Trump Ushers In the Imagination Age
Improvisation is the name of the game these days in Washington—and it seems to be working.
Are you interested in the Middle East? Curious about the Trump administration’s policy on Gaza? If so, then you might have already seen the video that President Trump shared on February 26.
Amidst images of a bombed-out Gaza transitioning to a golden-hued Dubai, we glimpse a giant gleaming statue of the 47th president. To a fast beat, the lyrics: “Donald Trump will set you free, bringing the life for all to see, no more tunnels, no more fear, Trump Gaza is finally here.”
Roll over, Henry Kissinger, Warren Christopher, and past notions of a Middle East “peace process.”
The point here is not to mock the efforts of diplomats and diplomacy, even if some would say that the peace process mocks itself. After all, we’ve just seen 15 months of carnage in Gaza, as well as various slaughters in nearby Syria, Yemen, and Sudan. And that’s just the Middle East; diplomacy has fallen short elsewhere, as well. It sure seems as though blood and iron is getting the better of speeches and majority resolutions.
So maybe we should cast a sympathetic eye toward someone who thinks anew. That’s Trump to a large, gilded “T.”
One headline caught the man’s playfulness: POLITICO EU bannered, “Trump posts madcap Gaza ‘Riviera’ AI video featuring sunbathing Netanyahu.” To be precise, Team Trump didn’t create the video. NBC News tracked its origins to a pro-Israel social media account, where it first appeared on February 7. Reached for comment about Trump’s use of it, the account responded, “It was a joke,” adding a laughing emoji.
So does that get Trump off the hook? That he was being funny? The media weren’t laughing, and so not unhooking. NPR blared, “Trump’s social media video garners pushback from Arabs and Muslims in U.S. and Gaza.” Meanwhile, The Guardian espied a “backlash,” while the Forward ripped it as “gaudy and abhorrent.”
But the authoritative voice of the Fourth Estate belongs, of course, to The New York Times. And the Grey Lady was not amused: “’Fantasy’ AI Video, Shared by Trump, of Gaza as Luxury Resort Draws Scorn.” Okay, so the Times didn’t like it, and it quoted a Hamas spokesman liking it even less: “We strongly condemn, in the harshest terms, the disgraceful video published by U.S. President Donald Trump, which contains unethical scenes that violate the customs, morals and traditions of our Palestinian people.”
So what do the Trump people have to say for themselves? White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly answered to NPR, “As President Trump has said, Gaza in its current state is [uninhabitable] for any human being.”
Indeed, starting on February 4, Trump has made that point about Gaza many times—and it sure seems to be a statement of compassion for Gazans, even if not everyone takes it that way.
The White House’s Kelly added to the Times, “President Trump is a visionary, and his plan to have the United States involved in Gaza’s rebuilding will allow for Palestinians to resettle in new, beautiful communities while improving conditions in the region for generations to come.”
Kelly’s line about “resettle” rings a bell with me because it’s close to an idea that I have advanced here at The American Conservative and elsewhere, as early as December 2023—namely, seeking the voluntary movement of the Gazans to some other place, a Gaza 2, which could be a Jules Verne-ish man-made island.
To be sure, Gaza 2 is long shot, yet one bitter reality is just as sure: Especially in the wake of the hideous spectacle of the sadistic transfer of Israeli hostages—including the corpses of murdered infants—there’s little likelihood of an old-fashioned “peace process.” As T.S. Eliot penned of impossible guilt, “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?”
So if there is no Gaza 2, the almost certain result is that Hamas stays in charge of Gaza 1, chanting for death to Israel while the Jewish State’s drones circle overhead. Occasionally, with unknown deadly effect, the two antagonists will exchange fire. Needless to say, there will be no rebuilding. It’s not even clear there will be much relieving, even feeding.
So maybe, amid our dripping despair, we should take another look at Trump and his out-there ideas. Following the dictum of taking him seriously but not literally, let’s consider the many Trump foreign policy initiatives—some of which might be little more than off-the-cuff comments—that have swirled around his young second presidency: Does he mean it, literally, when he says he wants to retake the Panama Canal? Or does he just want a better deal, and more security, for the U.S.? Which he seems to be getting. Same questions for the annexations of Canada and Greenland.
And what of that as-seen-on-worldwide TV mineral deal-or-no-deal for Ukraine? The one that blew up so spectacularly on Worldwide TV on February 28? The latest seems to be that it’s back on, as Zelensky edges towards apologizing—and signing. Yet as Trump says of so many things, “we’ll see what happens.” At minimum, it seems that Trump’s two-by-four to Europe has knocked some sense into them about their own defense—and that of Ukraine. Meanwhile, back in the USA, the Trump-Vance approach to Ukraine is proving popular. Not among the elites, of course, but with the folks.
Soon enough, the Dealmaker-in-Chief could be on to some grander bargain with Russia or China. If there’s no interagency process, no white paper, no formal démarche, it’s all the easier for Trump to call an audible at the line of scrimmage, to offer a hundred visions and revisions. Which pitch is the real one? In Trump’s reckoning, it’s the spiel that sells.
Is this a good way to run policy? The Establishment will weigh in soon enough with not just tweets, but tomes. Yet the rest of us should keep in mind that Trump has already had some successes. He was a steady opponent of “endless wars” in the Middle East, and now it’s hard to find anyone in a high place who is vocally in favor of invasive nation-building. At the same time, the Abraham Accords—based on real-estate dealing, as opposed to democracy-making—seem to be holding up, despite the enormous stress of the Gaza conflict. (Which erupted, Trump points out, during the Biden interregnum.) Finally, Trump’s suspicion of China is now the conventional wisdom.
Trump himself might be an intuitive operator, and yet others are now schooling in his school of thought. ”The postwar global order is not just obsolete,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared at his confirmation hearing in January. “It is now a weapon being used against us.” There’s a new world order for you. TAC’s Joseph Addington calls it “International Nationalism.”
Indeed, Trump’s jazzy improvisational style seems to be in keeping with the realities of this era, the Information Age, when bytes and terabytes pour from every pore.
Yes, knowledge is power, and that’s why the tech lords are so rich and lordly. Yet still, datapoints are dull. And the ennui of info-overload is crushing. What’s interesting, and motivating, are stories, narratives, and, yes, salesmanship.
Oh, and people themselves are interesting, especially if they are colorful and charismatic. So all roads lead back to Trump, who cuts through the clutter. He is, no doubt, the best-known personality on the planet. In our time, “yellow hair,” “red tie,” and the various permutations of “MAGA” are all one needs to get the right answer on Jeopardy!
To be sure, for every person who finds Trump to be delightful, there’s someone who finds him frightful. Yet either way, they pay attention. Given the one-syllable simplicity of “Trump,” the name is always spelled right.
As the U.S. commander-in-chief, Trump can wield plenty of force. Yet in his willingness to take risks, or at least dares—including that madcap Gaza video—he offers much more. He offers entertainment, including the willingness to use media tools perfected by people a third, or a quarter, of his age. That alone is exciting: a conservative figure, rooted in the past, who nonetheless reaches for the future.
In this era of do-it-yourself AI videomaking—and all the other wonders, and perhaps horrors, to come—the Information Age is giving rise to its sequel: The Imagination Age. Trump himself is no techster, and yet he is leading the way. And if the Gazans were willing to follow him, they’d have a better life.
The post Trump Ushers In the Imagination Age appeared first on The American Conservative.
