Nathan Robinson: Trump's Mount Rushmore speech was a grim preview of his re-election strategy

By Dilip -

Donald Trump’s Independence Day address at Mount Rushmore was not overflowing with the spirit of national unity. He chose to use the national holiday as an opportunity to denounce the political left and the many Americans protesting against racial injustice. The speech was a grim preview of the cynical rhetorical strategy he intends to use to seek re-election.

The general thrust of Trump’s speech was: this country is not threatened by a virus, it is threatened by a protest movement that aims to destroy our culture and history. At a time when Covid-19 cases are growing by the tens of thousands every day, Trump tried to shift the focus to “cancel culture” and the activists who have been trying to tear down controversial monuments….

... conservative rhetoric always involves telling those with the most money and power that they are actually being oppressed. (See, for example, Ayn Rand’s ludicrous 1963 lecture America’s Most Persecuted Minority: Big Business.) The picture is always completely topsy-turvy. “Cancel culture” is a completely overblown phenomenon. Yes, people do lose their jobs for political speech – in fact, just last week, a Black Lives Matter supporter was fired from her job at Deloitte after angering Trump fans with a TikTok video. But this is not because the left is in charge, it’s because the left isn’t in charge, and American workers lack the kind of labor protections that would prevent them for being fired for their speech off the job….

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/08/trump-mount-rushmore-speech-left-culture-wars

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