Agent Orange and his nostalgia trip

Donald Trump is a 20th-c. militarist stuck in the 21st c. His nostalgia isn't restricted to the bumper sticker of 'Make America Great Again', but extends to a Cold War era plied by the likes of Nixon and Reagan when 'boys with their toys' mattered far more than it does today when defence - in Trumpspeak, 'war' - is far more based in behind-the-scene tech and leaner, meaner fighting machines. Trump's vision of US greatness seems to draw more from the 1950s-60s of a world of militarised states and 'Bay of Pigs'. Last week, he articulated this while addressing US military officers at the Marine Corps' base in Quantico, Virginia, where he spoke about 'maybe start thinking about battleships'. Not the board game, but pre-aircraft carrier warships.

At Quantico, Trump also spoke about the 'war from within' in 'crime-filled urban hellscapes' (read: cities in Democrat-governed states), adding that he wants to use US cities as 'training grounds' for the military. This is tinpot America that now sees 'tinpotism' as a virtue. Rather than deploy modern tools, Trump's fondness for 20th-c. war game optics is not unlike dressing up for Civil War enactments favoured by the history hobbyists. A 'visibly militarised' US is the latest twee obsession of White House's Agent Orange. It certainly makes for quicker, less cumbersome ways of making America great again than fuelling a contemporary military economy that the US has almost always been.

Turning war games into defence contracts is also a low-hanging fruit for someone who (paradoxically?) covets a Nobel Peace Prize. Trump's latest MAGA plans of anachronistic 'Bullworker-style' muscle-flexing has all the traits of a DeLorean time machine that some of us recall from the 1985 film, Back to the Future.