The United States of Backlash

We have entered the season of revenge. But it won't last forever.

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As I watched Donald Trump deliver his second inaugural address, I was struck by how weak it was as a piece of political rhetoric — no memorable turns of phrase, nothing particularly eloquent or inspiring, little more than familiar complaints and tired campaign lines. Not every president is going to produce “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” but Trump’s speechwriters seem to have barely tried. It was just a warmed-over version of what you would have heard at a hundred rallies over the last year, so prosaic it even included bragging about the fact that Trump won swing states, and how “we did tremendously” among auto workers. Not exactly oratory for the ages.

The GOP was once the party of steadiness and consistency, laboring to maintain time-honored truths and noble goals; the world might sway to and fro, but the moral wisdom of tax cuts for the rich is eternal. But that party is no more, and perhaps never will be again. So Trump gave a speech true to himself and his movement: a declaration of backlash. Here’s how he summed it up:

My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place and to give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy, and indeed, their freedom. From this moment on, America’s decline is over.

So what it’s really all about, then, is betrayal. The real Americans have been betrayed, their world and their place in it taken from them. Trump was the candidate of backlash, and will once again be the president of backlash.

The last few years have been one insult after another to his supporters: drag brunches, pronouns, government dictates during the pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests and the subsequent expressions of concern and solidarity by everyone from corporations to politicians, and on and on. Does seeing a recycling bin piss you off? Did watching Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer kneel in the Capitol, adorned in kente cloth, make you feel not just scorn but rage? When Kyle Rittenhouse killed a couple of libs and got away with it, did it give you a joyous taste of what could be?

You have watched the world shift around you, feeling more angry and alienated by the day, but now Trump will give you back what was taken from you by the tectonic motions of social change. Or if he can’t give it back to you, if nothing else he can make those who took it from you feel some pain. The backlash will be your new reality, and it will be its own reward.

Where the backlash takes us

What is the society Trump now seeks to create? It’s one in which virtually all the social progress of the last half-century is reversed. Not only will efforts to address racism in both public and private institutions be eliminated, even talking about racism will be either forbidden (as in schools) or banished through intimidation. Even the most milquetoast efforts to improve diversity will no longer be allowed. Millions of undocumented immigrants and their families — including both legal immigrants and U.S. citizens — will be deported, while legal immigration is drastically reduced, the result of which will be a re-whitened nation in line with a blood-and-soil conception of American identity.

Women will be removed from combat roles in the military and leadership in other organizations, where “masculine energy” will finally be valued again. Abortions will become unobtainable, at least for those who aren’t wealthy. Transgender people will be forced back in the closet, their very existence deemed unspeakable. Straight white men will no longer have to fear anyone saying to them “Hey, what you just said is kind of uncool, don’t be an asshole.” At long last, “wokism” will be destroyed. And with that, the liberals will no longer be on top; they will be hounded and frightened into silence, just as they ought to be.

But even before we reach that societal transformation, the backlash will suffuse everyday life in the same way that the forces against which the backlash fights do now. Your relationship with your neighbors, your coworkers, even your own family, all will feel the force of the backlash. Trump’s supporters believe that his presidency will determine not just government policy but the contours of our social lives, each and every day. They are not wrong, because it already has. The Trump era that began in 2016 has made America a meaner, angrier, more quarrelsome place. Trump has convinced millions that their worst self is their truest self, that there is no greater happiness than seeing those you hate suffer, and that there is not only no shame but even a kind of nobility in being like Trump: rude, cruel, petty, greedy and small.

Perhaps this was inevitable; after all, progressives have had great success in infusing popular culture with our values in recent years, and progressive success is always followed sooner or later by right-wing backlash. Even more, today’s media environment is built to accelerate and intensify backlash, a chaos engine created to smash particles of rage, lies, anxiety, and terror into one another at light speed. It’s a supercollider of discontent.

But backlashes don’t run forever. The truth is that even among those who voted for Trump, millions were not so worked up about pronouns or seeing a gay couple in a paper towel ad; they were foolish enough to think Trump might bring down the price of eggs. Feel free to be appalled at them for not paying close enough attention over the last decade to see him for what he is. But their fickle preferences will change yet again, and probably before too long.

Democrats can help that process along, if they demonstrate even a modicum of strategic thinking. They can convince a majority of the voting public that Trump is the one who betrays, the force of decline and defeat, and if he cannot be punished directly for everything that goes wrong then his party can be. If the public is going to keep being angry, get them angry at those who now have all the power. Create a backlash to the backlash. It can be done.