Page 77 - Šolsko polje, XXVIII, 2017, no. 3-4: Education and the American Dream, ed. Mitja Sardoč
P. 77
p. mclaren ■ from a city on the hill to the dungheap of history
a silver spoon in his mouth who prefers a U.S. 3.79 McDonald’s “quarter
pounder with cheese” to expensive French food. He is, in my mind, a lit-
tle more than an angry boil on the hairy arse of history (I only saw him
once, in person, very briefly, during his appearance at the Museum of Tele-
vision & Radio [now the Paley Center for Media], where he whined child-
ishly that his show, The Apprentice, didn’t receive an Emmy Award). He is
not a libertarian but a libertine disguised as a populist, with tanks, armies
and nuclear weapons at his disposal, engaged in a bellum omnium contra
omnes—the war of all against all. And he has an administration so skilled
at obscurantism that his ideas march unmediated from his mouth to the
brains of his millions of drooling twitter followers.
Trump and the wall he proposes to build to keep out “illegal immi-
grants” from Mexico, betrays the values inherent in the original Ameri-
can Dream. I will always remember what my Chicano comrades would tell
me during protest marches in East Los Angeles—“we didn’t cross the bor-
der, the border crossed us.” Imagine Mexicans entering California without
documents. Historically, this was their land before the United States in-
vaded it and exterminated the pueblos originarios. There is something re-
pugnant about referring to these border-crossers as “illegals” when in fact
that term should more truthfully be attributed to the Anglo-Americans
who perpetrated genocide in their conquest of the land. This attitude, com-
mon among gringos, echoes what the great Latin American philosopher,
Enrique Dussel, refers to as the “ego conquiro”—I conquer you therefore
I am, which is related to the “ego exterminus”—I exterminate you, there-
fore I am, two forms of consciousness that Dussel claims creates the con-
ditions of possibility for the arrogance of the Cartesian concept, “I think
therefore I am.” As Luis Martinez Andrade has noted, white people in the
peripheral countries of Latin America experience a certain form of “dou-
ble consciousness”—the pain of not being European and the pride of not
belonging to what they believe to be ‘inferior’ races. Trump likes to justi-
fy the unjustifiable and that is part of what some to believe to be the rea-
son why so many Anglo-Americans appreciate what they perceive to be the
candor of his politics. But this strange candor associated with Trump’s ac-
tions are dangerously deceptive since by repeating time and time again that
we need to be on guard and vigilant against terrorists and undocumented
immigrants, and to create a ban on allowing Muslims into the country, and
to rebuild the infrastructure of the country and keep companies from out-
sourcing their workforce, his critics bring themselves to believe that Trump
cannot possibly follow through on his threats, threats that they perceive as
simply part of his clown car parade down Main Street, his hair resembling
a Walmart lampshade drawn tightly over his head, on the way to the carni-
75
a silver spoon in his mouth who prefers a U.S. 3.79 McDonald’s “quarter
pounder with cheese” to expensive French food. He is, in my mind, a lit-
tle more than an angry boil on the hairy arse of history (I only saw him
once, in person, very briefly, during his appearance at the Museum of Tele-
vision & Radio [now the Paley Center for Media], where he whined child-
ishly that his show, The Apprentice, didn’t receive an Emmy Award). He is
not a libertarian but a libertine disguised as a populist, with tanks, armies
and nuclear weapons at his disposal, engaged in a bellum omnium contra
omnes—the war of all against all. And he has an administration so skilled
at obscurantism that his ideas march unmediated from his mouth to the
brains of his millions of drooling twitter followers.
Trump and the wall he proposes to build to keep out “illegal immi-
grants” from Mexico, betrays the values inherent in the original Ameri-
can Dream. I will always remember what my Chicano comrades would tell
me during protest marches in East Los Angeles—“we didn’t cross the bor-
der, the border crossed us.” Imagine Mexicans entering California without
documents. Historically, this was their land before the United States in-
vaded it and exterminated the pueblos originarios. There is something re-
pugnant about referring to these border-crossers as “illegals” when in fact
that term should more truthfully be attributed to the Anglo-Americans
who perpetrated genocide in their conquest of the land. This attitude, com-
mon among gringos, echoes what the great Latin American philosopher,
Enrique Dussel, refers to as the “ego conquiro”—I conquer you therefore
I am, which is related to the “ego exterminus”—I exterminate you, there-
fore I am, two forms of consciousness that Dussel claims creates the con-
ditions of possibility for the arrogance of the Cartesian concept, “I think
therefore I am.” As Luis Martinez Andrade has noted, white people in the
peripheral countries of Latin America experience a certain form of “dou-
ble consciousness”—the pain of not being European and the pride of not
belonging to what they believe to be ‘inferior’ races. Trump likes to justi-
fy the unjustifiable and that is part of what some to believe to be the rea-
son why so many Anglo-Americans appreciate what they perceive to be the
candor of his politics. But this strange candor associated with Trump’s ac-
tions are dangerously deceptive since by repeating time and time again that
we need to be on guard and vigilant against terrorists and undocumented
immigrants, and to create a ban on allowing Muslims into the country, and
to rebuild the infrastructure of the country and keep companies from out-
sourcing their workforce, his critics bring themselves to believe that Trump
cannot possibly follow through on his threats, threats that they perceive as
simply part of his clown car parade down Main Street, his hair resembling
a Walmart lampshade drawn tightly over his head, on the way to the carni-
75
