Only the most foolish and faint-heated will fail to take Trump seriously

 Jeffrey St. Clair >>

There was a messianic fervor in Trump’s Second Inaugural speech that wasn’t evident eight years ago. As dark as the 2016 American Carnage diatribe was, there was still the sense that Trump was a salesman pitching a vision he didn’t quite believe in but thought he needed to sell in order to legitimize himself to his own ragged ranks of followers. Mainly, he seemed surprised to find himself where he was. The man who returned to power this week seemed sterner, surer of how to leverage his authority and who to use it against, more confident of his own invincibility. Was this hubristic exhibition infused by the bullet that grazed his ear, or his close encounters with incarceration, and the Supreme Court anointing him with an almost Divine-like cloak of immunity to do whatever he wants for whatever venal reason? Likely, all of the above.

Refreshingly, Trump’s speech lacked any promises of national unity, political comity, rhetorical civility, or letting bygones be bygones. Trump was as explicit as he could get (given his limited facility with the language he wants to require everyone to speak) about what’s coming, and what’s coming is the dismantling of the regulatory state and the expansion of the imperial state. As always, the American underclass will pay the price, and it will be a severe one, subjected to both destitution and persecution. Only the most foolish and faint-hearted will fail to take him seriously now.