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Donald Trump and One-dimensional Life


Herbert Marcuse introduced the concept of one-dimensional existence, back in 1964. A one-dimensional person is a product of consumerism, technology, and conformist ideologies. One-dimensional people are happy with material comforts and superficial freedoms. They are rendered incapable of critical thinking, creativity, and authentic individuality. Hence they fail to see the system’s fault lines and injustices. In fact, the creators of the system make the society appear so efficient and materially fulfilling that all opposition succumbs to a natural death. The system creates the people’s needs through the media, propaganda of all sorts, advertisements and a mass culture.

Probably, Marcuse’s concept is more relevant today than in 1960s. How else would we explain the victories of our present-day leaders, the latest being Donald Trump’s. Why would a nation like the United States of America elect a man like Donald Trump as its president?

As Ali Chougule writes in today’s Free Press Journal, Trump won in spite of “four criminal indictments, two impeachments, three expensive law suits, 34 felony counts and endless reckless utterances in his campaign speeches.” Chougule ends his opinion piece saying that “There is little illusion about how Trump intends to govern, given his naked motivation for the pursuit of power and the preservation of the cult of personality he has built around himself.” Trump has no respect for law and the values, norms and traditions of democracy, laments this writer.

Yet why did he win the election?

I know Marcuse’s concept of one-dimensional person is only a facile explanation. There’s more to the victories of people like Donald Trump in the States and Narendra Modi in India. Look at the ‘popularity’ of others like them: Putin, Xi Jinping, Netanyahu and Kim Jong Un. [I have chosen to ignore people like Iran’s Khamenei who belong to an alien galaxy.]

If we let people like them govern us, there is something seriously wrong with us. I don’t think it’s all about our one-dimensionality.

The editorial of India’s Outlook magazine is titled Be Afraid, Be Very, Very Afraid. Be very, very afraid of Donald Trump is what the Outlook is cautioning the world. He is a violently one-dimensional man who will just eliminate his perceived enemies. The editorial begins with a quote from Trump himself: “We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections.” The editorial goes on to say how Trump has threatened to eliminate journalists if needed and how this first man of America has no respect for women at all. He called Kamala Harris a “sleaze bag.” He said he wanted to see Liz Cheney facing “nine barrels shooting at her.”

Why did the people of the USA elect this man as their President, this violent, narcissistic, uncooperative, and mean-minded trader?

“The wall in Mexico will be built, he says.” Outlook’s editorial ends. “But no wall is high enough. And no fear is too much to keep people from writing the stories that need to be written.”

Today, I read nearly a dozen articles on Trump’s victory, in different Indian journals. None of them is optimistic, to say the least.

Let me end this post with two images. The first is from a Malayalam weekly, Desabhimani. The second is from X. 



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