It was a time when the national character was not built within the circles of establishment in Boston, Philadelphia and Virginia but outside on the frontier, by the wild, outlaws. It was the rugged experience of westward expansion, historian Frederick Jackson Turner declared in 1893, that had given America its vitality, its equality, its dislike of high culture and noble manners. The West was settled by a rising tide of hucksterism – the spirit of circus master PT Barnum more than that of aristocratic writer Henry James.
It was the golden age of braggadocio, of Paul Bunyan-style tall tales. And it was a time when being an American was to be exalted in glory. Many Americans believed that God had given his new chosen people a holy mission, to fulfill history and bring a new heaven to earth. (Kind of like how God saved Trump from that field in Pennsylvania to complete the holy mission of deporting more immigrants.)
Herman Melville captured, without patronizing, nationalism in his book “The White Jacket”: “We Americans are a special, chosen people – the Israel of our time.” God has predestined, humanity expects, great things from our race; and great things that we feel in our souls.” Walt Whitman joined the chorus: “Do the races of the ancients stand still? Do they drool and finish their course, weary yonder across the seas? / We take the job forever.” There is no confidence like the confidence of youth, in man or country.
I can see why this image of a wild, raw, and desirable America appeals to Trump. Trump is sometimes said to appeal to those left behind, who have lost the information age. And this is a nation full of longing, courage, hope and consideration for the future. (It helps if, like Trump, you hide a few little details about 19th-century America in your photo — like, you know, slavery and Reconstruction.)
Perhaps the most important appeal of the Trump century is that in those days America was anti-establishment. On the other side of the Atlantic were the old states – Europe. From time to time, Europeans like Fanny Trollope (herself a novelist and the mother of a very famous person) would visit America and turn up their noses at the vulgar money-loving people found here. The English writer Morris Birkbeck summed up his view of the American spirit this way: “Win! Win! Win!” Americans prided themselves on snobs with their refined manners, hierarchical societies and inherited comforts.
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