“The Golden Age of America Begins Right Now”

With these words, Donald Trump began and closed his 2025 Inaugural Address. We first hear such words from Hesiod, a contemporary of Homer (c. 800 BCE), who described a cosmological cycle of Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages, the latter of which is ours. In the Age of Gold, men lived without property or strife, but the world has since declined, causing Hesiod to comment that he would prefer to have been born either earlier or later. This attitude typifies the outlook of many later Greeks and Romans, that while current times are less than desirable and the earliest age was the best, long-term cyclic change may return us to a primitive state. This is the first, the parent member, of a class of concepts called Renewal Ideas. It eventually includes Ideas of A Golden Age, Rebirth, Reform, The Millennium, Revolution, and Generic Renewal. They have primal sources in humanity’s experience of natural cyclic binaries, such as Day and Night, Winter and Summer, and Life and Death, which give them a special hardwired or archetypical rhetorical power. People tend to respond positively–they resonate–when they think, read, or hear of new life, daylight, or Springtime. Tapping into this ancient veneration of the primitive, President Trump used such images throughout his campaign to strike a familiar, pleasing chord with his constituency and win an election. 

Within Western history, new versions of the Renewal Idea emerge through mutation to fit certain needs and circumstances while they retain the backward or upward gaze toward something better. For example, the idea of a Golden Age is severed from the cycle to be used for celebratory proclamation. Virgil, in his Aeneid, addresses his patron, “Caesar Augustus, son of the deified, who shall bring once again an age of Gold.” Such a Golden Age proclamation is a Renewal Idea that will be used repeatedly for over two millennia; in today’s vernacular, the term may be applied to virtually any event someone declares to be exceptional. The facts of its ubiquity and lack of specificity demonstrate its power to justify or legitimize anything new without defining the nature of the change. President Trump echoes Virgil and the rhetorical tradition the poet established; he tells us that a “tide of change is sweeping the country, sunlight is pouring over the entire world.”

The Golden Age suggests a vitalistic rebirth, a Springtime, once celebrated in vernal festivals. For example, Boccaccio, writing during the early Italian Renaissance, says that God sent Dante to clear the way for the muses who had been banished from Italy. Again, as in Trump’s or Virgil’s proclamations, the occurrence does not require a program involving human choice or intention; like the coming of Spring, it simply happens. Returning to the familiar area of contemporary politics, Biden promised, “Our Best Days Lie Ahead,” and Reagan announced, “It’s Morning in America.” Much of Trump’s address is a litany of powerful images of new life, “a thrilling new era of national success,” countered by condemnation of a society where “the pillars lay broken and in complete despair.” The momentum is already here to “annihilate the challenges we face.” He does not ask for help; he declares, like a prophet, that renewal is happening. “From this moment on, America’s decline is over.” . . . “For American citizens, January 20th, 2025, is Liberation Day.”

Usually, such rhetoric of a Golden Age and vitalistic rebirth is “hollow;” a leader or advocate states that better days are arriving without reference to a specific program or requirement of intentional action. Images of both a primitive age of gold, an Eden, and spontaneous vernal rebirth are hijacked for advertising and political persuasion. Such uses are common in our Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, but they were preceded by many examples, including Charlemagne’s “Renewal of the Empire of the Romans” and similar claims of his European successors. Gregory IX, a thirteenth-century pope, was the most able of renewal rhetoricians. Not only did he use vitalistic and millenarian renewal imagery skillfully to promote the interests of the Church, convert the heathen,  celebrate new universities, and lead ideological crusades, he was a friend of St. Francis, through whom, he said, new waters of holiness spread throughout the world. He coopted and sanctified the Franciscan success to declare that a new day had come, a new holiness had arrived, hoping to promote unity. The Church used Francis to avoid revolution. Going beyond empty pronouncements, Gregory was a serious practitioner of personal reform, even wearing the saint’s habit. President Trump, on the other hand, displays little interest in personal reform, but he, along with some dictators, popular musicians, preachers, and politicians, is Gregory’s equal or perhaps superior in the use of celebratory spin that strikes a chord in its audience. These ideas and images resonate because of their congruence with primal renewal patterns and lack of demand for specific action; reform is more practical and programmatic.

The Idea of Reform complements the vitalistic and Golden Age declarative hype used by Trump and others; avoiding hollow pronouncements, it differs in requiring the free choice of an incremental program using a model. For example, the United States founders chose to make laws that would contribute to equal rights for citizens. This sibling of the other renewal ideas was born within the crucible of early Christianity, where the idea that the converts should change themselves toward the image and likeness of God in which they were created emerged. This primitivism has a connotation of both “again” and “looking back;” it is incremental. Note that our words that fit this meaning often begin with the prefix re-(store, form, pair). Such words were invented or repurposed by St. Jerome using the Latin re- as he translated the Bible from Greek and Hebrew. They evolved into the Romance languages that influenced our English. These re-words were first applied to the individual, then to groups in the form of monasteries, and eventually to the entire Church. From there, they were extended to a secular context, and Reform became the standard alternative to Revolution, which is not incremental. Reform, in our politics, is generally associated with democracy while revolution is paired with dictatorship. Notably, the act of reform requires free intention, and alongside his hollow but useful proclamations of golden age and rebirth, President Trump deploys this useful rhetorical tool with a new model for action by which reform is given a revolutionary jolt. 

While Trump does not use the word “reform” in his address, he does plan to “reclaim our republic,” “reclaim sovereignty,” “restore safety,” “rebalance the scales of justice,” and “reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place and to give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy, and, indeed, their freedom.” All of these words are reform words that look back to an earlier model in the same way that Christians have looked to the apostolic community, early Church, or the life of Christ for social and institutional reform and in the same way that secular institutions have advocated change based upon natural law and human equality. (Note, for example, the Declaration of Independence.)

President Trump, still using the past as his model for social change, will “bring back free speech to America” and, if that is not enough, “bring back hope, prosperity, safety, and peace for citizens of every race, religion, color, and creed.” Some will claim that such goals are overly vague; however, part of the power of the idea of reform comes from a “fill-in-the-blank” quality. The structure of re-form, which refers to a state happier than the present, may be used to present or advocate very diverse values while resonating with different audiences; they resonate because each listener may fill in their own beliefs. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan helped elect him twice as it assisted Ronald Reagan twice and Warren Harding once. The word “again” makes it a powerful reform idea: choice is required; current days are not so good; a better model exists for the constituency. The voter may fill in the blank for the model. In his second campaign, when he lost, Trump used the slogan “Keep America Great,” which is not a renewal idea, but discarded it when the campaign found it ineffective and returned to MAGA. Note that Biden countered Trump in 2020 with “Build Back Better” and “Restore the Soul of the Nation” in winning the election; both had advocated renewal. Of the twenty original candidates from both parties in that election, only one other than Biden and Trump used a renewal idea. Perhaps the others should have.

While President Trump is properly vague about the exact model for his renewal programs, he provides a dramatic hint of his plans. I hope he exaggerates when he says, “we will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense. It’s all about common sense.” Parsing this statement he made while introducing a list of executive orders, his notion of “a complete restoration of America,” while practically impossible, is revolutionary and entirely antithetical to reform. An attempt would require the techniques of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes, leading us to question his promise to bring back freedom of speech. The next phrase concerning a “revolution of common sense” seems to mean what it says, that his presidency shall bring about drastic, immediate change based upon common sense, which I assume is popular, everyday, practical opinion, including prejudice. By definition, common sense is distinct from expert opinion. President Trump displays admirable honesty in expressing his distrust of expertise and pointing out the revolutionary nature of this model for renewal, which rejects expert knowledge. This revolution of common sense is, importantly, a new mutation within the renewal family. The change model is Common Sense, and the idea is revolutionary due to the goal of “complete restoration” and the “revolutionary” adjective modifying common sense. Revolution has evolved from its cyclic origins to mean drastic and complete change, making it very useful in advertising. Now, using the term to modify “Common Sense,” has Trump gone “full cycle” in replacing expertise with primitive common sense. 

In a thoughtful article in the New York Times, David Brooks suggests that Trump’s historical model is the period of American history from 1830–1899, an age of populism, unfettered growth, industrialization and Manifest Destiny. Others have suggested that he would like to return to the 1950’s. Reading this inaugural statement, I take him at his word that “common sense,” defined as convictions that fit the opinions of those who attend his rallies, is the new model for revolutionary change. In an age of relativism lacking certain truths, Trump tests his ideas with an applause meter, not a history book. His references to “returning” or “bringing back” fit the needs of his followers for renewal of any kind, a new day, a new life–the rhetoric of renewal works. Trump’s qualifications involving common sense point toward actions that may be called “revolutionary reform,” providing fodder for political theorists. The tuning fork vibrates.

Along with Trump’s Golden Age, Vitalistic, Reform, and Revolutionary Renewal Ideas, President Trump includes a passage that may be interpreted as Apocalyptic or Millenarian: “Those who wish to stop our cause have tried to take my freedom and, indeed, to take my life. Just a few months ago, in a beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin’s bullet ripped through my ear. But I felt then and believe even more so now that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.” I do not know Trump’s true relationship with the Deity. However, Pew polling indicates that almost half of American Christians believe that Christ shall or may (27% are certain) return to earth within the next forty years, thus, this statement interweaves Trump’s life story with the beliefs of many supporters. Should they associate their leader with any of the many prophecies involving the apocalypse, judgment day, and the millennium, the other renewal ideas described above are magnified in power through the certainties brought by these prophecies of imminent providential renewal. 

If the goal of President Trump’s address is to celebrate his election, legitimize his program, establish common sense as a model for change, and anoint his supporters as the vanguard of a new age through the use of Renewal Ideas, he has succeeded. Drawing upon rhetorical patterns that have evolved over the entire course of our Western Tradition, he strikes a tone that appeals to those who may, ironically, reject the Western Tradition that gave us Renewal Ideas. With Trump’s election, a new order of things already exists; there is no room for amelioration or incrementalism. Revolutionary exaggeration, a potentially tragic level of hyperbole, is the way of the future.

Some of the examples used are taken from my book It’s About Time: Renewal Origins, Mutations and Eros’ Arrow (2024)