Greg Sargent: Trump's July 4 hijacking worsens

The authoritarian nationalist leader generally rewrote the history of the nation in his image. Our authoritarian nationalist of local origin has shown himself particularly attached to this fusion of the making of national myths and self-hagiography, often presented in his own unique language of crass, scathing show.

Historians tell us that this is what authoritarian nationalists do. As Harvard's Jill Lepore puts it, they replace history with proven fictions – false stories of national decline in the hands of invented threats, fused with fictional stories of renewed national grandeur, managed by the leader himself, author of fiction and his mythical hero.

That's what we'll see in one form or another on July 4, whatever President Donald Trump says in his speech on Lincoln Memorial Independence Day. The very fact of resuming the proceedings in the manner in which he has prepared accomplishes this feat.

New details appear on Trump's plans. The Washington Post reports that the National Park Service will now divert millions of dollars to improve parks across the country to fund the Trump celebration at the National Mall.

Meanwhile, a White House official told the Post that the project includes an Air Force One aircraft over his head, just as Trump enters the scene. The tanks will participate in the display.

Finally, the White House distributes tickets for the event to GOP donors and appointed political figures. The cards are distributed by the Republican National Committee and Trump's re-election campaign.

As many critics have pointed out, by politicizing July 4th so naked, Trump has inevitably turned the celebration into a campaign event. It remains to be seen if he will do so explicitly in his speech, but in both cases this conversion has already been implicitly achieved.

It is the fusion of this fact with the particular display of Trump that makes the thing so ugly. The demonstration of military might, Trump's association with it, and the unyielding conversion of a pagan to the constitution of the nation into a re-election event – all of this represents a sum greater than the sum of its parts.

The bare audacity of the usurpation is itself the issue. The fact that the Democrats and the Liberals are driven to expressions of indignation in this regard only reinforces this finding.

Many have interpreted this moment as another sign that Trump completely disregards the idea of ​​America. Never-Trumper, Tim Miller, argues that, in many ways, Trump rejects the ideas about freedom, equality and self-government that are at the heart of Thomas Jefferson's statement in the Declaration of '' ''. independence.

Instead, Miller notes, "It's all fake branding, not history," an exercise that "exchanges freedom and self-government to own the libs and self -agrandissement ".

All this is true. But at the heart of Trump's celebration, there will actually be a vision of America – or, at least, of American greatness, and more accurately, of its own imaginary restoration of that greatness. Because you can not unravel Trump's vision of these two things from his paeans to the strength of our army.

Trump campaigned on the false story of a declining America. He adorned this story with endless lies and demagogues about immigrants and how international engagement would have resulted in foreign leaders "mocking" us and "humiliating" us. At the heart of this story, there was the constant refrain that our armed forces were "exhausted", the ultimate symbol of this national decline.

Trump's claim of rebuilding the army is also at the root of his account of the revival of American greatness – and of his own author. He has withdrawn from the Iran deal – international diplomacy had resulted in a "weak" solution – and will now force Iranian surrender by threatening unilateral "obliteration."

There is no doubt that Trump sees this July 4 speech – delivered in the middle of a demonstration of military might – as a manifestation of his own imaginary role in the "restoration" of American greatness.

But the whole story that Trump has told about the American decline is false and produces epic political disasters. The insane world view that underlies its lies about immigrants produces a horrific humanitarian catastrophe. The anti-globalization rhetoric – while containing nuclei of truth – has in practice produced a combination of bread and circus panics towards foreign elites and endless destructive trade wars.

Meanwhile, the fact that Trump has turned away from international engagement has in practice meant genuine adherence to strong authoritarian nationalism, as well as a real abandonment of the ideals of liberal democracy. Just this week, Trump endorsed Russian leader Vladimir Putin's assertion that "the liberal idea failed" and "joked" with him about the need to get rid of journalists. Trump has absolved the Saudi royal family of any role in the dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi.

As Jonathan Chait suggests in New York magazine, Trump may not know why he hates liberal democracy, but only that he realizes that this is inconsistent with the value he gives to domination and hierarchy.

It may also be that Trump did not think much about the Declaration of Independence or that Abraham Lincoln – whose memorial will become Trump's scene – said of Thomas Jefferson's words in a 1859 letter:

"All the honors to Jefferson – to the man who, under the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence led by a unique people, had the coolness, foresight and ability to To introduce in a merely revolutionary document an abstract truth applicable to all men and all times, and thus to embalm it, that today and in all the days to come, it will be a reprimand and a stumbling block for the annunciators of the reappearance of tyranny and oppression. "

This "abstract truth" of Jefferson was considered at the time as an afterthought among the immediate political grievances of the moment. But that's what has lasted and it's an important reason to celebrate July 4th.

Certainly, no one has a monopoly on the meaning of America and its history. This is one of the main reasons why we also celebrate July 4th.

Trump will read out a few words from Jefferson and Lincoln, written for him, to give him the impression of grasping these things. But the celebration itself will reveal that it does not do it very much.

Greg Sargent wrote the blog Plum Line. He joined The Post in 2010, after working at Talking Points Memo, New York Magazine, and the New York Observer.