How Trump watered down the very idea of American greatness

At the heart of Buchanan’s speech were communities taking care of each other with self-sacrificial love. Trump’s speech never mentioned God. Trump’s speech never mentioned sacrifice for the community. Who needs a friendly neighbor when you have Trump? “I’m with you” is not just Trump’s clever revision of Hillary Clinton’s “I’m with her” slogan. It’s the man’s entire idea of American greatness. America will be great again when Americans can rely on Trump.

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Some nationalists aspire to be their country’s father figure. Trump wants to be our executive coach.

Or maybe he wants something more menacing.

In many ways, the concluding image of Buchanan’s campaign speech is reversed by Trump. In 2016, Donald Trump leads the threatening and cursing mob. His campaign is not a force for retrenching order, it is anarchic. The campaign says with a smirk that it is on the side of the law, and then encourages people to beat up protesters. It says America has been involved in stupid wars for too long, but promises to treat slights to our honor as imminent threats. This Trumpian mob wants to tear down and loot Washington D.C. which, in their view, is the convalescent home for a political and media class that has lived far beyond its usefulness to the rest of the nation.

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