Even worse was the victimology that the leader of the world’s only superpower expressed. Like himself and white males, America in Trump’s eyes is a perpetual victim: “The United States will not be taken advantage of any longer. For decades, the United States opened its economy, the largest by far on Earth, with few conditions. We allowed foreign goods from all over the world to flow freely across our borders. Yet other countries did not grant us free and reciprocal access to their markets in return.” And yet, our economy is better than ever — just ask Trump.

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He defends sentiments that are never in doubt. “America will never apologize for protecting its citizens,” he claims. How revolutionary! It is as if he is reading from a Sean Hannity script in which imaginary foes someone don’t let the world’s superpower be the world’s superpower. (“We will never surrender America’s sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable global bureaucracy. America is governed by Americans.”)

Banalities aside, the speech’s intellectual incongruity was alarming. On one hand, Trump says the best way to deal with mass migration is to help countries make a better life for their own people. In the next breath he says, “The United States is the world’s largest giver in the world by far of foreign aid. But few give anything to us.” (Does he expect poor, war-ravaged countries to pay the richest country on the planet?) “That is why we are taking a hard look at U.S. foreign assistance,” he continued, vowing only to give “foreign aid to those who respect us and, frankly, are our friends.” I suppose those countries’ peoples would have no choice but to migrate, which is exactly what is occurring in Syria and Central America, among other places. One cannot promise aid as an alternative to migration and then say we’re not giving aid unless the recipients like us and give us something back.

Moreover, Trump simultaneously declares that all nations are beautiful, unique, stars in the constellation (or whatever) and should do their own thing, while criticizing the world’s bad actors — including China, Iran, Syria and Venezuela. Either the world is hunky-dory and we can retrench, or the world has some very bad players who treat their people terribly, requiring U.S. leadership. It’s one or the other. Trump says, “Both!”

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Then there is Trump’s weird fondness for dictators. He accords more praise for the leader of the world’s worst gulag (“I would like to thank Chairman Kim for his courage and for the steps he has taken, though much work remains to be done”) than he does for allies, who he thinks are still ripping us off. Somehow Russia’s occupation of a sovereign country and its attacks on our electoral democracy didn’t figure in his defense of national sovereignty. Odd.

Finally, there is Trump’s unhinged, cartoonish attacks on international bodies. The speechwriter seems to think frothy speeches at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) or blog posts from Breitbart represent the true state of affairs. Does anyone outside 1980s-fixated, right-wing confines think the International Criminal Court is the first step on the road to “unaccountable global bureaucracy”? This is an applause line at the Values Voter summit, not a serious foreign policy statement.

If you listened to Trump without any knowledge of post-World War II history, you’d think the international system of trade, multilateral alliances, human rights treaties and the rest had left the United States hobbled, destitute and weak. How is it then that we are the richest, most powerful nation on the planet, a country to which immigrants risk life and limb to enter?

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