Listening to Trump blather on during his announcement that he was withdrawing the country from the Paris accords about how America is being taken advantage of by the rest of the world suddenly made me recognize how the powerful flip persecution narratives upside down.





Trump declared the Paris deal “bad for America” and that “the bottom line is that the Paris accord is very unfair, at the highest level, to the United States.” How a voluntary agreement in which we set our own goals for emission reductions could possibly be unfair is beyond my ability to comprehend, but Trump has never been known for being logically coherent. But it also reminds me of how often Trump claims that America is being treated unfairly. On trade, he continually claims that other countries are “taking advantage” of us by…what? By selling us products that Americans want to buy?

“”Mexico has taken advantage of the US for long enough,” he tweeted at one point. He’s said the same thing about China, Germany, Canada and much of the rest of the world. Never mind that the global trade regime under GATT and the WTO were designed to allow the United States to dominate much of the world economy. Never mind that the United States buys cheap products from abroad, much of it made with slave or near-slave labor in sweatshops, then give them back solid and often toxic waste.

We are the biggest bullies on the block, the 8 million ton gorilla in the world economy that manipulates markets and exploits the resources of other countries, having spent much of the last century and a half installing and supporting one brutal dictator after another to ensure that continued domination. But somehow Trump has convinced himself, or is trying to convince others, that we are the poor victims of the very nations we have gone to such lengths to oppress and dominate.

It’s quite similar to the Christian right persecution narrative in this country. Christians control nearly every seat of political power, yet they have convinced themselves that they are martyrs, perpetual victims of the politically correct left that dares try to prevent them from oppressing women, gay people, those of other religions and anyone else they get in their crosshairs. The oppressor magically transforms themselves into the oppressed through mere rhetorical trickery.

Welcome to Mr. Orwell’s world.