After Donald Trump's first ten days in office the shape of his presidency is beginning to be discernible. Its final shape will be determined by how he responds to events outside his control (including those initiated by him). But what we have seen merits reflection.
Much of what he has done is by way of promise: to open facilities used for torture, to build the Mexico wall, to spend massively on the military, to drop the Trans Pacific trading pact and to revise others, to build pipeline on environmental and Indian heritage grounds, and to prevent government agencies from promoting action against climate change. He has halted travel and immigration from seven Muslim nations and appointed his chief political adviser to the National Security Council. And he has continued to tweet liberally.
These promises and actions make clear what we can expect from the Trump presidency. Economically the President will keep his promises to lower business and personal taxes and direct massive expenditure to infrastructure. This will deepen inequality. He will also protect United States industries, hoping that these measures will give employment to people left aside by globalisation and benefit their communities.
Both in domestic and international relationships he will protect the short term economic interests of the United States. He will encourage exploitation of the environment, protection in trading relationships and make other nations pay for any United States services.
In his domestic policy we should expect punitive action in the name of security against minorities and against community groups that protest against violations of human rights. Both have been displayed in his suspension of entry visas for people from the seven nations. Culturally the administration will encourage disdain for informed opinion, for the search for truth and for stored wisdom and for their repositories — including the mainstream media, academia, non-government organisations, environmental scientists and historians.
And we can expect that the President will continue to scattify his critics by multidirectional rapid twitter fire that keeps their heads down and leads them to respond jerkily to each provocation.
If the success of a presidency is measured by re-election, there is no reason why the Trump presidency should not be successful. The stimulus given to the economy will certainly benefit the wealthy few. It may also bring some benefit to people neglected in recent years. And even if it fails, voters may respond favourably to his appeal to national self-interest and his scapegoating of minorities.
But if success is defined in larger terms of the national good the United States is likely to be worse off after four years. The likely deepening of inequality, the disregard for universal human rights and for the international and national responsibilities that flow from them, the contempt for the environment and for evidence based research, and the debasement of political speech promise a more divided society in a more divided world.
"The deepest challenge is to build the kind of relationships between persons, between different groups within society, with the environment and between nations, that enable people to flourish."
If that happens it will inevitably affect Australian society. So Australians will need to find a response to the Trump presidency and its effects. In such a noisy and staccato atmosphere the beginnings of an appropriate response lie in not responding to every tweet. We should stop looking with horrified fascination at the president and his personality, and reflect on the significance of what he and his administration are doing.
Where words are inflated and debased, the proper response is to maintain an adamantine sense of what matters in a good society. Here the deepest challenge is to build the kind of relationships between persons, between different groups within society, with the environment and between nations, that enable people to flourish. These are relationships based in respect and on the acknowledgment that we human beings depend on one another to prosper.
To evaluate whether the quality of these relationships is furthered or harmed by the Trump administration we need to have a vision of how respect and mutual responsibility are to be embodied in personal, communal and public life.
When engaging with the Trump phenomenon, too, a major challenge is to embody in our words and disposition the values that characterise the relationships that build a good society and are now debased in public life. This means resisting fear and anxiety, and consistently showing respect, even to people whom we are tempted to disrespect.
In an environment, too, where a violent and dismissive rhetoric is designed to make minority groups in society focus solely on their own interests and so alienate themselves from other groups, all must focus attention on the deepest source of threat to shaping a society in which they can each flourish. In our society the threat arises from gross inequality. Anger at inequality underlies the current disillusion with politics and its institutions. If it grows under the Trump administration the result is likely to be a more brutal government less tolerant of minority groups.
If we are preoccupied with our own narrow interests and ideologies we shall be like geese snapping at one another as together they head for the knife.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.