President Donald Trump's vision of America's tomorrows looks much like its yesterdays.
He loves "beautiful" coal. "Beautiful" warships. And "those four beautiful words: MADE IN THE USA!" He speaks of the country's might as measured by its steel mills, farms and cars rolling off Detroit assembly lines.
He's not merely summoning happy memories. His nostalgia shapes policy and lives, too.
FILE - In this July 22, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump shakes hands with Ship Captain Rick McCormack as he arrives for the the commissioning ceremony of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) at Naval Station Norfolk, Va. Trump’s vision of America’s tomorrows looks much like its yesterdays. He loves “beautiful” coal. “Beautiful” warships. And “those four beautiful words: MADE IN THE USA!” He speaks of the country’s might as measured by its steel mills, farms and cars rolling off Detroit assembly lines. (AP PhotoCarolyn Kaster, File)
Trump glorifies the muscle and sweat (but not the labor unions) of those who toil in factories and till the soil, like those idealized depictions of labor in century-old murals .
He does not love wind power. He's a fossil fuel guy. A meat and potatoes man, too, he steers an administration that reflects not just his agenda but his pre-woke diet, as when it pulled back on requirements for whole grains in school lunches.
He's had it out for those newfangled light bulbs for years, ever since he warned flatly and falsely that they "can cause cancer."
He waves off modern worries about global warming by pointing to a cold snap. His campaign sells plastic straws to thumb its nose at what Trump considers political correctness.
Meantime the world moves on.
Industry, technology and much of the culture are finding new ways of doing and living.
Even the auto industry, which doesn't like being told by government what to do, has found itself unhappy about how Trump is easing fuel economy requirements . Crusty old Detroit has already moved on from its most gas-guzzling days and invested massively in more efficient vehicles, kicking higher even as Trump lowers the goal posts.
U.S. prosperity has been driven for decades by services, technology and new things, not the grunt work of old that is celebrated by Trump. He sees trade in terms of the exchange of goods and he ignores services, where long-standing U.S. strength in global competitiveness does not fit his world view of an America under siege by rapacious traders like China.
"We are bringing BACK," he likes to say, and always with exaggeration. "We are bringing back America faster than anyone thought possible! We are bringing back our factories, we are bringing back our jobs, and we are bringing back those four beautiful words: MADE IN THE USA!"
"All those things come from the '50s and '60s," said Irving Rein, a professor of communications at Northwestern University who has studied cultural trends for more than a half century. He says that when Trump cheers things such as king coal, big steel and trade protectionism with the "big, beautiful tariff" on China, he knows his audience — a largely older one that takes comfort in a filtered view of the past.
Yet modernity advances.
"Popular culture is like a river; it just kind of floats by," Rein said. "Some of it stays." And Trump has captured those eddies.
In his own way, Joe Biden has, too.
While disagreeing with the 73-year-old Trump on almost all of the above, the 76-year-old Democratic presidential hopeful invokes a time of comity between political opponents — "the feeling that, nostalgically, there was more compromise," Rein said — and holds out the prospect of bringing back those days. This, while Trump and most of Biden's rivals seem ready to lunge at each other.
Trump's throwback tendencies are not unique in leadership. Ronald Reagan could be steeped in sentimentality, too, if without the sharp edges of this president.
Constantine Sedikides, a psychology professor who studies nostalgia from Britain's University of Southampton, said right-wing populists in Europe have romanticized the past to advance goals such as Britain's exit from the European Union and the marginalization of "outgroups" such as Islamic migrants and refugees.
"Trump is using collective nostalgia — sentimental longing about the country's rosy past — to his political advantage," Sedikides said by email.
By its nature, such cultural observers say, collective nostalgia is history seen through a veil, with old hardships and prejudices put out of mind in favor of wistful remembrance. "You cherry-pick things," Rein said.
Some of Trump's retro impulses are reflected by now in law or in the lifting of regulations, a trend most pronounced when it fits his pro-industry conservatism as well.
This past week his administration barred California's longtime authority to set stricter car and truck emission standards than federal rules require. Nearly half the states sued to block the Trump administration's action, which by its own reckoning is likely to result in additional fuel consumption of 500,000 barrels a day.
The auto industry, instead of being relieved, warned that their vehicles will become less competitive globally if the incentive to increase fuel efficiency is lost. Trump called them "politically correct Automobile Companies."
Trump has eased up a variety of environmental regulations, in part to serve his interest in reviving coal. But that effort is up against forces of the modern free market, awash in natural gas, as utilities continue closing coal-fired plants in favor of energy sources that are cleaner, cheaper or both.
This month the administration slowed a long push by Congress to wean the country from old-time incandescent bulbs in favor of LEDs and other lights that use less energy. Trump argues the savings aren't worth it, consumers should have a choice and under those new bulbs "I always look orange."
"And so do you," he told a Republican gathering, as if realizing he has been associated with that color anyway.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Russia on Wednesday vetoed a U.N. resolution sponsored by the United States and Japan calling on all nations to prevent a dangerous nuclear arms race in outer space, calling it “a dirty spectacle” that cherry picks weapons of mass destruction from all other weapons that should also be banned.
The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 13 in favor, Russia opposed and China abstaining.
The resolution would have called on all countries not to develop or deploy nuclear arms or other weapons of mass destruction in space, as banned under a 1967 international treaty that included the U.S. and Russia, and to agree to the need to verify compliance.
U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said after the vote that Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Moscow has no intention of deploying nuclear weapons in space.
“Today’s veto begs the question: Why? Why, if you are following the rules, would you not support a resolution that reaffirms them? What could you possibly be hiding,” she asked. “It’s baffling. And it’s a shame.”
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia dismissed the resolution as “absolutely absurd and politicized,” and said it didn’t go far enough in banning all types of weapons in space.
Russia and China proposed an amendment to the U.S.-Japan draft that would call on all countries, especially those with major space capabilities, “to prevent for all time the placement of weapons in outer space, and the threat of use of force in outer spaces.”
The vote was 7 countries in favor, 7 against, and one abstention and the amendment was defeated because it failed to get the minimum 9 “yes” votes required for adoption.
The U.S. opposed the amendment, and after the vote Nebenzia addressed the U.S. ambassador saying: “We want a ban on the placement of weapons of any kind in outer space, not just WMDs (weapons of mass destruction). But you don’t want that. And let me ask you that very same question. Why?”
He said much of the U.S. and Japan’s actions become clear “if we recall that the U.S. and their allies announced some time ago plans to place weapons … in outer space.”
Nebenzia accused the U.S. of blocking a Russian-Chinese proposal since 2008 for a treaty against putting weapons in outer space.
Thomas-Greenfield accused Russia of undermining global treaties to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, irresponsibly invoking “dangerous nuclear rhetoric,” walking away from several of its arms control obligations, and refusing to engage “in substantive discussions around arms control or risk reduction.”
She called Wednesday’s vote “a real missed opportunity to rebuild much-needed trust in existing arms control obligations.”
Thomas-Greenfield’s announcement of the resolution on March 18 followed White House confirmation in February that Russia has obtained a “troubling” anti-satellite weapon capability, although such a weapon is not operational yet.
Putin declared later that Moscow has no intention of deploying nuclear weapons in space, claiming that the country has only developed space capabilities similar to those of the U.S.
Thomas-Greenfield said before the vote that the world is just beginning to understand “the catastrophic ramifications of a nuclear explosion in space.”
It could destroy “thousands of satellites operated by countries and companies around the world — and wipe out the vital communications, scientific, meteorological, agricultural, commercial, and national security services we all depend on,” she said.
The defeated draft resolution said “the prevention of an arms race in outer space would avert a grave danger for international peace and security.” It would have urged all countries carrying out activities in exploring and using outer space to comply with international law and the U.N. Charter.
The draft would have affirmed that countries that ratified the 1967 Outer Space Treaty must comply with their obligations not to put in orbit around the Earth “any objects” with weapons of mass destruction, or install them “on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space.”
The treaty, ratified by some 114 countries, including the U.S. and Russia, prohibits the deployment of “nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction” in orbit or the stationing of “weapons in outer space in any other manner.”
The draft resolution emphasized “the necessity of further measures, including political commitments and legally binding instruments, with appropriate and effective provisions for verification, to prevent an arms race in outer space in all its aspects.”
It reiterated that the U.N. Conference on Disarmament, based in Geneva, has the primary responsibility to negotiate agreements on preventing an arms race in outer space.
The 65-nation body has achieved few results and has largely devolved into a venue for countries to voice criticism of others’ weapons programs or defend their own. The draft resolution would have urged the conference “to adopt and implement a balanced and comprehensive program of work.”
At the March council meeting where the U.S.-Japan initiative was launched, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned that “geopolitical tensions and mistrust have escalated the risk of nuclear warfare to its highest point in decades.”
He said the movie “Oppenheimer” about Robert Oppenheimer, who directed the U.S. project during World War II that developed the atomic bomb, “brought the harsh reality of nuclear doomsday to vivid life for millions around the world.”
“Humanity cannot survive a sequel to Oppenheimer,” the U.N. chief said.
United States Ambassador and Representative to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield addresses members of the U.N. Security Council before voting during a meeting on Non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, Wednesday, April 24, 2024 at United Nations headquarters. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez)
FILE - U.S. Ambassador to United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield speaks on Thursday, April 18, 2024, in Tokyo. The U.N. Security Council is set to vote Wednesday, April 24, 2024, on a resolution announced by Thomas-Greenfield, calling on all nations to prevent a dangerous nuclear arms race in outer space. It is likely to be vetoed by Russia. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, Pool, File)
