...Of all the words used by the press to describe Donald Trump, the million-hit (Google) wonders are these:
bully 1.4 million
self-obsessed 2.5 million
vicious 9.1 million
rude 13.3 million
cruel 13.3 million
liar 16.2 million
angry 19.3 million
And the winner—drum roll, please:
idiot 20.5 million
Notice that five of the eight are internal attributes, only one can be fact-checked, and the most popular epithet of them all is the last refuge of sputtering incoherent rage.
...Of course, as we know from the recent convocation of the Illuminati at Bohemian Grove, there are many reasons for Trump’s popularity, but they all come down to one reason, the reason given over and over again, the reason so ingrained into the consciousness of the editor of the Lotus Grove Daily Arapaho that he tells his own readers why they are all ignoramuses and deluded throwbacks.
It’s The Angry White Man.
There’s an Angry White Man abroad. This AWM is so infused with rage that he has become a ballot-box terrorist and votes for Trump. He is determined to tear down the very foundations of the American experiment and return to some sort of gun-toting western wilderness where women are chattel and homosexuals are tarred and feather-boaed. When asked to produce one of these Angry White Men, fingers are pointed at that guy, the one with the wild hair and the crazy eyes at a Trump rally in Akron—yes, that guy that looks just like Timothy McVeigh. I’m waiting on the actual interview with the Angry White Man, but in the meantime we have a list of all the reasons he’s angry.
The main reason he’s angry, detailed at great length in President Obama’s speech at the Democratic convention, is that he lost his factory job. He’s a man with a hardhat and a lunch pail and nowhere to go. I don’t know how many times the Democrats used “loss of industrial jobs” to explain why people would want Donald Trump in office, but I’ve got news for you people: The factory closed in 1974!
That guy has grandchildren who don’t even know the factory existed. That factory became a derelict building in 1980, a Superfund site in 1985, a scientific laboratory in 1990 when Rutgers University biologists discovered the pollution was creating new mutant fish species in the Hackensack River, a vacant lot with a few structural walls still standing in 2000, a federally funded “redevelopment project” in 2005, a multi-purpose retail-and-residential high-rise in 2010, and today is advertised as The Factory Lofts: Luxury Starts at a Million Dollars.
“Well then,” says the journalist explaining The Trump Phenomenon, “it’s people who hate immigrants because they think they’re taking their jobs.”
Actually the main complaint about immigrants in Texas, my native state, is that they don’t learn English and so it’s hard to order at Whataburger. You would think the only state that fought two actual wars with the Mexicans and has a sacred monument to Mexican-killing martyrs would be inclined to take a hard line on Mexican immigration, but in fact there’s been so much wandering back and forth across the Rio Grande the past 300 years that it’s more like an irksome annoyance that comes and goes. The rate of illegal immigration actually flat-lined in 2005, partly because we built all these American factories in Nuevo Laredo and Juarez and Matamoras and—my own personal favorite border town—Piedras Negras, and partly because the Mexican economy got better in general.
...If it’s not the hardhat reason and it’s not the wetback reason, then it must be the Mythical Golden Age reason. This is the idea that there are millions of people in the backwoods of the Ozarks who are upset about the integration of the schools in 1957 and wish they could drive their pickups down picturesque dirt roads and go to fiddle conventions with other white people who belong to the Eureka Springs Free Will Pentecostal Tongue-Talkin’ Church, which is full of Aryan Brotherhood gun nuts who own tattoo shops in East Tulsa. The whole “mythical golden age” reason was apparently invented by West African exchange students at the Berkeley School for Public Policy who spend way too much time watching Country Music Television.
...First, stop with the psychoanalysis. Trump doesn’t believe anything. Trump is like Luminol. Luminol is the chemical used on Forensic Files to find blood after the crime scene has already been scrubbed. You just spray Luminol all over the floor and walls, and if human blood has ever touched anything in the room, it will phosphoresce like a red-headed hobo’s nose after seven bottles of Night Train. So Donald Trump is Human Luminol. He doesn’t have any real opinions. He just seeps into an environment like a grievance-seeking gas. He finds whatever people are mad about and says “I can fix it.” He probably can’t fix it, but he’s talking about things that nobody else wants to fix. He sees the blood on the floor.
Second, it’s the very people who hate Trump the most who created Donald Trump.
...There are all kinds of ordinary people who are gonna vote for Trump, and they’re not chasing a mythical golden age, and they don’t wear hard hats, and they don’t wanna live under a dictatorship. They’re what’s referred to in the mainstream press as “working class”—a strange term implying that they’re to be feared because they’re out there working instead of doing what the other classes do. Running Silicon Valley start-up deals? Managing trust funds? I don’t know why the Democrats, especially, equate “working class” with the Angry White Man, but they do.
My point is that the Donald Trump voters have consistently told us why they’re voting for Trump, but it doesn’t fit any of the stereotypes and so it’s never mentioned. What’s the first thing out of a Trump voter’s mouth when he’s asked about it?
“I like him because he says what’s on his mind.”
“He’ll say anything.”
“He doesn’t sugar-coat it.”
“He says things no one else will say.”
It’s a political movement based on the First Amendment.
Shouldn’t we, at the very least, be looking at why 40-plus-percent of the American population would feel stifled and silenced? Shouldn’t this be what we’re examining instead of the cerebral cortex of Donald Trump’s addled ego? Wouldn’t this be the reporterly thing to do?
So why do they feel muzzled? It probably started with something minor. Their third-grade son gets sent home for calling a girl “fat” in the school yard. But it doesn’t end there. The parents are called in. The student is required to attend Soviet-style reeducation classes. When the parents complain that “you’re making a big deal out nothing,” they are reminded that their progeny may have damaged a tender young girl for life.
And so, from a very early age, their kid is taught that he has to shut up about certain things. When a guy named al-Khalifa Mustafa bin Muhammad bin Chaka Khan shoots up a synagogue in Atlanta or slits a priest’s throat in Budapest, most Americans assume that a) he’s a Muslim, b) he’s a radical terrorist, and c) he should be shot on sight and his associates should be jailed or executed. But don’t say this out loud. There are local committees—and, again, it’s likely to come from the school—imploring our communities to “assume the best about all religions” and “resist the temptation to profile.” After all, there might be radical Jews or radical Christians bursting into mosques with AK-47s.
And then there are the examples with real, immediate consequences. A private joke at work becomes a disciplinary matter and possibly a loss of employment. An allegation of “sexual harassment” based on locker-room humor turns into an article in the paper and a civil lawsuit. Your daughter goes to college, gets the female lead in Carousel, but is told the drama teacher will be rewriting the final speech because it’s considered politically incorrect. You’re constantly put in situations where you’re not sure whether to mention your church affiliation for fear of being branded a yahoo. You post some photos on Facebook of your child’s first deer hunt and you’re smothered with online abuse as a Neanderthal killer and child abuser. God forbid you say something with a racist tinge, lest “hate speech” laws send you to jail.
Most Americans don’t believe in dividing speech into “protected speech” and “hate speech.” Most Americans believe that all speech is protected, even speech that some people regard as hateful. Most Americans think it’s okay to be an old coot with unpopular opinions. Most Americans feel that the federal government should get out of their business. And many Americans blame the Supreme Court for allowing the national social norms, set in New York and Washington, to filter into their communities in Wichita Falls, Boise and Spokane. They fear Hillary because they fear that more of their speech will be taken away, and more of their local control. They don’t love Donald but they know he’ll “say whatever he wants.”
They remember a time when they could also say whatever they wanted to say, too, but that time was more than thirty years ago. Meanwhile, there’s some guy at the Daily Arapaho telling them they’re idiots for voting for Donald Trump. They remember that guy, he’s the snooty one who went to McNeese State. He’s a clueless media type. Otherwise he would know that they’re not voting for Donald Trump because he’s a swell guy, they’re voting for the restoration of their personal liberty. Fortunately for their cause, the very fact that the media opposes them means they’re even more certain that it’s the right decision.
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