After working on them for a bit, I realized that there is a common, golden thread running through my posts this morning. There is a profound pathology in present-day American politics. I think that Donald Trump is reflective of that pathology rather than its cause but who knows? What I see is that people are condemning their political enemies for everything, forgiving their political friends anything, and all without much evidence.
We are not without problems but, as I’ve said before, I’d rather have our problems than China’s. I sincerely believe that our economic prospects are better than China’s, we are less racist than France or the United Kingdom, and we’re less sexist than Sweden.
But, as noted, we do have some problems. Unfortunately, our present pathology renders actual progress on any of our problems difficult if not impossible and is only really good for our political leadership and those who already have their cabins in the woods or beach houses on Maui.
I think our present situation is tremendously dangerous. It has already resulted in more than 25 years of continuous warfare, so much war that I presume that young people today assume that we have always been at war with Eastasia.
My take on this has been that the think tanks and media have really been successful in driving us into two camps. Not the relatively innocuous MSM, but the talk radio people and the far out blogs and think tank dominated media on cable and elsewhere that perpetuate conspiracy theory that becomes accepted as normal belief. That declares the opposition evil. That they must hate America. There is an awful lot of that now and the base of each party is saturated with it. It lets you never deal with faults in your own party or politicians if you can find anything even remotely wrong with someone or something in the other tribe.
The thing about Trump is that he is a genius. People on the left still like to call him ignorant and a doofus, and when it comes to policy or US history, the law, health care details, foreign policy and many other things it might be true. However, when it comes to media he is the best ever. He knows how to manipulate the media and get his message out better than anyone. He understands his base as well or better than anyone before him, and knows how to manipulate them to support him. The final piece to his puzzle is that he has zero morals. He will say anything or do anything. Common decency just doesn’t exist for the guy. That means he can appeal to and energize and enable the parts of his supporters that were probably best left alone and, frankly, has lowered the decency of everyone who supports him since he is so flagrant in what he does and says.
The best we can hope for here is that he is a one off phenomenon, but I don’t think so. You now have people trying to out-Trump Trump.
Steve
He may be a genius but I’m not so sure. I think it’s more likely that he’s one of those guys who thinks that stirring the pot is fun.
Other than that I agree with most of your comment. But I also think that our problems go a lot deeper than Trump.
The snappiest wisecrack I’ve heard in a while is somebody who said that he can’t wait for the Trump presidency to be thought of as the good old days so they can attack the next Republican administration as literally Hitler.
There was a Philip Roth quote about the difference between the Lindbergh and Trump. Roth basically said that Lindbergh did something admirable; he was a hero. But Trump is the exact opposite. He’s an empty manipulative man who has no friends, no love or energy, nothing. For all of the money he blows on sex, he seems to take no enjoyment in that, which is really something.
If there’s a pathology, it’s that people are selecting this nothingness over anything else. It’s like being upset about the flag being ‘disrespected’. It’s not real. Whereas white supremacy might be a too-easy way to describe a problem, but it’s real. At a certain level I honestly that a significant number of Americans are angry because they suspect they are deplorable. And Trump is feeding on that need to be conned by being deplorable in their name.