Hair Führer's Big Cookie

One of my favorite cinematic scenes is from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, in which Pee-Wee meets the rich kid Francis on the sidewalk.  Frances says his dad says he can have anything he wants.  He's decided he wants Pee-Wee's Red Rider bicycle. Pee-Wee playfully teases Francis until their argument ends with both of them screaming, "I know you are but what am I?"  While patently silly, the scene does such a good job of describing demand politics, and more specifically, the key factor of petulance, or a certain regression to a childish state in which demands for love take the form of "give me a cookie" and, then, an ensuing tantrum. 

Demand politics typically refers to insistent struggles over resources or the use of force in respect to some claim of recognition. At some level all forms of recognition are pleas for love (hence the demand first emerges in childhood).  Demand politics are responsible for some of our most celebrated achievements as a liberal democracy, including civil rights.  Rights are a common sort of cookie.  But the thing about demand politics is that it must be pursued at the same time as other forms (compromise, technocratics, development, and so on) for a semblance of balance and reason, and to stave off a kind of addiction.  Demands are drug-like in their addictive quality.  Moderation is hard to manage when demand is concerned, however, striving for moderation can lead to more secure, long-term gains. 

One of the most conspicuous features of the Trump presidency is that it consists—at least in the public screen---almost entirely of a politics of pure demand: Veruca Salt's "I want it now!" chorus keeps coming from the White House and usually through Trump's unfortunately ugly mouth.  That few seasoned statespersons, even his supporters, are unwilling to comply with all of his demands make them only stronger.  His incessant demand for "a wall" is like the most superduper jelly-centered cookie, the big one and, given his qualifiers for describing it ("big, beautiful"), it must certainly promise the greatest love of all.  I suspect at least one side of any successful part of the wall that is actually completed will be mirrored. 

Yesterday the POTUS held a press conference with what he's calling "Angel Families," or those who have lost loved ones to immigrant violence, in hopes of shifting attention away from the abhorrent "zero tolerance" policy that has separated some 2,000 children from their families. Despite numerous studies that have shown no link between immigration and crime, ever since he announced his candidacy, Trump has consistently described immigrants in racist and dehumanizing terms to flame support for building his Big Cookie.

The optics of the scene were petulant and recall to mind adolescent fantasies of neighborhood tribunals during which competing neighborhood tribes vie for ownership of the dirt hill in the empty lot for bike jumps.  Arrayed on stage were a number of families who had a loved one killed by the hands of an illegal immigrant, no doubt a fact.  But the empirical statistics and research we have at our disposal on the topic suggests, of course, these families are more of an exception than the rule.  That this is an orchestrated optical illusion is exhibited by Trump's decision to autograph the posters featuring portraits of the deceased.  What the autograph is meant to communicate is unclear, except for the fact that such a press conference was not for these families; it was a platform for Trump to make his demand for "immigration reform" and get his Big Cookie.   The families' victims, in effect, get victimized again. 

This kind of media spectacle, meant as a form of misdirection, is something Trump and his handlers repeatedly orchestrate.  Some readers may recall in October, 2016, just prior to a presidential debate, Trump invited self-described victims of sexual misconduct by both Bill and Hillary Clinton to a press conference.  The women repeated their stories and expressed admiration and support for Trump, who sat in the middle like the messiah with his characteristic, neck-bearing smugness.  I have no reason to doubt these women; what is startling is that they would agree to rehearsing their claims to assist Trump in his bid for the presidency. As I have argued elsewhere, such grandiloquent display of exploitation rehearses the logic of sexual assault by using victims to support a larger cause, using them as vehicles of communication and expressions of power (e.g., Rubin's conception of "trafficking in women").  Of course, such deflecting spectacles are meant to erase memory of the Access Hollywood tape in which Trump expresses he is above the law and, because of his fame and power, can grab any woman he wants by the genitals.

The "I know you are but what am I?" presidency puts petulance on the world stage, to embarrassing and deadly consequence.  Given the well-acknowledged, perverse logic of spectatorship as such, Trump's presidency is the most perverse reign we have ever seen.