Trump protests Seattle. Picture by Elaine Thompson AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.Many of us who are still shocked by Trump’s unforeseen victory and struggle to understand how this happened, have been focusing our attention on the ideological flavour of Trump’s campaign and its appeal to the fears and base xenophobic instincts of the white US population. In particular, we have been hearing about the plight of the humiliated, underrepresented white lower middle class and the working poor – “white trash” – of whom there are many millions in middle America, yet who have been ignored and dismissed by the Republican and Democratic elites alike. This population is not educated or wealthy enough to matter in liberal/neoliberal America, nor can they easily be represented in the progressive lexicon as one of the designated oppressed groups in need of protection (such as people of colour, women and LGBTQs). The invisibility of this enormous population, their relative inability to make themselves a factor in US policy, became a ticking bomb.
But the analyses that I have read failed to focus on the profound idiosyncrasy of Trump’s own figure and the almost magical, fairy-tale quality of his success story – a story uniquely well-suited to ignite hope in people who have spent their lives losing one battle after another. According to the theory of the influential French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, any actual historical father one might have can only seem omnipotent; in actuality, he is not, as he has been symbolically castrated by his own father. In other words, for any powerful man, there is someone out there who is even more powerful. Inability to realize that, insisting on viewing the father figure as truly uncastrated and omnipotent, and identifying with a figure thus seen, paves the way to madness. To enter as a subject into a patriarchal social order, one needs a father figure to grapple and identify with that that can help mediate between the protected symbiotic world of the nursery room and the wider social reality. This transition legitimately evokes resistance and is not easy for anyone, yet one’s basic sanity and functionality depends on it.
Having gotten away with lying, stealing and sexual violence, he appears not to be obligated to follow any law
