RESIZING AMERICA'S SENSE OF SELF

AMERICA'S love affair with monumentalism is hardly a secret: with buildings, warships, automobiles, aircraft-and, most importantly, self image.

- KAJAL BASU

So, when this core of self-esteem begins to crack and eventually crumble, we can be sure that something is afoot that will redefine America's sense of self. For better or for worse which might actually go hand in hand.

Never before has the US introspected more than after Donald Trump took office this January. The most monumentalist president in the 80 postwar years, according to Gallup, he began with approval ratings of 47 percent (21-27 January) but is now down to 36 percent (1-15 December), where it has been stuck since November 3.

This steadily declining graph is a reliable mirror to America's glissading sense of self under the Trump presidency. Trump has been promising big and delivering small. The Epstein files fiasco is a case in point. One of Trump's presidential election planks was the unconditional release of the entire, un-redacted Epstein files. In January, Trump reiterated his promise. In February, his attorney general Pam Bondi told an interviewer that an Epstein "client list" was on her desk. The department of justice (DoJ) ostentatiously sent "declassified" dossiers to far-right influencers but it was material already in the public domain.