Trump, the Marlboro Man and the New Frontier

Donald Trump and the Marlboro Man are case studies of branding success. When Philip Morris introduced the cowboy on its ads in 1955, sales were at $5 billion. Two years later, sales were at $20 billion. Ellen Merlo, the vice president of marketing services at Philip Morris, described the cowboy image as “very rugged, individualistic, heroic.” Rugged and individualistic is exactly the image Trump tries to portray. Why else go to WWE Raw events or a college football game? How else to describe his raised fist cry “Fight, fight, fight,” when struck by a bullet during an assassination attempt. Trump’s mythological image has helped him to be re-elected president despite (because of) twice being impeached and convicted of 34 felony accounts. The Marlboro Man and Trump’s image portrayal are fundamental to the American mythology of the pioneer spirit exploring new frontiers which now includes the popular success of tech start-up heroes like Elon Musk.

Donald Trump is the 21^st century version of the Marlboro Man, the rugged individual on the border of civilization. And along with him are his pioneering friends, the Elon Musks, Peter Thiels and other Big Tech entrepreneurs involved in the new frontiers of cyber, bitcoins and artificial intelligence. (Musk is also involved in the frontier of outer space.) The story is similar in American history from the Pilgrims on, atypical individuals challenging the borders of the known and unknown. The pioneer spirit is foundationally embedded in American mythology and culture.

One of the most perceptive descriptions of the American experience is Frederik Jackson Turner’s 1893 paper “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” In it, the historian traces the development of a distinctive American culture and identity around the idea of pioneers conquering frontiers. “American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier,” he said. “This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American society.”

How best to describe the American frontier and the pioneers who dared enter the unknown territory, a meeting point, in Turner’s words between “savagery and civilization”? It could have started with the Pilgrims who left the known of England thinking they were sailing by an undiscovered route to India. It was certainly frontiersman like Daniel Boone with his coonskin cap going “over the mountain” through the Cumberland Gap to open the Wilderness Road to settlers moving westward, or members of the Donner Party who finally reached the outer edge of the Continent in California once they had climbed over the Rocky Mountains’ Wasatch Range, gone through the Great Salt Lake Desert, and struggled over the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Later, after Hawaii and Alaska joined the United States, the frontier took on new dimensions when John F. Kennedy declared in his 1960 acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention:

We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier…The pioneers gave up their safety, their comfort, and sometimes their lives to build our new west. …That there is no longer an American frontier. … we stand today on the edge of a new frontier, the frontier of unknown opportunities and perils. … Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered problems of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus. … I’m asking each of you to be pioneers towards that New Frontier.

Outer space and science were part of the new frontier between the known and unknown. Not quite the space between civilization and savagery, but nevertheless an important part of the American image of pioneering.

It is against that pioneer image of rugged individualism that the Marlboro Man fits the mythology. Alone, or with other cowboys like him, he is always pictured outside civilization, somewhere taming animals and dominating his horse. No women are pictured in the ads, no symbols of domestication or evidence of restrictions on the cowboy’s liberty. The cowboy/pioneer is distinct from all that civilization represents.

Included in the pioneer spirit is the sense of adventure. There is something exhilarating and appealing about setting out on a new journey away from the known, of being an outsider. Trump’s chaos represents an out-of-the-ordinary experience, and should be understood as part of the thrills of a pioneering adventure. When the term “eurosclerosis” is used to describe European stagnation, it is often used in an indirect comparison to American dynamism and creativity, the American pioneering spirit. It is no wonder that New York is often praised as “The city that never sleeps.”

The best description of the MAGA phenomenon is the adventure and liberty of the frontier. Forget labels such as neo-conservatism or populism. Trump’s lack of civility is exactly what makes him successful since it matches the primitiveness of those who venture into the unknown unburdened by the trappings of the past.

The tag team of Trump and Musk represent the modern reincarnation of the uncouth pioneers. Don’t expect virtuosos like Pablo Casals to play at the Trump White House, as they did when John Kennedy was president during the 1960s New Frontier. This new frontier is more an attack on the old, a direct confrontation with civilization and its institutions rather than a recognition of civilization’s benefits while reaching beyond its borders.

Look at the list of Trump’s nominees to be ambassadors, representatives of the United States in foreign capitals. There are none of the urbane, sophisticated, experienced diplomats like the Crockers, Bohlens, Kennans, but people like Charles Kushner, father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, a real estate developer who served two years in prison for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering. Kushner has been nominated to be the U.S. ambassador to France. Charles Kushner in Paris, the home of the Louvre, fashion, sophistication, an important Western cultural center.

Trump 2.0, Musk and MAGA represent a new frontier spirit in the American pioneer tradition. They are libertarians in the sense of the uncontrolled cowboy, those very American mythological figures who lived without formal borders and restraints.

Can the historic Wild West now be situated in Washington DC? Unlike the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol which was violent, the Trump 2.0 presidency-in-waiting shows all the elements of Andrew Jackson’s March 1829 presidential inauguration when the public was invited to the White House for a post-inauguration reception. This time, the January 6, 2021, intruding MAGA followers will be formally invited inside the Capitol and White House. On January 20, 2025, the Wild West will formally come to Washington with the MAGA/pioneer/cowboys set to attack their newest frontier, what they see as Americansclerosis including all its historic institutions.

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