Trump, The Jacksonian?

In January 1835, an un•employed house painter who thought he was the king of England failed to assassinate Andrew Jackson. Rumour had it the seventh president was a changed man thereafter. Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt in the run-up to the 2024 elec•tion but only Walter Russell Mead would have made the connection. Mead, a foreign policy thinker who thinks differently, had written in July last year about Trump being “part of a strain of American politics that Andrew Jackson brought to power in 1828”. Now, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Mead elaborates on Trump’s “Jacksonian” foreign policy in the aftermath of Ameri•can strikes on Iran. There are four approaches to US foreign policy, says Mead. Hamiltonian, Wilsonian, Jeffersonian and Jackso•nian. While Reagan was a blend of Hamiltonian and Wilsonian, and MAGA stal•warts like Tucker Carlson are Jeffersonian isolation•ists, for Jacksonians the objective of foreign and do•mestic policy is the security of Americans. Trump, as a Jacksonian, might believe the US “should not seek out foreign quarrels, but when the U.S. or its allies are attacked or threatened or even insulted, [Jacksonians] can become very energized, like a hive of bees. If the hive is attacked, they will sting with everything they’ve got.” Does that make Trump respectable or put him soundly in a little-studied tradition?

Glastonbury, Gaza and Anti-Semitism

Do the rap-punk duo Bob Vylan mean what they say now: “We are not for the death of Jews, Arabs or any other race or group of people. We are for the dismantling of a violent military machine”? Or is Sir Ephraim Mirvis, the UK’s chief rabbi, right: “…now, one need only couch their out•right incitement to violence and hatred as edgy political commentary, for ordinary people to not only fail to see it for what it is, but also to cheer it…”? Bob Vylan’s and Irish-language rap trio Kneecap’s stunt at the Glastonbury festival has blown up in the BBC’s face for its failure to pull the live stream when the duo chanted “death, death to the IDF”. The police have begun a criminal investiga•tion and a BBC-sympathetic Labour government has come down hard on the na•tional broadcaster. Where is the line between speaking up for Gazans and wishing Jews ill? In what recesses of the human brain did the origins of the chant lie? That answer alone can say who’s right.
But the dark history here is millennia old.

Ozzy Says Goodbye

He is the real working-class hero. At 76, rock’s ‘Prince of Darkness’ Ozzy Osbourne wants to call it a day but not before reuniting with Black Sabbath for one last show in Birmingham. Metal•lica, Slayer, the remaining Guns N’ Roses, all Sabbath’s progeny, will also be there. Those who thought Ozzy’s craziness on stage was an act found out he didn’t live much differently when his dysfunctional fam•ily pioneered reality TV. The 3Ds—drink, drugs and debauchery—to say nothing of accidents, six weeks in prison as a teenage burglar, and Parkinson’s of late have caught up with the former lead singer of Sabbath, the band that invented heavy metal with a few basic instruments. Authentic is the word.

anti-semitismDonald TrumpGazageopoliticsGlastonburyWalter Russell Mead