The Brooklyn Rail

“Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.”
–Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda.”
–Hannah Arendt

“Our national myths often exaggerate the role of the individual heroes and understate the importance of collective effort.”
–Robert D. Putnam

 

The unrelenting flood of directives during the Trump administration’s first hundred days, with dozens of executive orders signed, has had a shockingly surreal effect, both in its speed and its continual theater of spectacle. From appointing Elon Musk as senior advisor in charge of remaking the federal government, with its new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), to ending the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which was set up in the early 1960s to administer humanitarian aid programs on behalf of the US government—all of this has been accompanied by mass deportations of immigrants, aggressive tariffs imposed on our trading partners, and outlandish assertions of American foreign policy, which gives us inexplicable positions on the world stage. And all of this is being done while we’re once again caught in the critical junction when restoring economic stability at home and inventing new models of foreign policy are desperately in need of great attention.

As we look back to history, we can see that both liberals and conservatives have for decades been involved in a kind of dueling contest of populisms. While those on the left are pounding their chests for economic fairness, those on the right are attacking the power of the federal bureaucracy and the so-called “cultural elites.” Amid this critical time, the Trump administration of 2025 seems to resemble FDR’s New Deal of 1933 in complete reverse. On the home front, whereas the New Deal expanded the federal government into massive functioning bodies to fight against the Great Depression, Trump and his allies are trying to shrink the government down. During the 1940s and ’50s, with the collapse of the British Empire after the two World Wars, the United States’s rise as a consequential successor under FDR’s leadership was inevitable. Can the same be said of Trump’s leadership in mediating the rising tension between the US and China? Despite constant and very costly US engagements in proxy wars since WWII, which brought numerous failures and debacles, American power has managed to stand on its own feet in large measure because no communist system has ever survived political liberalization. But we might ask ourselves how far can either the United States’ policy of containment or policy of enlargement be effectively deployed if there is a fiscal crisis at home that undermines the kind of defense budget needed to deter its enemies around the world?

Again, during this extraordinary time, the Trump administration is frantically attempting to reengineer the federal government as if it were Twitter, Facebook, or Amazon. It remains uncertain as to how Elon Musk and the DOGE will ever achieve their objective of balancing the national budget by aggressively eliminating preexistent governmental programs at home, while President Trump and Vice President Vance are performing their theater of spectacle abroad. We are living in a time when remarkable political polarization has reached its boiling point. After decades of economic inequality and social isolation infused with our unfortunate culture of self-centeredness, which highlights the emphasis of me, I instead of us, we—we must ask ourselves whether America has the will and the ability to prevail once again as it did in the past. American power has proven from time to time that it can restore its strength through its self-correcting mechanism in a way that is breathtakingly miraculous. Yet, many of us have come to realize that not since the Civil War (1861–65) has the level of common distrust in our civic institution and of each other been so high. As the old proverb says, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” We Americans must work very hard to come together with a collective will to solve the social and political ills that both parties have created with their corrosion of our reluctant empire’s social life.

We must once again be as inventive, resilient, and courageous as urgently needed in mediating the following impending issues—what Philip Roth refers to as “The indigenous American berserk,” by which he meant America is a nation of extreme contradictions, capable both of losing its mojo by self-effacing identity and of demonstrating its own arrogance and narcissism. What are we to do with Congress’s failure to uphold Article One in our constitution, as the Trump administration aggressively tries to undermine or override our legal system? Would it be enough for Trump to feed only his base, which is constituted by less than the nearly fifty percent of voters—with partisan support from conservative media—that brought him his second-term presidency? How will we ever come to terms with Twitter and other social media platforms being used as cold devices of enormous distractions instead of being potential warm carriers of social solidarity? Although we may agree that the hard-left’s cultural politics have weakened American power on the world stage, which inevitably prompted the hard-right’s spineless opportunists to rally behind Trump’s populism, we should also remind ourselves how the French Revolution ended with great terror and even greater chaos. We must avoid the complete breakdown of the system of our liberal democracy. For once we break things, it is all the more difficult to rebuild with the shards that remain from that which we broke.

Perhaps the desire to have a smaller government is timely. But only if it leads to a more effective performing body of governance, which requires a massive capacity to recorrect all of America’s flaws and its fiscal insanity. It is indeed our civic duty to be mindful of the vast network of special interest groups which display a wide disparity of selfish opportunism, and to keep in mind also those selfless civil servants who need to be inspired and empowered to undertake their thankless yet necessary work for our commonwealth. What we desperately need at this moment is to reactivate Robert D. Putnam’s two essential concepts: bonding social capital and bridging social capital. While the former is a natural given condition of bonding people with similar backgrounds and upbringings across racial groups, genders, generations, and so on, the latter is built with diversities of people who share differences in their worldviews on various matters. While we’re learning how to inject human warmth and social intimacy onto the cold form of technology, we must amplify face-to-face connections. For the balance between both of our social capitals can be attained only through brilliant equilibrium.

Onward, upward with love, courage, and cosmic optimism to us all,

Phong H. Bui

P.S. This issue is dedicated to the remarkable lives and works our friends and mentors, including Graham Nickson (1946–2025), Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (1940–2025), Walter Robinson (1950–2025), Kim Keever (1955–2025), Mel Bochner (1940–2025), Gerd Stern (1928–2025), and Richard Flood (1944–2025), all of whom have enriched our cultural lives with great significance. We’d like to send our deep condolences to the immediate members of their respective families, their close friends, and admirers across the world. We thank our production assistant Charlie Medeiros for his extraordinary work and wish him well on his new journey. We welcome Elle Gordon and Charlotte Moore as our two members adding to our new and expanded production team. Lastly, we’re thrilled to announce Singing in Unison, Part 11: Love Poems, curated by Chris Martin at Anton Kern Gallery (March 12 through April 26, 2025). Please join us at the opening reception, featuring a cooking performance with Rirkrit Tiravanija, Tomas Vu and company on Wednesday, March 12, from 6 to 8 p.m.