There is an idea abroad that Trump is somehow an exceptional president, that there is something unique about how he tears up rule books, imposes the will of the USA on other nations and lacks an understanding of the rest of the world. There is some truth to the idea that he is uniquely stupid, amongst the pantheon of US presidents, so much so that he makes George W. Bush seem like an intellectual colossus. But that is all there is to his being an exception.
There is a great deal of continuity in Trump with other presidents, not in the details of some of his policies, but in broader terms we have been here before. Trump is a product of the country he grew up in, where children from a very young age were indoctrinated with the idea of American Exceptionalism, yes, they do indoctrination better than anyone else. The idea is a simple one, that the USA is somehow unique in the world, morally, culturally, economically, and with that goes the right and even the duty, as they see it, to impose their will on lesser nations. He is part of a generation that was raised on the idea the USA is the greatest nation on earth, despite all the evidence to the contrary. US social indicators have always been abysmal compared to other industrialised nations.
It occupies 52nd position in the world in terms of child mortality rates with 5.1 deaths per 1,000 live births, not only behind places like Norway and Ireland but also other places such as Malta and Cuba, of course, and only just ahead of its enemy China with a rate of 6.2, according to the CIA World Factbook.[1] A similar situation can be seen on other issues such as maternal mortality rates i.e. the number of deaths per 100,000 live births where it had a rate in 2020 that was worse than prewar Ukraine, 21 compared to 17, and a lot worse than Russia’s rate of 14.
Even on literacy the US lags behind lots of places, but let’s not go there, that is part of the wider problem of culture and political culture in particular. Actually, let’s go there. The “greatest” nation on earth ranks 36th in world literacy rates, which is not bad at all, except it is the richest country on the planet, so not being in the top five never mind the top thirty is nothing short of a disgrace. The illiteracy rate in the US is 21% compared to El Salvador with a rate of just 10% and 54% of those in the US who are literate have a literacy level below 6th grade, 45 million are functionally illiterate and read below a 5th grade level and a whopping 44% of US adults do not read a single book in a year.[2] Trump himself is one of those who does not read, unlike his republican predecessor George W. Bush, who surprisingly read quite a bit.
In such a nation, putting out the idea of American Exceptionalism is all the easier. Trump was raised in such a void. But liberals who have done little to improve the situation would look at those stats and spit out the word, Rubes, an insulting term for the rural working class. But actually, this rubbish is spouted frequently by college educated liberals. The talk show host and liberal doyen Bill Maher is one such fool, frequently insulting what he and Hillary Clinton termed the deplorables, though Maher’s preferred phrase being Rubes. Maher once described US bases and soldiers in the Arab World as being there to protect Arabs and questioned on his show why given the Saudis’ lack of response to ISIS why the US bases continued to protect them. That is a Trump like level of stupidity that is common amongst liberals. Trump neither has a monopoly on believing in the US’s role as a leader of what they like to call the “Free World” nor does he have one on stupidity either.
However, its military prowess and economic clout have been, and still are, exceptional, even now with the Empire in clear decline. Trump grew up on the myth that they were the best. This myth is shared by the vast majority of the US population and peddled by conmen such as Obama, Biden, Clinton etc, in the Democrats and others such as Bush in the Republicans, to name just those who are still alive.
The other aspect of this exceptionalism was the US justifying its military adventures through a contorted moral lens which gave it the right to wage war, attack, bomb and assassinate in the name of “freedom”. It could and did do this at will for more than two centuries, it was its Manifest Destiny, a term that initially referred to the expansion of whites throughout the entire American continent. This has led the US to be one of the most warlike nations on the earth. It has been almost constantly at war, or engaged in sporadic attacks on its real and perceived enemies since its foundation. In the case of Latin America, it is easier to count the countries where it hasn’t invaded or overthrown the government, than those it has.[3] There are countries that it is not credited as having invaded, such as Colombia. Though it did break off Panama from Colombia in 1903 in order to build the Panama Canal and then sent a military delegation to the country in 1963 to encourage the Colombian government to set up death squads.[4] A similar picture can be seen on other continents. The US even invaded China in 1900 as part of an eight-nation alliance to put down the Boxer Rebellion. It had other clashes with China after the revolution and also in Korea and it waged war in other countries of the region such as Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines.
Though if we want to talk about the current situation, we need to look at more recent issues. It is not the case that the relationship with China was rosy before Trump came along. The US has long wanted to stuff it to what it sees as a major economic and even military competitor. Obama said that:
However, its military prowess and economic clout have been, and still are, exceptional, even now with the Empire in clear decline. Trump grew up on the myth that they were the best. This myth is shared by the vast majority of the US population and peddled by conmen such as Obama, Biden, Clinton etc, in the Democrats and others such as Bush in the Republicans, to name just those who are still alive.
The other aspect of this exceptionalism was the US justifying its military adventures through a contorted moral lens which gave it the right to wage war, attack, bomb and assassinate in the name of “freedom”. It could and did do this at will for more than two centuries, it was its Manifest Destiny, a term that initially referred to the expansion of whites throughout the entire American continent. This has led the US to be one of the most warlike nations on the earth. It has been almost constantly at war, or engaged in sporadic attacks on its real and perceived enemies since its foundation. In the case of Latin America, it is easier to count the countries where it hasn’t invaded or overthrown the government, than those it has.[3] There are countries that it is not credited as having invaded, such as Colombia. Though it did break off Panama from Colombia in 1903 in order to build the Panama Canal and then sent a military delegation to the country in 1963 to encourage the Colombian government to set up death squads.[4] A similar picture can be seen on other continents. The US even invaded China in 1900 as part of an eight-nation alliance to put down the Boxer Rebellion. It had other clashes with China after the revolution and also in Korea and it waged war in other countries of the region such as Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines.
Though if we want to talk about the current situation, we need to look at more recent issues. It is not the case that the relationship with China was rosy before Trump came along. The US has long wanted to stuff it to what it sees as a major economic and even military competitor. Obama said that:
I could not have a trade war in 2009 or 2010. At that point I needed the cooperation of China as well as Europe as well as every other potential [growth] engine, just to restart the global economy[5]
Though it was in his opinion “entirely legitimate to push China much harder on trade issues”[6] and in Trump like fashion accused China of “evading, bending, or breaking just about every agreed-about rule of international commerce.”[7] Yes, Trump didn’t invent that either, though the US has been correctly accused of doing all of that in order to dump its agricultural surpluses on other nations in violation of WTO rules, sauce for the goose should be good for the gander. In fact, Obama pursued a very aggressive policy against China on trade, taking cases to the World Trade Organisation including one forcing it to remove restrictions on the export of rare earth metals.[8] China abided by the decisions of the WTO. The idea of going to the WTO again was anathema to Trump.
Obama didn’t just pursue an aggressive policy on trade, he ratcheted up the military tensions as well. In a visit to East Asia in 2014, he sought to “counterbalance” Chinese “military expansion through defence cooperation with other countries in East Asia.”[9] He laid claim to the South Sea Islands as being covered by the US-Japan Security Alliance and promised to back anyone in a fight with China. But in fact, it has been the US which has talked up the possibility of war and engaged in a policy of increased militarisation of the region.
In 2016, the renowned Australian journalist, the late great John Pilger made a documentary entitled The Coming War on China.[10] In it he dealt with the increased US military presence in the area, pointing out that China is surrounded by 400 US military bases and that as part of Obama’s “pivot to Asia” two thirds of US naval and air forces were to be concentrated in the region. In an interview for Al Jazeera, Pilger did something most mainstream journalists fear to do now. He criticised the US and went against the repackaged narrative of the Yellow Peril stories that abound in the Western media. He also linked the economic performance of China to why the US sees it as a threat that must be dealt with.
The US has missiles in the region pointed at China, located off its coast. China has no missiles off the coast of the USA. On the question of Trump, Pilger said of his first presidency that he was continuing Obama’s “pivot to Asia” policy. There is nothing new under the sun with Trump. The democrats had described Chinese economic performance, its use of its investments and foreign aid as soft power around the world as an economic and security threat.
Yes, Trump has been reckless in his application of this policy, he has done so with no real plan or strategy in place, but on the fundamentals, there is no break with Biden or Obama despite all his bluster about how unique he thinks he is. Many US liberals are tearing their hair out at how Trump is wrecking the economy and in practice weakening US standing in the world. Some of them seek to blame the working class for voting for Trump, refusing all the while to accept that whole sections, including blacks and Latinos abandoned them because the Democrats had done nothing for them. Now, in their opposition to Trump they propose nothing new for them, because they can’t and they are ideologically wedded to attacks on the working class, migrants and the defence of US imperial interests. We should remember at this point that Obama deported more migrants than Trump did in his first presidency and bombed more countries than Trump did.
Liberals now appeal to the working class, the deplorables and Rubes they so disdain, in order to put them back in office without offering anything new, just more contempt, more worsening living standards and a continuation of their imperialist agenda. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has already told women that they want to roll back Trump, but men must get access to women’s spaces, that was a redline. She said she wouldn’t throw trans identified men under a bus to win an election, which means the current crisis is secondary to her, as it is to many democrats. They would just be more efficient in their war with China, but war there would be, economic or military.
Trump is exceptionally stupid, exceptionally blind to his own lack of talent with an exceptional belief in himself. That however, is irrelevant as is the belief in some sectors that Trump might be clinically insane.[12] He would not be the first US president who was not compos mentis. Biden wasn’t in the waning days, nor was Reagan.
Bullying and throwing your weight around is how the US ruling class has done business since its foundation and in that, the current crisis is a continuation of past policy, albeit in a reckless and ill-thought-out fashion. Trump is, as we say in Ireland, a gobshite, an utter eejit, Obama is not. But both are cut from the same cloth, they are not enemies, they both seek to assert US dominance, and the fact that one is more efficient and strategic in that than the other is of no significance when we hear the lesser evil rubbish in elections. A plague on both their houses. Trump is a continuation of American Exceptionalism which the Democrats themselves have always championed. He is not insane, he is just the latest leader of an insane system.
Obama didn’t just pursue an aggressive policy on trade, he ratcheted up the military tensions as well. In a visit to East Asia in 2014, he sought to “counterbalance” Chinese “military expansion through defence cooperation with other countries in East Asia.”[9] He laid claim to the South Sea Islands as being covered by the US-Japan Security Alliance and promised to back anyone in a fight with China. But in fact, it has been the US which has talked up the possibility of war and engaged in a policy of increased militarisation of the region.
In 2016, the renowned Australian journalist, the late great John Pilger made a documentary entitled The Coming War on China.[10] In it he dealt with the increased US military presence in the area, pointing out that China is surrounded by 400 US military bases and that as part of Obama’s “pivot to Asia” two thirds of US naval and air forces were to be concentrated in the region. In an interview for Al Jazeera, Pilger did something most mainstream journalists fear to do now. He criticised the US and went against the repackaged narrative of the Yellow Peril stories that abound in the Western media. He also linked the economic performance of China to why the US sees it as a threat that must be dealt with.
I have reported from Asia for many years. In 2009, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that the South China Sea was a “security interest” of the United States . . . The rise of China’s economy in a generation is phenomenal and barely understood in the West. The US elite – that is, those who have assumed power with the post 9/11 ascendancy of the Pentagon and the national security monoliths – regard American “dominance” of world affairs, especially Asia, as threatened by China’s economic rise.[11]
The US has missiles in the region pointed at China, located off its coast. China has no missiles off the coast of the USA. On the question of Trump, Pilger said of his first presidency that he was continuing Obama’s “pivot to Asia” policy. There is nothing new under the sun with Trump. The democrats had described Chinese economic performance, its use of its investments and foreign aid as soft power around the world as an economic and security threat.
Yes, Trump has been reckless in his application of this policy, he has done so with no real plan or strategy in place, but on the fundamentals, there is no break with Biden or Obama despite all his bluster about how unique he thinks he is. Many US liberals are tearing their hair out at how Trump is wrecking the economy and in practice weakening US standing in the world. Some of them seek to blame the working class for voting for Trump, refusing all the while to accept that whole sections, including blacks and Latinos abandoned them because the Democrats had done nothing for them. Now, in their opposition to Trump they propose nothing new for them, because they can’t and they are ideologically wedded to attacks on the working class, migrants and the defence of US imperial interests. We should remember at this point that Obama deported more migrants than Trump did in his first presidency and bombed more countries than Trump did.
Liberals now appeal to the working class, the deplorables and Rubes they so disdain, in order to put them back in office without offering anything new, just more contempt, more worsening living standards and a continuation of their imperialist agenda. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has already told women that they want to roll back Trump, but men must get access to women’s spaces, that was a redline. She said she wouldn’t throw trans identified men under a bus to win an election, which means the current crisis is secondary to her, as it is to many democrats. They would just be more efficient in their war with China, but war there would be, economic or military.
Trump is exceptionally stupid, exceptionally blind to his own lack of talent with an exceptional belief in himself. That however, is irrelevant as is the belief in some sectors that Trump might be clinically insane.[12] He would not be the first US president who was not compos mentis. Biden wasn’t in the waning days, nor was Reagan.
Bullying and throwing your weight around is how the US ruling class has done business since its foundation and in that, the current crisis is a continuation of past policy, albeit in a reckless and ill-thought-out fashion. Trump is, as we say in Ireland, a gobshite, an utter eejit, Obama is not. But both are cut from the same cloth, they are not enemies, they both seek to assert US dominance, and the fact that one is more efficient and strategic in that than the other is of no significance when we hear the lesser evil rubbish in elections. A plague on both their houses. Trump is a continuation of American Exceptionalism which the Democrats themselves have always championed. He is not insane, he is just the latest leader of an insane system.
References
[1] See CIA World Fact Book
[2] See.
[3] TRT (n/d) The secret history of US interventions in Latin America. Adam Bensaid.
[4] Giraldo, J. (2006) Cronología de los hechos reveladoras del Paramilitarismo como política de Estado.
[5] South China Morning Post (17/11/2020) Barack Obama: ‘I could not have a trade war’ with China due to global financial crisis. Cissy Zhou & Finbar Bermingham.
[6] Ibíd.
[7] Ibíd.
[8] USTR (2015) Fact Sheet: The Obama Administration’s Unprecedented Trade Enforcement Record.
[9] The Conversation (02/04/2014) Obama’s key message in Asia – if China wants a fight, we’ve got your back.
[10] See.
[11] Al Jazeera (06/12/2017) John Pilger Q&A: ‘US missiles are pointed at China’.
[12] The Independent (10/04/2025) Fund managers quietly fear Trump doesn’t have a tariff plan and that he ‘might be insane’. Gustave Kilander.
[1] See CIA World Fact Book
[2] See.
[3] TRT (n/d) The secret history of US interventions in Latin America. Adam Bensaid.
[4] Giraldo, J. (2006) Cronología de los hechos reveladoras del Paramilitarismo como política de Estado.
[5] South China Morning Post (17/11/2020) Barack Obama: ‘I could not have a trade war’ with China due to global financial crisis. Cissy Zhou & Finbar Bermingham.
[6] Ibíd.
[7] Ibíd.
[8] USTR (2015) Fact Sheet: The Obama Administration’s Unprecedented Trade Enforcement Record.
[9] The Conversation (02/04/2014) Obama’s key message in Asia – if China wants a fight, we’ve got your back.
[10] See.
[11] Al Jazeera (06/12/2017) John Pilger Q&A: ‘US missiles are pointed at China’.
[12] The Independent (10/04/2025) Fund managers quietly fear Trump doesn’t have a tariff plan and that he ‘might be insane’. Gustave Kilander.
⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist with extensive experience in Latin America.
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