Trump’s Brand

Saturday, 26 November 2016

Trump’s Brand

by Ariadna Theokopoulos on November 25, 2016

Trump has been a very successful businessman, not so much as a builder but as a salesman. He sold the brand he created: himself, or rather, his name. It doesn’t matter how many or how few of his buildings he actually owns: the world knows them as Trump towers. The use of his name fetches large fees and a percentage of the profit.

Some of his campaign speeches, in which he talked about the wall he wanted to build on the South border sounded like the rehearsed spiel he must have always used: “It will be BEAUTIFUL! You’ll see.” He sounded confident because, justifiably, he trusts his own spiel based on the track record. It has worked well for him.

The brand he fashioned is recognizably American in spirit: “Bigger is better and biggest is best, and we are the biggest and the best” as well as Jewish: “All that glitters is as good as gold. Ostentation is good because too much of a good thing is wonderful.” Common to both is the belief that who you are is what you have and what you have is the measure of what you can do (and get away with):

His America is New York City,

a milieu where he made deals with, became friends with, and was helped along the way by many Jews, and where his children married Jews, so it makes sense that he expects this symbiotic cooperation to not only continue but to be taken to a new level.

His ego leads him to expect being able to “best” them in the biggest deal of his life: his project of “making America great again.” In exchange he will give them, say, a completely free hand in Palestine and, as a lagniappe, deeper deregulations here and then, in banking and industry, to make America “competitive.” Israel is already offering help with his beautiful wall project:

“Trump’s Mexican wall a boon for Israeli security company.”
The Israeli company that has built high-tech fences along the country’s volatile borders is now trying to build a bridge to the Trump administration — hoping to use its experience to cash in on the president-elect’s plan to seal the border with Mexico. Magal Security Systems has been a major player in building high-tech fences and walls along Israel’s volatile northern and southern borders, as well as the massive separation barrier that snakes along the frontier with the West Bank. “We believe that the U.S. government is going to increase its security budgets in the upcoming years and definitely we look forward to take part in it,” the company’s chief executive, Saar Koursh, told The Associated Press.”

Mexico also sees his wall as a good business opportunity! Was he right or was he right?

Based on the Gestalt of his life experience he may well sincerely believe that what the nation needs (and only he can provide) is a refurbished “America” brand. One so tall, so big and so intimidatingly shiny that the world will respect it again.

Some have said that the reason his team was so completely unprepared on November 8 — no transition plan, no clearly defined responsibilities of his team, and a vaguely sketched cabinet — was that Trump himself did not expect to win. I don’t believe this. He is not the type who forges ahead prepared to lose. I think he rather regards such preparations as he does the teleprompter: useful but not vital. If not available, he can always improvise. He will appoint “experts” (e.g., Mnuchin has vast expertise in finances, does he not?) to run the various departments, and he will busy himself cutting “deals” with foreign leaders that will all benefit “America” and will pacify areas of conflict in the world. One such obvious unresolved conflict is Palestine-Israel and he is already sketching a solution, working closely with his friend, Netanyahu. It will be beautiful.

Unlike the Clintons, greedy psychopathic liars sold to the highest bidder, which happens to be Jewish Power, I believe Trump is not only sincere, but also a patriot by his reckoning. He is sincere in his belief that the brand not only sells the product, but is the product. He is also a patriot who wants America to be “America” again — the shining brand the whole world used to admire and fear (“nobody will dare to mess with us”) — but his patriotism is local: he is a New York City patriot.

Despite his professions of understanding and identifying with those whom Hillary Clinton stupidly called “deplorables”– in rural America and in the devastated, formerly thriving industrial states (Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania) — Trump’s campaign visits there were the safaris of a New Yorker for whom civilization as he knows it ends west of the Hudson River. Beyond is another country and “they do things differently there.”

Trump did not “feel their pain,” as Bill Clinton used to lie; I believe he felt sincere compassion for the suffering of those he encountered, and a self-affirming, confirmatory delight at the warm reception his “tell it like it is” spiel received from them. He truly wants to alleviate their plight. He thinks he knows how, and is sure that his friends and long-term associates can help because they are deeply American too: NYC Americans, like him and, in final analysis, all “good people.”

All this is not to say that Trump’s presidency will bring no changes. Whether unwittingly or by sly intent to grab himself a heretofore ignored constituency, he has unleashed a deep national current of distrust, disgust and even hatred for the elites and the “lying media” that will not abate soon, and through his speeches has cut a large hole in the gag of political correctness.

Nationalism, specifically white nationalism, has gone from being viewed as the loony obsession of a few skinheads and survivalists packing ammo in Idaho and Montana to something now called a dangerous trend to be discussed openly (and excoriated, of course) on television and in the MSM. But there is another nascent change in the works: nationalism is being kosherized and defanged to make it safe for the sensitive, oppressed minorities (among which white Americans are not included yet). With kosher nationalism handed down to them — a sort of papalist populism– white Christian Americans will be able to have their cake without eating it. Jewish luminaries are calling it “pan-ethnic nationalism” and are telling hand-shy white liberals (“progressives”) that it’s ok, it has the rabbinical stamp. Ironically it resembles the democrat slogan, “We’re stronger together.” “America” means diversity, they explain, otherwise it is bigotry and worse: anti-semitism.

The unexpected number of women who voted for the “horrid misogynist” indicates that feminism has passed its sell-by date. No dramatic changes are to be expected on this score, however, but perhaps a more laissez-faire attitude regarding jokes and language so far considered male chauvinist will prevail.

The over-reaching of pro-immigration/open borders activists has fed the flames of anti-immigration sentiment to which Trump’s wall project appealed. This will not diminish and will still demand a solution, which the wall itself, absent changes in immigration and labor laws and social benefits distribution, does not represent.

So political correctness will be eroded in some areas to the chagrin of feminists and pro-immigration advocates, and Hallmark will print more “Merry Christmas” than “Happy Holidays” cards this Christmas.

When all is said and done, was the election joust only a skirmish between two factions of Jewish power? One that was won by the more astute manipulators who saw the surf and decided to ride it rather rail against it?

For now Trump’s deep motivation and intentions are still a puzzle.

What is certain is that the immediate danger of war with Russia has been averted and that is no small thing. It remains to be seen how Trump conducts himself in his interactions with Putin and other world leaders (like the Chinese), and if they see him as Chauncey, the gardner in Being There, or if he impresses them and their productive exchanges lead to mutually favorable agreements.

I agree with those who believe we should give him a chance and wait at least six months after the inauguration. Nevertheless, as physics teaches us, initial conditions determine much of the course of any event/phenomenon, and in the cone of shadow they cast, small indicators at the narrow end of the funnel are much amplified at the other end.

“But what if he fails?” asks Paul Craig Roberts. He answers his own question thus: “If Trump fails, the only solution is for the American people to become more radical.”

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Note: I chose a few drawings by a pre-eminent New Yorker, Saul Steinberg, to illustrate this essay because they seemed highly apposite.

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