts people by their abilities, which are unevenly distributed among people. American democracy promises and is capable of both equality and excellence simultaneously. Trump’s beliefs are the antithesis of these axes. His horizontal axis is a uniformity of mediocrity throughout the general populace so that none can challenge his rule—thus his attacks on education. His vertical axis is the stratification of preferred individuals—family members, friends, business cronies, plutocrats, and MAGA supporters—over all others, who constitute the masses. Those who are preferred are advantaged economically and privileged legally. Trump’s authoritarianism rejects equality and excellence, and, regardless of merit, favors the few at the expense of the many.
Trump is the personification of this inversion of democratic principles. He thinks himself superior to all others and above the law; he dictates orders regardless of the Constitution and the law. He exaggerates his capabilities and his accomplishments as unique or superlative. He promotes himself in vanity displays of banners with his likeness, buildings renamed for him, and new monuments and military parades in his honor. These demonstrations of his self-love reflect and are directly proportional to his hatred of America because of its democracy. His claim to want to make America great again is America’s greatest hater’s biggest and most successful con.
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