The Rhetoric of Our Celebrity Demagogue Otto Santa Ana
As a candidate, the forty-fifth president spoke and behaved unlike his rivals.1 He discharged a daily deluge of vile speech. His demeanor was vulgar, not presidential, and yet he won. I offer an explanation of why his behavior contributed to his victory. I also describe his only seemingly erratic language, and offer a warning about the rhetorical power of his speech. During the 2016 campaign for the Republican nomination and then for president, he gave voice to citizens who harbor resentment toward women and people of color who have won a hard-fought place in US society. He articulated nativist fears about a demographically changing population that both stirred up racist sentiments and gave expression to aggrieved citizens who have become less competitive in the global marketplace. He stoked the anxiety of Americans who fear that today’s young people will grow up less well off than their parents. To Americans who presume their superiority to the rest of the world, of course he did not speak about globalization. Instead he pointed to immigrants and “crooked” politicians who had gotten “bad deals” in multilateral trade agreements. And he accused President Barack Obama of “losing the war on terrorism,” assuring Americans that with him at the helm, they would no longer have to live in fear, because he would “quickly and decisively bomb the hell out of ISIS.” These pledges were not much different from those of other illiberal politicians, but his speeches were. He did not speak in measured terms. He demeaned women, assailed Muslims, launched petty assaults against his rivals, and demonized the press. His global politics were not the standard pieties: he launched attacks on traditional US allies while speaking glowingly about the autocrat of Russia. He epitomized the Ugly American.
Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 42:2
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