Sociologist's Trump book predicted Charlottesville
By Jon Dunbar
Writing about the Donald Trump presidency is about as easy as describing a building collapse in mid-demolition, while you’re on the top floor. Each week, a new disaster or national embarrassment changes everything, producing a high volume of new information as well as disinformation, chipping away at the very way society shares knowledge. But Jon Huer, a sociology professor and former Korea Times columnist, presents a great deal of insight into Trump as well as his supporters in his 12th book “Donald Trump: Made in the USA.”
Writing between Trump’s upset victory last November and around his January inauguration, Huer couldn’t have known how ugly Trump’s presidency really would be. But his analysis is so thorough as to be predictive of future events, such as the racially driven clash in Charlottesville and its aftermath.
“Imagine the crowd lining up on opposite sidewalks across the street supporting their own candidate, one side having the Trump supporters and the other side the Clinton crowd,” he writes in his book, released by University Press of America’s imprint Hamilton Books. “One side is very light, the other side very dark. Both sides are ardently cheering and shouting but would they be doing that in good spirits? We are sure the media would describe this as a race war, whites vs. non-whites. Violence may break out, shots may be fired, and law enforcement would surely be called.”
Written months prior to that incident, it’s closer than Nostradamus ever got.
Huer then accurately explains Trump’s Aug. 22 campaign rally in which he claimed to have condemned racial hate, reciting his words but neglecting the important “on both sides.” As Huer says, Trump isn’t lying because he can’t remember. “Technically he is a liar, but morally he is not, just like a child or an insane person who does not really remember that he indeed committed X,” Huer writes.
What’s more, Huer predicts how this affects the White House, where Trump becomes torn between his fascism and his capitalism, leading to the disbandment of economic counsels and the ousting of Steve Bannon. Huer predicts Trump’s downfall will come when the moneyed elite turn on him, either deposing him or taking away his power so he can go back to occupying himself with pleasure and amusement.
"If you are not angry or worried about America, it's because you are a happy American who has been fed garbage for decades now," Huer writes, mirroring the final public Facebook post of Heather Heyer, killed in Charlottesville, which shared the anonymous quote “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.”
Huer, rather than chasing the headlines about the latest controversy or trying to actually predict an unpredictable president, takes a step back and looks at the Trump nation through a sociological lens. It’s macro but hardly objective in tone: he likens Trump’s win to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, while comparing Trump himself to Hitler.
He isn’t much more sympathetic to Trump’s supporters, going beyond Hillary Clinton’s epithet of “deplorables” and calling them “garbage Americans.”
His reasoning is that modern societal factors such as consumer capitalism, social media technology and news as entertainment, leading to mental garbage that has destroyed the intelligence and humanity of white Americans. White Americans in particular because they are the intended beneficiaries of consumer capitalism, and they live a more isolated life than many non-white communities, which Huer refers to throughout the book as “lesser Americans.” Ironically the dominant position of white Americans led directly to their downfall.
He sees the same traits in Trump as in his supporters: childishness, selfishness and vengefulness. But rather than identifying Trump as a master strategist or opportunist, he sees Trump as the creation of the public that hangs on his every word and tweet; he is the president America deserves, its punishment for out-of-control consumer capitalism.
This national embarrassment has revealed to the world the illusion of the American dream, exposing the real America that is a “superpower armed with hate and brute force.” Trump, as the American most adapted to his surroundings, represents the spirit and mood of America better than anyone, Huer says.
Huer’s analysis has its faults. For one, he mentions Trump’s germophobic dislike of handshakes, long since forgotten following his grappling-move handshakes with countless world leaders. He singles out Snapchat as a “nothing invention,” while underestimating the needs of its users to resist making a digital footprint. And he sees white Trump supporters and non-white Trump opponents as serving their racially opposed self-interests, while seeing white Trump opponents as altruist going against their natural self-interest for the good of the whole, rather than seeing through a conman’s lies and false promises or having their own self-interest in a tolerant and educated society.
This book review ironically took extra time to complete, as it was read on the same digital devices Huer so criticizes, forcing his words to compete with endless alerts and news updates. Trump’s election, Huer concludes, hasn’t changed anything ― it has only exposed to the world the cage America has been building itself for decades.