It was unnerving to hear Donald Trump close out his first speech to the United Nations by promising to help forge “a future of dignity and peace for the people of this wonderful Earth.”
Our reality TV President hs morphed into a cartoon criminal mastermind, addressing Earthlings, as a group, to outline his diabolical plan for world domination. (Watching it from Mexico was even more surreal.)
People around the globe surely recoiled at Trump’s reckless declaration that “we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” if that “depraved regime” does not voluntarily abandon its nuclear weapons program.
But you have to be familiar with American popular culture to appreciate how cartoonishly ridiculous Trump’s language was in his speech—his South Park-like promise to “crush the loser terrorists,” and his description of Kim Jong Un as “Rocket Man”—as in the Elton John song.
Trump’s segue from North Korea to Iran, and his denunciation of the Iran nuclear deal as an “embarrassment to the United States,” seemed motivated more by his obsession with attacking everything achieved by his predecessor than any effort to build stability or peace.
For all the unstable rhetoric, there is at least some hope that Trump will simply fail to follow through on his most dire threats. “I don’t think you’ve heard the last of it. Believe me,” he said of the Iran deal.
Usually when he says “believe me,” you can bet he’s got nothing.
Still, Trump’s U.N. speech gave the United States’ neighbors plenty of reasons to worry. Besides seeming ready, even eager, to launch the total nuclear annihilation of the planet, Trump’s main ambition appears to be a retreat from a more expansive and cooperative view of our country’s relationships with other nations.
No more normalization of relations with Cuba. No more opening the door to Syrian refugees (it costs ten times less to house them closer to their homes—the United States will pursue that option.)
A harsh attack on the “failed ideology” of socialism. “The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented,” Trump declared, reviving memories of the bad old days of the Cold War and U.S. support for repressive Latin American regimes during that dark era.
Militarism, nationalism, and isolationism were the three pillars of Trump’s speech.
He wrapped up with a paean to nationalistic pride, both at home and in other countries. The crucial question for all the world’s people, he said, is whether they are still patriots. “Do we love our nations enough to protect their sovereignty?” he asked.
Sovereignty, in Trump speak, is a synonym for the harassment and deportation of Mexican immigrants in the United States. His assertion that immigration is bad for the sending countries because it reduces GDP, will be cold comfort to Mexico, where remittances from relatives working in the United States are as large a portion of the economy as oil exports.
Trump’s denunciation of NAFTA-like trade deals also rang hollow. He has pushed through two rounds of NAFTA renegotiations already, and so far there is no indication that the labor rights, living wages, or health and safety standards that cross-border labor coalitions have been advocating are emerging in a new deal.
Trump closed his speech by calling on the nations of the world to renew their patriotic fervor, and to become “a world of proud, independent nations,” as if recognizing the interdependency of the world’s peoples were the biggest problem we face.
Climate change, global trade, and the threat of nuclear weapons are problems for the entire world. The last thing we need is an increasingly fractious, nationalistic group of nations dedicated to myopic self-interest.
As Jorge Ramos, the Univision anchorman and columnist for the Mexican daily Reforma, who was ejected by Trump from a news conference during the 2016 campaign, observed after Trump’s Inauguration, three decades of covering authoritarian Latin American leaders have prepared him well to cover the current U.S. presidency.
Ruth Conniff is working as editor-at-large for The Progressive from Oaxaca, Mexico.