TRUMP'S CULTURE WAR.

America has entered a new Kulturkampf. This assault on the accepted (not without opposition) values is the more strange, that it is waged under a president who is culture indifferent and morally suspect. While Steve Bannon was invited to give op his seat in the National Security Council, his influence remains ingrained for now, while he is largely unpopular. One can see how a mass culture with a populist connotation is trying to dislodge what the White house considers to be an elitist high culture. In reality Trump's America becomes an ideological counter proposal to existing "market driven" choices.

  

In this "ideology", disguised in permanent chaos, former downgraded references and reactive patterns have their "come back". Religion, conservative norms, family values and hostility versus the trends which benefited from globalization (climate change, environment, reproductive rights, non discrimination) have their day under the sun . Bannon considers the existing world architecture as opposed to American values and interests which need to make a U turn towards the "self ". The "make America great again" is just a form of protectionism based on negative memory. The last crisis in the stock market, the rise of  fraudulent actors, the implosion of labels due to open trade, the hindrances created by regulations, have consolidated the accession of a non cosmopolitan America made fundamentalism. It has to be seen if such a choice can be maintained while the world is on fire.

This administration wanted to be unhindered from what it perceived as undue shackles which distract from priorities home. Since Trump was elected by mostly rural or economically depressed areas he plays on the frustrations of his electorate while at the same time pursuing policies which will hurt this same base which remains stuck in some dry dock of its own making. The wake up call will be hard. Unfortunately the legacies of Presidents Johnson and Obama are dismantled meanwhile without a grain of remorse or social empathy.

The agenda  of the president is presented as a tour de de force, it is more a coup d'etat coming out of a Banana republic playbook. If it was not that serious it could become an other Tim Rice low Bradway production, of the Cats, Evita genre. Unfortunately it is serious. Health care will be revisited, the wall will be build, multilateral free trade will be a thing of the past, foreign policy will become a  twelve-tone score for too many actors who might further muddle what is complex. America became a family business wherein too few talk to too many, as in the Russia saga. Trump's son in law, Jared Kushner(inger), is supposed to continue in Henry's footsteps. I doubt if he ever red Kissinger's WORLD ORDER . If he had done so, he might have been more humble. The same goes for his father in law. I forgot Rex Tillerson...nobody will notice !