I have been meaning for some time to put down some thoughts about our President, Donald Trump. Let me say first that I do not blame the man for the state of things in America today. I don’t think he is the source of most of the problems that we are experiencing. We have been heading this way for a long time. I do feel that he has taken advantage of a lot of the negativity in this country and that he has successfully surfed that wave right into the office of the most powerful man in the world. When he was elected, I took some solace in the fact in the belief that the President is not nearly as powerful as a lot of Americans think that he is. I still feel that way, but I can honestly say that the man has surprised me with what he has been able to do. But, more on that later.
First of all, let’s give him credit where credit is due. There is a tendency that I have seen in people to very often turn their opponents into cartoon characters, to overstate their worst qualities, to undercut their achievements, to never see any possible good or any logic in anything that they do. I do not like this tendency. On it’s face, it is just an ad hominem attack and holds no value. It is also a dismissive tactic that demonstrates an unwillingness to look objectively at a situation and base a solid opinion on actual facts. People thought that Barack Obama was a secret Muslim who was trying to destroy America from within. He wasn’t. People thought that George W. Bush was a complete moron. I just don’t think that is the case. But Trump pulled off something pretty amazing to counteract this tendency: he leaned in. Put simply, the man just is a cartoon character. His physical appearance is outlandish, from the unusual hair and the poorly applied spray tan to the gigantic ties that his company has made for him by tiny, adorable children in China. His demeanor is ridiculous, including his posturing to get in front of other world leaders for photographs or making a point to speed up and walk in front of the Queen Elizabeth, who I don’t think I have to point out is a very, very old woman. The man simply dares everyone to try their best to make him into a cartoon character. I don’t think political cartoonists have ever had it this easy. They really just need to draw a realistic-looking picture of him doing something that he was actually doing, and then they can just collect their check and call it a day. It is pretty amazing.
He is also bold. I think in some weird way, he may have become the embodiment of the the way the world sees America. Overblown, bombastic, openly lying about things that are easily verifiable, taking credit for things that we had very little to do with. In a lot of ways, he is like a fun, obnoxious guy at a bar, just engaging in complete and utter bullshitting. And I hope that you know that there is an art to that. And he is damn good at it. Also, another thing to point out - he doesn’t drink. Weird, right?
The man successfully hijacked almost an entire political party. I am not well-versed on presidential history, but I cannot quickly recall another President who was able to accomplish that with so much success. The man was a registered Democrat for most of his life. But he decided at some point to just switch parties and then directly take on the Republican establishment, and despite clearly not being the man that any of the party leaders would ever pick for the job somehow he convinced them to rally behind him. Now, I will probably write another blog-entry at some later point regarding my frustration with current state of the Republican party, but for now, let me just say that what Trump did to them was very disturbing, but also quite impressive.
But the problem is the way in which he did it. He disparaged Mexicans in the very first moments of his candidacy, setting the pace for a strong trend of doing his best to stir up fear of immigrants, especially those with a darker complexion. He has done his absolute best to capitalize on fear and insecurity. In his current effort to salvage his presidency, he is doing everything that he can to scare the ever-loving crap out of white people so they will vote for him so that he can protect them and their property somehow. They are coming out of those evil, crime-ridden, Democrat-run cities, and they are going to take over your suburbs! He has completely eroded trust in the government and scientists, which really has a tendency to come back and bite you on the ass when there is a global pandemic that you have to deal with. But at least he has stuck firmly to his game plan and continues to insist on calling the virus names, because that is certainly good for America.
I do feel that the man is a drawing salve. I mean that his actions have a strong tendency to pull infection up to the surface, most evidently the racism that still exits so strongly in America. At the beginning of his presidency, I thought that it was probably a good thing, that sunlight is the best disinfectant, that it is better to deal with terrible ideas out in the open rather than letting them hide in the shadows and gain strength. I am wondering now if I did not just completely underestimate how racist a lot of American people remain. Based on several conversations that I have had, people that I know and love now seem to be much more racist than they were a few years ago. I guess it is always possible that they are now just more comfortable being open about it, but I obviously still find that to be quite troubling, Honestly, I am still up in the air on whether or not he has actually made people more racist. I guess it is always possible that he just pulls to the surface something that was always there.
His game is division and anger and mistrust and conflict, and I’ll be damned if it hasn’t worked for him a great deal of the time. He screams about Fake News and the Liberal Media while giving interviews on the most popular, and clearly conservative, news channel in America. He has stirred up a pretty disturbing level of obsession with conspiracy theories on the right. I have heard it said that he has engineered a situation in which facts and truth simply no longer matter, and that can get you into some pretty scary strongman/dictator territory if you don’t look out.
But his game is just not working right now. American’s are getting sick and dying because we can’t seem get on the same page about science. All the racial mistrust and the frustration with the system is coming to a head in so many of our cities (and everywhere else) right now, and his proposed solution is not to acknowledge that maybe we have some stuff that we need to come together and work on, but to march Federal troops into those cities. I find that to be absolutely terrifying, and it astounds me that no one on what I thought was the small-government-loving right seems to think so.
I think I am going to wrap this up for today, though this may be a topic that I revisit at some point. I can honestly say that I find Donald Trump to be a fascinating person for so many reasons. And, I can respect many of the things that the man has been able to accomplish, though I strongly disagree with both his means and his ends on so many of them. The man has powered his way to the top, and he is shaping the course of American history right now. Honestly, I think it has the potential to be a positive thing that he, his beliefs, and his supporters are providing such an amazing pressure test of our system right now. But we have to remember that the point of a pressure test is to identify the weaknesses and then do the work to fix them, not to just blow the whole damn thing up.