Between Image and Message

Can a 13-year-old boy become a member of the secret service that protects the US president? Can he become one after being sworn-in as a police officer in, according to some media reports, 800 different places in that country? DJ Daniel is all of that and none of that. While giving his address to the Congress, Donald Trump announced that DJ, a cancer survivor who was present in the audience, is being made a secret service agent. No one believes he will be around Trump with a gun but that doesn’t matter. Symbolism is an integral part of politics. DJ is a representation of many things for people. Some see in his miraculous survival a resilience to life, others an act of god. In his public display, Trump tugs into that sentiment.

Human beings go to great lengths to get to the top of the food chain while simultaneously also celebrating the antithesis of strength, wealth and power. In India, for instance, much is spoken in veneration of the farmer precisely because he is so poverty-stricken and in dire circumstances. To be a voice for him is for a politician to show that he is compassionate at the right places. Symbolism is exploited as a tool because it has resonance and so figures prominently in the arsenal of public life.

Why should it have evolved at all? Humans are social beings and no matter how strong you are, the weak make up the numbers, and so you need them behind you. It is especially true in democracies where the weak are the ones who cast the deciding votes. Campaigns are usually done on the streets among ordinary people but as soon as a victory is won, successful politicians retreat to places where elites stay. In making a regular cancer survivor a secret service agent, the president of the US conveys that he feels for the sickest and the weakest. Except that he is also cutting funding for cancer at the same time.

Donald Trumpgeopoliticssecret service agentsurveillanceyouth