Trump at the UN – Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

President Donald Trump just spoke at the UN General Assembly in New York. Nobody in the hall quite knew what to expect though I imagine few had a positive outlook as to what was to come.

After all, it was his first time returning to the General Assembly in six years due to the Biden interregnum, his first time addressing such a gathering of the world’s leaders since he was sworn back in. He was a man with a lot on his mind and a lot to say and at nearly an hour in length, the speech blew past his allotted speaking time of fifteen minutes as he made damn sure he said it.

By the time he was done, I felt that the all-pervading sense that we are collectively witnessing the passing of something was compounded, by the words of the most powerful man on the planet. Whether his successors will be allowed to claim that sobriquet though will depend in large part on the decisions Trump has made, or will continue to make, over the course of his remaining three and a half years in office. After all, power is not a right inherited but a resource shepherded and tended by wise decisions and like all resources, it can be needlessly squandered.

Trump at the podium of the United Nations General Assembly was Trump unleashed, performing as much for his isolationist base that has always suspected that the rest of the world has sought to free-ride on American greatness whilst doing America down, as for the dignitaries in the room.

I’m not going to recap the entire speech here. It really has to be read (or watched) in full. Suffice to say, he tore into everything he despises. That included the United Nations, which he accused of failing to live up to its potential — and of ignoring his calls to help end seven wars (three of which weren’t even wars, one of which is restarting, and one he personally participated in).

He also lashed out at Europe, declaring: “It’s time to end the failed experiment of open borders. You have to end it now. Your countries are going to hell.”

Finally, he delivered a full-throated repudiation of climate science, waxing lyrically about “clean, beautiful coal” and abundant oil, while portraying the climate crisis as a scam designed to weaken the West from within.

And through it all he sang his own praises, the supposed successes of his administration, the golden era America has re-entered under his watch, the contrast he provides every day with his benighted predecessor Joe Biden.

He said nothing new of course. It was vintage Trump, uncorked, a concoction laced through with bitterness but with adherents all over the world. But it was where he said it, how he wove each thread together and the intensity with which he delivered what in essence was the manifesto for his political ideals. He described a world falling to ruin and in which he alone was the sole hope of salvation.

Trump has grown fond recently of quoting the message emblazoned on a hat worn by some of his supporters that says ‘Trump was right about everything’. It surely appeals to his self-belief to see himself as the solution, which is a tragedy for Trump cannot see how he is not the harbinger of American greatness, but a symbol of America’s rapid decline.

The United States political system, based on an 18^th century document that has been fetishised by the American population as a corner stone of their identity, is simply incapable of processing the dysfunction in their society. You can point to any number of flaws in the document, but the worst by far (leaving aside anything to do with slavery) is how it has enabled politicians to choose their voters through gerrymandering and voter suppression. Creating safe electoral districts for each party has meant that politics has become less about finding consensus and more ideological purity tests, where the most dogmatic candidate wins office. The rise of social media and the disinformation tsunami it has unleashed was more than the US system could bear.

As we cast our eyes across the Atlantic I don’t think many of us see the ‘hottest country in the world as Trump described it in his speech. Instead we see a nation paralyzed by in-fighting, retreating from its traditional friends, giving into authoritarian impulses and seemingly doing everything in its power to cede the future to China (whether China is up to the task of seizing the opportunity is another matter).

Trump is not the enabler of this fall, he is its culmination and expression.

Trump’s speech made points I am sure many will agree with, or nod along with, or even see merit in. Not everything in it can be dismissed out of hand. But the sum total of what he said and the way he said it constituted nothing less than a complete rejection of a global order that his country spent over seventy years constructing and which he has now decided was somehow the rest of the world taking the United States for a ride. In rejecting this order in favour of something more base and more transactional, Trump is eviscerating the very pillars of power that American greatness has relied upon, a country many around the world looked to for inspiration (whether that was justified or not is in the eye of the beholder).

As he left the stage, having expounded on his vision of a meaner, darker world that he equates with American power, I saw all that was lofty and aspirational about the United States drain away, replaced with something smaller, a far cry from the shining city on the hill.

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi; thus passes worldly glory.

I’m a firm believer in Irish unity and I live in the border regions of Tyrone.