As the first days of Trump’s presidency shoves its way into reality, and drags away any pretence that this was somehow, actually, never going to happen, millions of people across the globe are trying to work out what is going to happen, while praying to anyone that might be listening that it ends up being over a considerably shorter period than four whole years.
There’s lots of different people which are likely to suffer over the next few years including women, people of colour, LGBT groups, pretty much anyone who doesn’t fall into the happy category of the white-straight-rich man, but another thing that will suffer and effect everyone as it does is the environment. It is already clear that Trump’s reign will be one of rampant ecocide, where regulation to tackle climate change will be cut and men who deny climate change and are deeply invested in the fossil fuel industry are put in positions of power, including Energy and the Environmental protection agency. His decisions are so clearly fuelled by self-interest and scratching influential backs it’s hair-tearing levels of frustration.
There is a very simple reason as to why Trump appealed so widely and why The Simpsons seemed to predict his rise (though frankly his duping of over 60 million people is still baffling). Trump’s win is the culmination of the American Dream, a dream that is devoted to self-interest, endless expansive growth and accumulation and little else. People may try to tack words like progress and possibility to it but the end result is often devoid of these. The basic American Dream is that any man (a woman is often an after-thought) can make his way, own his business and buy a beautiful house in suburbia with a picket fence and apple pie. In reality it becomes something more akin to white men scrabbling to line their pockets the most, and be damned with the almost inevitable casualties. It is about amassing more and more property and wealth for no other end than just to have, and Trump has very happily won the game, proving yes you can do absolutely anything in America, provided you’re white and rich.
As I’ve discussed before, a lifestyle dedicated to growth is one that is unavoidable environmentally destructive but I think there is another seed planted in the American Dream which ploughs it towards a future that exists at the expense of the natural, an infatuation with conquest. This came from the most early settlers but became cemented 200 years later when the Frontier Myth took hold. The journey westward was centred on placing ownership on land and exploit it for the pilgrim’s own good (not matter who or what may already be making good use of it). It meant that a beautiful and majestic landscape became realised as something put there only for these new American people’s utility.
And so a history of careless destruction of the environment followed, with it’s legacy and neglectful mindset firmly established, a history that culminated in Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States. I don’t think we need any clearer evidence that America needs to find itself a new dream to follow.
Lost in the Industrial Jungle 