Trump invoked all corners of American history. How might he use them to build his new 'Golden Age'?
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He talked of a new Manifest Destiny and a “Golden Age." He invoked the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. An honor guard appeared with tricorn hats, fifes and drums — all traditional Revolutionary War iconography. Those in attendance heard tunes deployed from the classic American songbook — from Scott Joplin's “The Entertainer” to Woody Guthrie's “This Land is Your Land.”.
At the inauguration Monday, American history in its varied stripes was firmly planted. "We will not forget our country," President Donald Trump said. In summoning people to his vision for the future throughout a day of pageantry, Trump assembled a dizzying collage of American myths, tropes and ideals. His new “Golden Age” was brimming with the stories that shaped the nation’s past. But how will he use them?.
A presidential inaugural address is typically a projection of the balance between American yesterdays and American tomorrows. Trump came to power the first time, and regained it the second, with an exhortation to reclaim the past and “Make America Great Again.” In his address on Monday, he conflated a vast and sometimes confusing array of national imagery from across the centuries to make his larger point.
Manifest Destiny returns to center stage. Most epic, perhaps, was the notion of American expansionism once called “Manifest Destiny” — a romantic story about the “God-given” right to push westward and outward that has defined the nation's growth even while oppressing and killing many others as it has played out over 350 years.
