Mick Clifford: Living in Trumpland — how his politics of grievance spread to Ireland
Trump’s politics of grievance and 'othering' are shaping global debates, with worrying echoes in Ireland’s immigration and public discourse.
Maria Steen claimed the ‘political consensus seemed more oppressive or detached from the wishes and desires of the public’ when she conceded her presidential election bid. Picture: Brian Lawless/PA
We all live in Trumpland now, even those of us who consider the terrain to be dangerously hostile.
It’s a world without facts, where you fashion a narrative that suits your purpose and present it as reality.
In Trumpland, all approaches to matters public are informed by a sense of entitlement and an acute feeling of victimhood. In Trumpland, most problems, grievances, resentments, and shortcomings can be blamed on immigrants who are detailed the status of “the other”.
This week at the United Nations, Trump told the world how it is and how it’s going to be. Europe’s countries are “going to hell”, he said.
“Immigration and suicidal energy ideas will be the death of western Europe immediately,” he lectured the leaders of western Europe and the rest of the world.
What makes the world so beautiful is that each country is unique. Your countries are going to hell
In a world that hadn’t gone mad, such self-serving waffle would have been greeted with laughs, or maybe jeers, or even shouts of derision. Yet all the leaders simply sat there stony-faced.
They know that Trump is primed to take offence at anything. They know that he is capable of harbouring a grudge against a country simply because a representative has said something to inflame his sense of grievance. At a time of living dangerously, nobody wants to take that chance.
In Trumpland, facts aren’t just redundant — they’re offensive. A fortnight ago on a visit to Britain, Trump told a state banquet that he has transformed the US economy.
“We are a country doing unbelievably well,” he said. “We had a very sick country a year ago, and now we are the hottest country in the world.”
Shoot the messenger
Last month, after the official jobs numbers in the US were so sluggish, the president fired the official who is charge of compiling the data. In Trumpland, if facts are contrary to the narrative, you get rid of the fact compiler and put in somebody who knows where their bread is buttered.
Back at the UN, his analysis of climate change — “the greatest con job” — is at total variance with a vast body of science. No matter. If he says that climate change isn’t wreaking havoc, then let his word be truth.
At the Global Climate Summit in New York on Wednesday, practically every country on the planet was in attendance to at least acknowledge the threat of climate change. Included among the roster were places such as Syria and Iran. North Korea wasn’t there. Neither was the USA.
Trumpland is no longer an exclusive province of America. Its success has promoted mini-me Trumpies around the world to attempt to emulate it.
The tenets deployed by this authoritarian are being tested all across the world.
Take this country. When it emerged on Wednesday that Maria Steen would not qualify for nomination to run for the presidency, her supporters adopted the pose. The reaction on the airwaves, but particularly on social media, was full of grievance and victimhood.
“Rarely has the political consensus seemed more oppressive or detached from the wishes and desires of the public,” Steen said.
This was an entirely fact free statement based on nothing more than a notion on her part. She was quite obviously aggrieved that the nomination process wasn’t tailored for one such as she, who must have woke up one mid-August morning and determined she wanted to be president by late October.
But Steen bears no responsibility for the conduct of her supporters online, including public figures, all of whom bitched and moaned as if they just returned by economy class from the darkest valleys of Trumpland.
These people have since attempted to replicate Trump’s narrative in the USA, portraying themselves as the ordinary men and women standing up to an elite which is infected by some kind of radical left philosophy.
Thankfully, things are not yet as crazy in this country that any kind of a cohort is likely to buy this particular cyber snake oil
The other feature of Trumpland that has infected some corners of public life in this country is the complete “othering” of immigrants.
There is ample evidence that racism is rising in this country, that immigrants no longer feel as welcome as they once did. The most recent manifestation of this is the display of Tricolours for the sole purpose of signifying hostility to immigrants.
Trump demonstrated that there is political gain to be garnered by othering immigrants, by effectively blaming them for the ills of society. In this country, that approach has been imported and spun to blame the housing crisis on immigrants.
Those purveying this muck are careful about specifics when it comes to hating immigrants. They are not pointing fingers at the Filipino nurses that prop up the health service, or the Asian doctors who might save the lives of their children. They’re not even pointing at the Brazilian couriers who deliver their fast-food orders for a pittance. They know that to openly do so would be to betray breathtaking stupidity, if nothing else.
Healthy economy
Instead, they blame all on the relatively small cohort of individuals who apply for international protection in this country. Last year, for instance, there were around 18,500 applicants, while the number of people arriving in the State was north of 140,000 — as might be expected in a healthy economy. The numbers applying are down by 43% this year, according to the International Protection Office. That’s a huge drop which suggests the numbers in recent years were temporarily inflated.
You won’t see that result highlighted by the particular media outlets like Gript.ie or those who attempt to portray this as a major crisis. Good news is useless if your objective is to promote grievance and resentment as per the Trump playbook.
At an Oireachtas justice committee meeting, minister Jim O’Callaghan was asked whether he agreed with the estimate of his predecessor on migration matters, Roderic O’Gorman, that we can expect a norm of 30,000 applicants in the coming years.
“We see the new norm as being around 15,000, not 30,000,” O’Callaghan told senator Michael McDowell.
“I think what we saw was a surge in ‘22, ‘23, and ‘24, that many have been a consequence of what happened in the covid years. I want to see numbers under 10,000,” he said.
That is the reality. For those who pine for Trumpland, a different fact-free narrative applies in which we have open borders, are being overrun, and the place is going to hell. So far, they aren’t getting much traction in the real world.
