Trump is a Two Hit Wonder: MAGA and America First. By Hal M. Brown
Trump has written two songs. They were such big hits they got him elected president twice. Trump spins his Make America Great Again and his America First songs like a DJ who returns to the same two songs ten times an hour during the same gig. One would think that his audience would tire of this. Nope. Not yet at least.
I had a friend in college, AJ Weberman, with whom I am still in occasional contact). He is one of the several old friends and new friends who has a page on Wikipedia. (His is here.)
Back in college, when he was just called Alan, my roommate Paul and a few others used to sit in a booth in the Student Union restaurant between classes and on weekends. Alan would always be working on a detailed analysis of meanings of the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s songs. He’d be writing on a legal pad coming up with connections and interpretations that he was certain Dylan wanted to convey to those smart enough to figure them out. To others who took them at face value, Alan’s explanations would seem obscure. In later years he wrote about the life and works of Bob Dylan, including a pamphlet titled Dylanology in 1969 and he created a word concordance of Dylan's lyrics. He also wrote the Dylan to English Dictionary, published in 2005.
The meaning of Trump’s two songs are not obscure, bit it is worth spelling them out.
The Meaning of Make America Great Again
Trump never actually defined what he meant by “again.” Most critics say that he wanted to evoke the days prior to the Civil War and to the subsequent Jim Crow era before the (more or less) success of the Civil Rights movement.
When he ran for the second time, of course “again’ meant what it was like during his first term and better.. Part of his attempt to make America even greater has been to transform the country into a police state as will happen if the Big Beuatiful Bill is passed. $45 billion will be devoted to immigration enforcement ridding the country of “undesirables.” This is his version of “great.” Of course “great” also means that he is the absolute ruler, a king with a red hat as a crown.
The Meaning of America First
I thought of writing this when I looked at the Accuweather worldwide temperature map this morning. The temperature maps are shown on top of this page with the MAGA Trump wolf AI image added. This all hatched into today’s Substack. This is how my mind often works as I free associate to my initial ideas for a Substack. (I hope it is why some of you read my Substacks with all the digressions that I try to pull together for those who make it to the end of the page.)
Trump doesn’t want the United States to be an equal partner in the worldwide community of democratic nations. He doesn’t even want to be a leader, a first among equals. He wants every other country to bow down before him and when he says jump he wants them to say “how high” with the “your majesty” implied.
As contradictory as this seems to be, he is an isolationist maldome (click for Wiki defintion). This is the male version of a dominatrix). Trump wants to keep the country out of international entanglements and conflicts when it suits him, and he wants to involve the country when he can play the big, bad, wolf. He wants to be the ferocious big bad wolf in a MAGA hat who is so feared nobody dares to stand in his way when he sets out to get what he wants. His mantra is “dare to defy me and I’ll devour you.”
Recent:
The idea of American isolationism is nothing new Under the sun. Trump hasn't come up with anything Innovative or creative. Politicians have talked about American isolationism for decades. What Trump wants is basically a version of what's mine is mine and what's YOURS is mine. Typical of a sociopathic toxic narcissist to want only to take and not to give. In my estimation, he is one of the most despicable human beings on the planet, and the human part is debatable.