10 November 2016

Give us a ‘T’, give us an ‘R’…

The forty-fifth president of the United States.

by Neil Tidmarsh

The first thing that caught my eye when I went to Chicago a few years ago was a big, shiny, brand-new skyscraper.  And the first thing I noticed about that was the word which workmen were putting up on its side in big capital letters, ten or twenty feet high.  There was a ‘T’ and an ‘R’; and a ‘U’ was being manhandled into place at that very moment.  Yes, this was Trump Tower, and it was being branded with the man’s name for all the world to see.

I was amazed and amused.  It was almost too good to be true.  Here was the condescending Old World snob’s cliché of the New World: big; brash; boastful. If you’ve got it, flaunt it!  Write your name in the sky!  In huge letters!  In your face, and yours, and yours!  It was only my first or second trip to the USA.  It made quite an impression.  I imagined the whole of Chicago (“City of the Big Shoulders”), and a whole ostentatious country, applauding the man’s chutzpah.

Wrong.  It took me less than a day to realise that no one was applauding it.  The people of Chicago hated it.  They thought it was vulgar and egotistical to put your own name up on the side of your own building, in everybody’s face.  They were (and are) very proud of their architectural heritage, and, while they welcomed the building itself (Chicago being the home of the skyscraper), they thought that the all-too-visible branding was an act of architectural vandalism, an unnecessary and unsightly piece of megalomania.

The branding paused while I was there.  The remaining letters – M and P – were left at the side of the pavement, propped up against the side of the building.  And here was the second thing which made me realise that the USA wasn’t the bragging, bullying, violent Wild West of Old World prejudice which that first impression might have suggested – nobody vandalised those huge letters in spite of the strength of public feeling against them.  Nobody tried to smash them up or heave them into the river, which was conveniently to hand on the other side of the road from the Tower.  No, this was clearly a calm, civilised, peaceful and measured country, a country where the guide on our boat-tour of the city’s architecture wasn’t embarrassed to quote the poetry of Carl Sandburg to us.

And yet, and yet…

A new president of the United States has been elected, and here we are, back with those first impressions, back with everything which seems to confirm an Old World snob’s prejudices.  With someone who seems to enjoy projecting himself as an archetype, a stereotype, a cliché of an American – coarse, vulgar, bullying, and very, very rich.  We may well ask “What has happened to America?”, but the cynic may well answer: “It has just elected an archetypical American – is that a surprise?”  He could have come straight from the pages of Mark Twain or Herman Melville. Yes, those authors would have employed a satirical pen, but a second glance at almost any American icon reveals some sort of ambiguity, a love-or-hate duality.  Hemingway – macho monster or great artist?  Pathetic poser or real man?  Or all of the above?  Jay Gatsby – a straw man, a liar and a fraud, or the only person with real heart, humanity and honesty in the whole story?

Even Chicago has its ugly and evil side, admitted Carl Sandburg in his hymn in praise of that great city, quoted by our tour-guide. “They tell me you are wicked and I believe them” Sandburg wrote.  “They tell me you are crooked and I answer; yes it is true… they tell me you are brutal…”  Indeed, imagining the aged president elect’s triumphant laughter makes me think of Chicago’s laughter: “Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,/Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,/Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,/Laughing!”

Bragging about the pulse, the heart of the people?  That brings me to the first of three points. The first point is one of bewilderment (plenty of that around); the second is of anxiety (plenty of that, too); the third is of hope (only one, I’m afraid, and a desperate one at that).

First, the anger and disillusionment of blue-collar America, disinherited by the sexy, immoral threesome of Capitalist Privilege, Corporate America and Globalisation.  How has a man who is the very face of those three perceived evils been accepted as a leader by their victims? Why have they accepted him, of all people, to champion their grievances?

Second, the UK has just chosen (bravely, some might say; fool-hardily, others might say) to leave the protectionist, inward-looking EU in order to pursue a more open and free engagement with a wider world; but much of Trump’s rhetoric about the future of the USA has itself been protectionist and inward-looking.  President Obama told us we’d go to the back of the queue – will President Trump go further, closing the shop and dispersing the whole queue?

Third. A desperate hope… If you look beyond those huge letters T, R, U, M and P, that big, shiny, brand-new skyscraper is actually a very fine piece of architecture.  Trump Tower is a very beautiful building.  It pleases the eye.  It fits into the surrounding city-scape.  It enhances it.  If we accept Trump Tower as a symbol, might it be possible to hope, if we can ever get beyond the shock and distaste which the name has left us from the campaign trail, that the forty-fifth president of the United States of America might, just might, after all, make a positive contribution to the cultural, political and economic landscape of his country, as his Tower has to the urban landscape of Chicago?

 

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