Take a Deep Breath

Take a deep breath America, relax…it’s only Donald. 

What we’re seeing in the Republican Party this political season relates more closely to Reality TV than reality.  The massive attention “The Donald” has received from both news media and bias media (Right and Left) is no less bizarre than the affection he gleans from his supporters.

He has been called or accused of being a fascist, a tower of strength, a demigod, a racist, a patriot, a loser, a winner, a womanizer, a fighter, or a megalomaniac, among other things.  Take your choice. 

None of them are true.  I liked Martin O’Malley’s label of “carnival barker”. After all, what kind of colorful, fast talking trickster stands before a crowd trying to entice them into the Fun House.  Sounds like Trump to me.

In truth, what he says is meaningless, beyond the generation of endless rhetoric.  It’s what he does that defines who he is, and as of yet he has done nothing other than talk.  Moreover, there is nothing he can do and, likely, nothing he will do.

I’m not suggesting that rhetoric has no value, far from it, but a weather report is not the weather. When someone is forecasting a July snowstorm in Miami, it’s time to stick your head out the window.

Trump is not alone. All politicians, but the Republicans especially, campaign with the use of outrageous fantasies.  How many times have I heard Republican presidential candidates advocate the elimination of the Internal Revenue Service?  An $18 trillion Federal budget with no agency assigned to collect the money??  We’re going to run the Country on goodwill and the honor system??  Perhaps we could employ the Salvation Army bell ringers during their off season.

Deporting millions of people, building impenetrable walls, stopping immigration (even visitation), or tagging Americans by their personal beliefs are just as cockeyed and brain dead as any other political fantasy.

So can this carnival barker actually become President of the United States? After all, we did have Warren G. Harding, Chester A. Arthur, and (gulp) George W. Bush. Of course Trump won’t become President.  No prior President ever gestated in the world we know as Reality Television, and it’s not going to happen, all other things being equal.

It should be no mystery, however, why Donald attracts the starboard side of the good ship GOP.

Republican politicians primarily trade in the use of fear to harvest support.  They’re good at it and they readily get mass media to help. It doesn’t matter if it’s because of immigrants, minority crime, “leftists”, or even simply the “Government” (which they are trying so desperately to be part of) their followers are, by their opinion, deep in doo-doo…and it works.

When a Republican candidate expresses his dire concern about the cunning insertion of Shiria Law into our Judicial System, as most of them have, it should evoke universal belly clutching laughter…but it doesn’t. Hell, we can’t even get good law passed, let alone Shiria Law.

Instead of gun control laws let’s pass laws that take away the driver’s licenses from all women.  Yeah…that’ll be easy.  Regrettably, it doesn’t cause laughter even in those who know better. What it does, when said over and over, is to create uncertainty, the mother of fear.

So who are these “legions” that support Donald, Ted, Rubio, Ben, Jeb and the like? 

This week Bernie Sanders was asked that question.  He said emphatically that they were those individuals angry from the injustice and inequality of our (non-pluralistic) economy in which the power barons in Washington fight to maintain.  According to Bernie, Republicans like Trump give them a scapegoat by blaming the Muslims or Latinos, just as Hitler used the Jews to gain power in a very sick Germany.  Sounds good but, sorry Bernie, you couldn’t be more wrong, except for one thing…they are angry.

The diehard Trump supporter is white, Christian, and with reasonable income and assets by national standards. He or she is usually rural, older, suspicious of education generally, and adverse to change. What makes them angry?  Quite simple really: bias talk radio and television. 

Most all the things that make them angry and engender irrational fear are not really happening in their lives.  Without Rush Limbaugh, Carl Levin, Fox News and the like they probably could deal with, for example, a black President.  Does that make them stupid?  Not really. Still, when fear walks in one door, generally intelligence walks out the other.

The good part is that there are just not that many of them.  One well thought out estimate I read recently argued that if The Donald could hold onto every one of his current supporters in a general election he would garner less than 5% of the vote.  Breathe easy.

The United States is not the German Weimar Republic of 1934…not even remotely close. However, the similarities on the kinds of things that can cause fear in both cultures are notable. Add to that our 21^st Century ability for instant mass communication and you can see how relatively small events or incendiary rhetoric can have widespread impact. 

Donald Trump knows this and uses it to his advantage…but not to be President. 

The Donald is a business man, as he claims.  It is what he actually does.  He is currently merchandizing the “Trump” brand with hundreds of millions in free advertizing.  I believe he’s not interested in being President, probably not even the Republican nominee.  He might leave the Party as an excuse to exit the race, but he won’t run a third party campaign because he wouldn’t spend a dime of his money on a sure loss. He is not a man of principal…obviously.

Trump is a smart, rich narcissist and we’ll be seeing him in the news long after we start saying “Marco…ah, what’s his name?”  So sit back, relax and enjoy the show.  Reality starts again next fall.