This post was originally written in January 2017, following Donald Trump’s inaugural speech “America First”

It was not about Donald Trump, and it still is not about him. I cannot say much about him since I know him only from the media and his social media engagements. And that is not enough. 

How can I claim to know him only from the media? He has undoubtedly done something in practice, not just through his words but through his actions. He certainly has done something. Unlike his predecessors, he did not start any war. He had several initiatives aimed at lowering global political tensions. The economy in the USA is doing reasonably well. I know this even though the mainstream media does not present Donald Trump in this light. And in the final analysis, I have to conclude that I cannot evaluate Donald Trump after four years of his presidency, but through media reports. It will take decades until the media’s picture of Donald Trump is reevaluated in a more or less accurate historical perspective. 

This brings me back to my original position. I can only analyse his inaugural speech that I have had direct access to. 

I decided not to comment on what I wrote almost four years ago. Let us all be in an equal position to assess the implications of what I wrote after four years of experience. 

It’s now eight and a half years since I wrote it, and half a year into Trump’s second term. How does “America First” reflect today in Trump’s America? I will leave an answer to this question for another post. It still holds that he did not start any traditional war (yet). However, contemporary wars are different now, and it is challenging to claim that digital or info-war is not a war. What is also uncertain is whether his intense involvement in international affairs (Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Iran, Yemen…) contradicts the “America first” value? However, my position from 2017 did not change.

This is what I wrote in January 2017:

The difference between the speech and Donald

I will only reflect on some messages conveyed by his inaugural speech. I hope the difference between the statements:

“conveyed by Donald Trump”

and

“conveyed by his inaugural speech”

is understood. With that, I want to stress that I cannot be sure how Donald Trump understood his inaugural speech. Only after we see some of his acts, will we be able to come a little bit closer to what he really had “in mind”.

“America first and liberalism

First of all, I take the “America first” message from the perspective of liberalism. Why? Because that message conveys the fundamental liberal value that no one can live your life but yourself.

This simple truth, killed by all collectivists from fascists to communists, should be understood for all possible identities. It is valid for a person, for a family, for a local community, for a city, for a state, and for the whole Earth if confronted by aliens. This message addresses identity, the protection of identity, and the simple rules of brand life, all while opposing the terrible mistakes of multiculturalism. This is a message that one has to have a strong sense of one’s own identity to enter a mature relationship with another identity. Weak identities cannot cooperate, communicate, or trade. So one has to put the identity first to start mature cooperation with the rest of the world. That is valid for me as much as for America.

The supremacy of the individual

Strong statements about bringing power back from Washington to the people supported this message. Many have evaluated this statement as demagogy. This only means that those attacking this message are hard-core collectivists, followers of Marx, Lenin, and Hitler.

Namely, one cannot think about liberalism without having supremacy of the individual over any other collective organisation as the highest possible value. But to range values that way (liberal way) also means that individual is a supreme authority not only above the state but also above the church (all churches), trade unions, NGO dictatorships, LGTB and other fashionable movements organised as organisations, Scientologists, Universities (as those that speak in the name of their members), Rotary clubs, Chamber of Commerce’s and even more all supranational bodies like United Nations, WHOs and so on and so on.

The paradox of collective bodies

And here exactly we enter an apparent paradox. Namely, we cannot imagine a contemporary society that could operate on the laws of direct democracy. We cannot imagine democracy without democratically elected bodies that decide and take actions (legislative and executive power) in the name of individuals. And immediately, when we have bodies that are more complex than one individual that should have supreme authority, such bodies by definition form their own personal identities. And those identities should be protected, as stated before, by fundamental liberal values and law. If protected, that should necessarily apply protectionism and thus the destruction of liberal values, so it seems.

This paradox could be seen in the inaugural speech as well. It was said that Americans should buy American goods first and hire American people first. It appears that this message introduces protectionism as an essential value, yet we feel that such a value cannot coexist with the liberalism of the first message. One could understand from the statement that the identity of America could be protected only by protectionism.

It looked like either the message conveyed an unsolved paradox, or that the statement bluffed about putting Americans first, or that it bluffed about protectionism. (As a matter of fact, critics of Trump argue that he not only bluffs about prioritizing people but also that the capital backing him will mitigate his protectionism, revealing a telling cognitive dissonance among these critics, by the way.)

Is this really an unsolvable paradox?

No. It is not! It is not whether one understands the hierarchy of values seriously. Namely, if individual supremacy is the highest value, then protection of identities could be derived from it without any harm to the first supreme value.

How? Let me give some examples.

Suppose the power of economic transaction really lies unhampered within the individual. In that case, he needs no trade unions, no consumer protection NGOs, and other intermediary bodies that protect an individual from the evils of his environment, and no other protections but the protection of peaceful collaboration (police and army). Don’t we see that immediately when we try to protect an individual, we already destroy his supremacy? So the State that would govern its business in the direction of abolishing all elements that are destroying individual supremacy could act both as an identity guardian and as a supporter of free trade. There is no paradox in this.

The hierarchy of values

Now we do not know whether Donald Trump will take this liberal direction because there is always an option to understand values in a different hierarchical order.

It is such a massive difference if you take protectionism as a first-order value and individual supremacy as a derived one. Marxists, socialists, and all US governments after Woodrow Wilson or even after Theodor Roosevelt chose this second option that completely contradicts what Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Adams had as their vision. There were some exceptions, like Ronald Reagan, but he was relatively unsuccessful amidst the prevailing environment dominated by Hollywood and university memes.

The role of intellectuals in collectivism

It is pretty clear now that Marx was entirely correct that socialism should first emerge in Germany (although Russia took a slight primacy). Still, he underestimated the power of intellectuals as a significant force behind collectivism completely.

Revolutions in Germany with Nazism and in Russia with Bolshevism, in fact, harmed the spread of communism around the world. Intellectuals who were already at the beginning of the 20th century dominating the social meme scene would make much faster progress with the collectivist paradigm, without mentioning the two failures. Those two failures enacted too fast a disruption so that the shift to worse was apparent to everyone.

The evolution of intellectuals nowadays in support of communism is much more subtle. The frog (people) does not feel slight changes in the temperature of the water in which we are cooked. We even feel comfortable. We evaluate sweets that we get from the state and collectivist bodies as beneficial as much as a frog takes warmer and warmer water in which it is cooked, as pleasant.

The supremacy of the individual is possible.

I’m unsure if Donald Trump can establish a productive hierarchy of values. I am uncertain whether he truly grasps the foundational principles of liberalism, the economic transactions and value exchanges outlined by Ludwig von Mises, or the constitutional values established by the Founding Fathers of America. But if he does, then America could even produce a society in which multiculturalism rises from the supremacy of the individual. Namely, only after intermediate bodies that harm the supremacy of the individual entity to behave like drug dealers, the need for protection evaporates. Then, only there would we have an environment in which individuals could cooperate globally as sovereign bodies and could establish multicultural cooperation raised from egoistic needs and not implanted as a political agenda.

And yes. This is called homonism.