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THE DANGEROUS CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS OF DONALD TRUMP  
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Stephen F. Eisenman
June 4, 2024
Counterpunch
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_ With the 34 guilty verdicts delivered on Thursday by a New York
City jury, Donald J. Trump is now shown to have been plucked by a
“seductive priestess,” a Maja named Stormy Daniels. _

Francisco Goya, “There they go, plucked,” Los Caprichos, 1799,
Metropolitan Museum of Art.,

 

 

PLUCKED

There was a fashion, among the elite of late 18th C. Spain, to mimic
the styles and habits of the working class, in particular, the
subculture of _Majas_ and _Majos_. The French Ambassador to Spain, J.
F. de Bourgoing, described the phenomenon — _encanaillement_ or
slumming_ —_ in a letter from 1788:

The _Majos_ are beaux of the lower class. . . . Their countenance,
half concealed under a brown stiff bonnet, called _Montera_, bears the
character of threatening severity, or of wrath. . . . The _Majas_, for
their part seem to make a study of effrontery…. But if the spectator
approaches them with a disposition, not very scrupulous, he sees in
them the most seducing priestesses that ever presided at the altars of
Venus.

The artist Francisco Goya was particularly attuned to _Majismo_ and
represented it in many paintings and prints. In an etching titled
“There they go, plucked,” from the album titled _Los Caprichos_
(1799), he shows a pair of _Majas_ and their elderly _Celestinas_
(procuresses) threatening and sweeping away a pair of naked chickens,
with a third one nearly out the door. They are Johns or punters who
have been fucked and plucked — fleeced of their feathers and funds.

With the 34 guilty verdicts delivered on Thursday by a New York City
jury, Donald J. Trump is now shown to have been plucked by a
“seductive priestess,” a _Maja_ named Stormy Daniels. In 2006, he
met her at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe and suggested a
rendezvous in his suite. There, he asked Daniels about her family
background as well as detailed questions about her career as a porn
star. She answered that she was the child of a low-income, single
mother, and that porn actors are regularly tested for STDs. After a
visit to the toilet, Daniels was confronted by Trump stripped to his
boxers. He proposed sex and Daniels demurred. Infatuated by her career
and working-class origins, Trump persisted: “I thought we were
getting somewhere, we were talking, and I thought you were serious
about what you wanted. If you ever want to get out of that trailer
park.” In her trial testimony, Daniels said that she never lived in
a trailer park. But she acceded to a single, brief and literally
unmemorable (she blacked out) episode of unprotected sexual
intercourse, missionary position. She rebuffed his many subsequent
calls for sexual liaisons.

A decade later, in 2016, Daniels extorted from presidential candidate
Trump $130,000 to keep the whole episode secret. The payoff money was
fronted by Michael Cohen, Trump’s bulldog and fixer_._ Following the
election, Cohen squeezed now-President Trump for $420,000 as
reimbursement, tax pre-payment, outlay to a stiffed creditor (money
which Cohen kept for himself) and a performance bonus, the latter
being a consummate expression of _chutzpah._ Trump was once again
plucked. Finally, last week, a random group of New Yorkers, many of
whom are working class, determined that the business records
associated with those payments were falsified to perpetrate an illegal
fraud upon the electorate. Trump was once more plucked by members of
the class he envies and exploits. He will return to court for
sentencing on July 11, a few days before he is for the third time
nominated by the Republican Party for President of the United States.
If he loses the election, there is a good chance he will be jailed. In
that instance, he’ll be processed like any other prisoner: stripped
(plucked), handed a uniform (no red ties – they are a suicide risk),
and assigned a jail cell.

LOVE AND HATE

_Majismo_ was the offshoot of a wider, Enlightenment trend: the
bourgeois cult of nature. Whereas the European aristocracy and
nobility held themselves superior to nature – physical, bodily, and
human – the middle class or bourgeoisie claimed nature as a
birthright. They owned farmland, mines, and factories, and exploited
them – not with their own hands, but with the labor of others whom
they either bought as slaves or to whom they paid wages. As more of
this class gained wealth and power, its members felt a need for
ideological self-justification. Lacking the birth and bearing of their
noble or aristocratic superiors, they claimed to be the “natural”
class: honest, direct, and unaffected by fashion, falsity or
convention. Their very lack of breeding was a sign of their worth.

In response, the noble and aristocratic classes of France, Spain,
England and elsewhere, began to emulate the styles and habits of the
lower orders. In France, Marie Antoinette dressed as a milkmaid. In
England, great show was made of the agricultural productivity of noble
lands. And in Spain, the nobility and aristocracy – all the way up
to King Carlos III and Queen Maria Luisa – emulated the _Majas_ and
_Majos_ in a vain quest for the supposed authentic essence
(“_autentico ser_”) of ancient and medieval Castile. Make Spain
great again! The emptiness and absurdity of this elite quest for
origins and authenticity were grist for Goya’s sharp and satiric
art.

Francisco Goya, “As far back as his grandfather,” Los Caprichos,
1799. Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Flash forward 175 years. Donald Trump, ne’er-do-well son of the
striving, successful and unscrupulous Fred Trump, seeks to make his
own way in the competitive world of New York real estate. Lacking his
father’s talent, connections and personality, he is mentored by a
corrupt but skillful prosecutor, lawyer, bully boy, and fixer, Roy
Cohn, famous for securing the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
and abetting the anti-communist witch hunts of Senator Joe McCarthy.
Failing at business, Trump by the late 1980s finds fame by feeding at
the trough of racism and fear while claiming to be the friend of
working people. He at once offers working people a leg up in his TV
show, _The Apprentice_, and ruthlessly fires them. He attacks the
poor, young, Black suspects in the Central Park Jogger case and
publicly calls for their execution, even before they are (falsely)
convicted. He befriends Mafiosi, boxers, wrestlers, football players,
bikers, models and beauty queens. He claims to admire military men,
police officers and factory workers while privately calling them
losers. During his presidential campaigns, he exhorts his
working-class acolytes to violence, and promises to pay their legal
costs or pardon them if they are convicted.

MAGA AND NARCISSISM

More than a desire to restore a supposed national glory, Trump’s
quest to “make America great again” is the search for his own
“authentic essence.” His narcissism is pathological. He displays
pomposity, grandiosity, and superiority, constantly seeking attention.
He expects perfect loyalty from others to affirm his own value. He
chooses wives and lovers based solely on their looks to convince
himself of his own, physical beauty. He belittles and bullies others
to affirm himself. He plays the victim to make sure that any failure
is the fault of others, since he is faultless. And he exhibits a
profound sense of emptiness – his hours-long perorations at MAGA
rallies are ways of filling the void in his spirit and soul. There, he
mirrors the ideological stance of his most damaged and desperate
working-class followers, and they do the same with him.

The cycle of in-group affirmation and out-group derogation is endless
and dangerous; it’s the stuff of fascists. After Trump’s
conviction last week for falsifying business records to cover up
election crimes, he delivered a 35-minute peroration in which he
claimed to speak for the working class of the U.S. while at the same
time attacking homeless Americans as well as the poor of South America
and Africa, and other parts of the world, whom he called criminals,
terrorists and insane. He promised to wall the border against
immigration and to lock up and deport millions of people already in
the country. Trump’s is a peculiar form of class consciousness –
that of a wealthy and arrogant narcissist who seeks validation from
his putative inferiors while at the same time chastising or even
destroying the working class that exists outside his circle of
acolytes. Those who don’t honor and adore him, must be locked up or
destroyed. Convicted, Trump is more dangerous than ever.

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_Stephen F. Eisenman is emeritus professor at Northwestern University.
His latest book, with Sue Coe, is titled “The Young Person’s Guide
to American Fascism,” and is forthcoming from OR Books. He can be
reached at [email protected]_ _ _

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* Donald Trump; Trump's Narcissism; Trump's MAGA;
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