What If a Late-Nineteenth Century Utopia Inspired the President?

Political pundits frequently suggest that President William McKinley is Donald Trump's primary late-nineteenth-century inspiration for his vision of America. But what if, unbeknownst to the pundit class, President Trump was familiar with such an obscure American utopian novel as Looking Forward: A Dream of the United States of the Americas in 1999 (1899) by Arthur Bird, former U.S. vice consul-general in Haiti? Extremely unlikely, you say. Well, consider the parallels:In Bird's utopia the Gulf of America keeps its name but the administration eliminates all the province names in Canada and replaces them with West Canada and East Canada (see figure 1).America withdraws from a major international organization, the International Court of Arbitration because the U.S.A. can “take care of herself” and because other nations are so jealous of America's successes and power that any international decision would be biased against the U.S.A. In 1999, the U.S.A. is a “world within itself” or, in other words, “Uncle Sam had his own ranch and had things pretty much his own way.”1There are anti-Muslim and pro-Christian sentiment and mass deportations. Muslim rule has been banished in Europe (81), and Christianity “outnumbers” any other religion in the U.S.A. and throughout the world. This brand of Christian Nationalism is combined with an emphasis on English as the American (and world) language (45–46). But the emphasis for this National Christianity is tempered. with “love and gentleness” (200).All “Negroes” have been deported. In pre-utopian days, according to Bird, African Americans were “detested” by whites who consider them to be “an utterly alien race” that is demonstrably inferior because “The high white forehead cannot be ruled by the low black one.” The result of this hatred was the abject suffering of African Americans. The solution: all “Negroes” voluntarily agreed to be deported to “reservations” in Venezuela. In contrast to our present Venezuelan deportees, they won't live in tents meant to house them in Guantanamo Bay. Instead, they live in fertile Venezuelan farmlands and thrive. Mass deportation has its advantages (225–31).In Bird's utopia, there is a fixation on retribution for perceived enemies often based on debatable evidence. Bird accepts the “fact” that Spain sank the Maine in 1898 (22). This belief justifies the Spanish-American War. But in Bird's vision of the future, his leaders go far beyond McKinley's war of retribution. Using naval and especially airpower in the twentieth century, the U.S.A. destroys Madrid and much of Spain. Bird celebrates the destruction with hyper-masculine rhetoric: “the vengeance that was meted out to Spain . . . was sweeping and most complete” (22, 52, 61–62).In Bird's future, anti-Europe sentiments thrive, not because European nations fail to pay their fair share for self-defense, but because European nations are “political cannibals,” devouring countries around the world for their own selfish benefit (48). Bird is especially critical of how, early in the twentieth century, “European cormorants pounced on [Chinese] coasts, and . . . [stole] a whole country under the guise of civilizing it” (90). Bird's condemnation of Europe, especially Germany, ignores an obvious double standard. By 1999, England occupies India, Africa, and Australia. Russia, which Bird doesn't seem to consider “European,” controls much of Europe; China is a province of Russia; and the Czar is the “Emperor of China” (112–13).Despite all the aforementioned parallels between Bird's and our President's concepts of America as a utopia, I appear to have overlooked two key parallels: tariffs and a strongman leader. The first omission is easy to explain. Unlike Presidents McKinley and Trump, in Bird's 1999, there is no need for tariffs on Mexico, Canada, China, and other countries. Like McKinley and Trump, Bird's utopians had big expansionists dreams, though the expansion did not reach as far north as Greenland. In Bird's utopia, Canada and Mexico are now part of the United States of the Americas that extends from Alaska to Patagonia. Unlike European nations, the U.S.A. was not a “cannibal.” It was her “destiny” to be a savior, a “light of the world” (48, 82, 234). Mexico was the first to seek inclusion; the rest of Central and South America soon followed and in 1930 Canada finally joined. “England, of course, had to be consulted” about Canada, but Canadians “for many years” had been “entirely willing” to become one of the eighty-five states, which includes Brazil, the “Texas of the South” (85), and an international canal through Nicaragua (not Panama, which in fact did not declare its independence from Colombia until 1903) over which the U.S.A. had total control. One reason Bird's utopia is favorable toward Russia is that China's Russian Emperor sought “special trade privileges” with the U.S.A. Thus no need for Chinese tariffs.The strongman appeared a century before 1999. In Bird's utopia, there is even an annual “Dewey Day” (32) named for Admiral George Dewey, the hero of the Spanish-American War (25) and in Bird's vision, the U.S.A. celebrates a grand Dewey Centennial Celebration led by a President, a grandson of Dewey, who is “A Chip of [sic] the old Block” (33–34).If indeed President Trump read Bird's Looking Forward, he seems to have skipped over much of the praise for scientific invention, including medical research (193). But our President does not have a strong reputation as a reader of long documents, and the first half of the book is such a good playbook for his administration that he didn't really need to finish the book. McKinley's policies and Bird's utopia were enough guidance to chart his course.