Sound the Trumpet
Operative B writes in with a question that interested us, so here it is:
| O Great One! This lowly minion crawls on your still-threadbare carpeting to beg an answer to a simple question: do people hate Trump because he’s a loudmouth buffoon who is incapable of stating a coherent sentence without resorting to one of his overwrought mantras (e.g. “Make America GREAT Again!”, etc) in his brain-exploding free-association speeches, or do people hate Trump because they think he’s a rich jerk who thinks that he can buy the electorate and they’re pissed because they didn’t get their piece (yet)? I begin to believe that Trump is hated by the powers-that-be (both those in office and those in the media) because he isn’t a traditional baby-kissing politician, isn’t playing “by the rules”, and doesn’t have much respect for “the way things are”. No, I’m not a Trump supporter by any stretch of the imagination, and it would take a lot of arm-twisting for me to pull the lever in his direction in November (or, in the case of our community, blacken in the spot on the card that goes through the optical reader). Yes, he’s an entertainer, a businessman who is selling a product (himself), a snake-oil salesman telling us that his bottle of cure-all will solve all of America’s problems in the first gulp. What a load of bovine excrement. But, I also begin to believe that people are swallowing his nonsense because they are tired of being told that they are racist homophobic anti-muslim xenophobes, and that they are “bitter clingers” to Constitutional rights, traditional values, and American patriotism. Trump satisfies those needs with his “there, there, you’ll be OK” speeches. He is a heck of a salesman. I look at Hillary and I see someone whose lies and behavior do not inspire trust or confidence. I look at Bernie and I see a 60’s radical who – although remaining true to his own belief system – was never able to reconcile capitalism with socialism (What the heck is a “democratic socialist”? Is that like a “jumbo shrimp” or an “original copy”?). This is not to say that the other candidates do not have their own problems (why are Christie, Bush, Carson, and Huckabee still in the race?) or that any of them are inspirational choices for the office of the chief executive of the USA. But at least these other candidates are able to speak (relatively) cogently when asked a question. Listening to Trump trying to make a point is like trying to make sense of nuclear fission: his answers fly off in all directions just like neutrons, and are just as unguided and useless. So I am left with a simple observation: Trump is gaining support because… well, because The People are tired of policy wonks spouting complex answers to simple questions that they barely understand, that they just want to watch YouTube on their smartphones, and they want to be comforted by someone who will tell them that they aren’t racist homophobic anti-muslim xenophobes. And that the monsters under their beds are real. After all, Trump said so. |
There is a great deal of sad truth in what you suggest. Actually, Trump appeals to his supporters for all of those reasons, not for any single idea in particular. Since Trump supporters generally cannot organize their thinking, they may not even realize that the supporter next to them may be diametrically opposed—given Trump’s ability to say totally opposite things on different days—to what they support. You know, like typical Democrats.
He’s a mess. We’ve less than a week to go before the primary—and if you’re as baffled and curious by the Trump phenomenon as we are, the Iowa one will be telling. The Czar is not making a prediction, but he would not be surprised if Trump’s actual voter turnout was terribly low. In some respects, the more popular he becomes with non-voting people, the less inclined they’ll be to go out and darken a dot for him, assuming—as these folks often do—that he’s got enough supporters already.
We’ll soon see.
Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.