Trump gives America's critics their dream opponent
(emphasis carried forward from the original article)
By Ishaan Tharoor February 8 at 1:00 AM
President Trump's political success has attracted a curious cast of cheerleaders abroad.
You know about the European ultra-nationalists and neo-fascists who yoke their political struggles to his right-wing populism. But there's another motley group that warms to his presidency because of the radical departure it represents from what came before. Their collective backing of Trump illustrates how much the new American president is both shaking his country's sense of identity and reshaping its image elsewhere.
Consider some luminaries on the left. Slavoj Zizek, the oft-quoted Slovenian Marxist philosopher, cynically suggested he would prefer Trump over Hillary Clinton because Trump's victory would trigger a crisis that could reboot the left in America.
"In this situation in which we are now, only some kind of a shakeup can save us," Zizek told Al-Jazeera before the election. "And one good thing about Donald Trump — and it's an obscenity to call this a good thing — is that he put [the system] into great disarray."
When not cast as an agent of chaos, Trump is proving to be a useful foil for those eager to show that the United States is a superpower with no moral standing, an empire with no clothes.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/02/08/trump-gives-americas-critics-their-dream-opponent/?utm_term=.e371b728cf6b