Trump's Burgers: A Glimpse of Humanity
I must confess: I am obsessed with Donald Trump.
I read about him almost every day, and certainly every week. I have bought and read several books about his presidency and his allies—Joshua Green's Devil's Bargain, Bob Woodward's Fear, and Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury being the most notable. I have read multiple investigations and reports on him, his presidency and his allies –'The Rise and Fall of Steve Bannon', 'How Mark Burnett Resurrected Donald Trump as an Icon of American Success', 'Stephen Miller: The Believer', ' Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump's Battering Ram' are perhaps my favourites, roughly. I have closely followed the investigation of Russian interference in his campaign and have read extensively about the socio-political context that led to his winning the presidency.
Why am I so aware of the course of a subject who detests en masse all those who hold my own nationality? As always, the answer is not one but several. In part, it interests me because Donald Trump, like very few before him, has twisted and deformed in his favor the myth of the self-made man, a myth that, as a person who grew up in religious Protestantism and poverty, permeates me. deeply. Partly also because the similarities between his rise and that of fascism make me alert to the chances of something like this happening here, in this conservatism-prone land called Mexico.
But more than anything, more than anything else, I'm fascinated with Donald Trump because he's a villain. A monster. A guy of an evil imbecility that with a literal stroke of the pen can put children in cages, prohibit trans people from serving in the army, make fun of a disabled person, express empathy with Nazis and white supremacists. Trump is the perennial reminder that most of the time evil is nothing but empowered stupidity. Donald Trump is an idiotic Lex Luthor: a cartoon villain with power, money, and the determination to affect the entire world according to his most reprehensible instincts. I'm obsessed with him because it's so easy to hate him, and because I enjoy wallowing in that hate.
This is also why it was so difficult to see Donald Trump as a poor human being just like any of us.
It happened two weeks ago, which in Trump time is something like two months. Donald Trump, in the midst of his problematic forced closure of the US government – at the cost of holding hostage the salary of 800,000 gringo workers in exchange for 5.7 billion dollars for the construction of a wall on the border between their country and ours –, was giving an interview outside the White House. The guy was talking about a reception for a football team, champion of the university league. Every year, the tournament champions go to dinner with the president. The matter is routine and, normally, the anecdote does not become news.
Not with Trump, of course. The President of the United States claimed, with his repulsive orange skin and his idiotic hyperbole, that he was on his way to talk to some farmers in the morning. In the evening, if the weather didn't turn bad, he would host the All-American team. And then: a very brief display of humanity that ripped through the repellent Trumpian façade. “I think we are going to serve them food from Wendy’s, McDonald’s and Burger Kings [sic], with some pizza. I'm serious. I'd think that's his favorite food,” the would-be dictator said with transparent, almost childlike enthusiasm, only underscored by his mistake in naming one of the hamburger chains.
The gringo media fell in mockery and criticism before what was evident, incontrovertibly, was a rudeness of marrez by a despicable subject, famous for being a championship elbow, who owns a hotel five blocks from the White House, not to say billions of dollars. The later video and photos, in which a Trump could be seen with a wide smile cracking his face, standing before a feast of junk food on tables with long cloths and chandeliers lighting the menu, only confirmed the accuracy of ridicule and criticism.
Still, seeing him there, grinning at the prospect of packing up a Big Mac, one can understand his enthusiasm.
Junk food is one of the great achievements of humanity. Also, like all great achievements of humanity, it is one of the worst things we have collectively perpetuated. The people who work in these places often do so in poor or appalling conditions; food is highly caloric, greasy and, as far as we have been told, harmful; farmers and growers who supply raw materials to restaurant chains have to lower their prices until the profit margin practically disappears. Junk food is one more of the aberrations of capitalism.
And its virtues are unappealable. The food is cheap, so many people eat there to minimize expenses. (Eating well, you often forget when you have to, it's usually expensive.) The food is ready quickly, so it's ideal for those in a hurry. In some places, like Hong Kong, homeless people stay at McDonald's 24 hours, and the company has put in place a policy that allows them to stay there without consuming, a trait of empathy that could use, for example, to Donald Trump himself. For students, a part-time job at a fast-food restaurant is, more often than not, a substitute for a government scholarship that allows them to continue studying while working. For those who get bored easily, the constantly updated and experimental menu of industrial restaurants is a refreshing roller coaster ride for the taste buds.
But let's not forget the main virtue of fast food chains: the food is delicious. Exaggerated, hyperbolic, redundant, crass, you name it, but few things are as close to happiness as taking a bite out of a warm burger whose yellow cheese melts generously over a pat of ground beef cooked to paroxysm. Hardly anything quite compares to eating a packet of French fries one by one with just the right amount of MSG, and few things make you salivate more than the prospect of packing a pizza fresh from the industrial oven. The one with junk food is an endearing poisoned hug.
That is why I was grateful, after the blow that was realizing that I understood the enthusiasm that emanated from the person responsible for the death of Latino children on the border, that Trump had had that minimum gleam of humanity in which I saw reflected my appetite and that of almost all the rest of us. Because his enthusiasm is one that I have also felt, and it is a much-needed reminder that this tyrant, this human centipede who has taken it upon himself to shake up the already tenuous world order, belongs to the same group of talking apes to which all of us belong. whom he hates and repels; because in him and in his appetite we can also see ourselves for a moment. Because, like him, we don't care about the exploitation of others as long as we can get an order from McNuggets, and others don't care much about our exploitation as long as they can enjoy the sweet fruits that our work brings them. Because that minimum moment of humanity of this detestable monster was also a reminder that, in this alien and wide world, there are few things as universal as the perfection of a hamburger.~
