Sunday, September 18, 2016

Donald Trump: No ... by gimleteye

The birther movement that sprang from Donald Trump's lips -- and onto the talking points memo circulated by Roger Ailes and Fox News -- was meant to prod, to goad, and to irritate racist sentiment in America. The constant scraping at the wound energized a segment of Trump supporters who were valuable to his primary victories against "politically correct" and soft Republican opponents who played their own games to attract extremists in the GOP ranks.

The birther movement Trump represented will have to now go to its hidey-hole unescorted by a Republican candidate for president of the United States. "I am not a racist," Trump says, but Trump will say anything. The whole time he claimed President Obama was from Kenya, he was feeding raw meat to the beast. He knew it, and that makes him as cynical and as prejudiced as George Wallace; the face of racism in the 1960s.

Not all Trump supporters are racist. Among these, there is a sentiment that the office of the president need not be occupied by anyone with history or experience because America needs, in this view, a disrupter-in-chief. To these supporters, what matters most is that American exceptionalism is a lie told by a political status quo -- in both parties -- that can only be reversed by a "bull-in-the-china-shop".

To these supporters, every one of Trump's reversals loosens the grip of the status quo. His lies don't matter. Every means justifies the end: a president who will howl and pound the table at our adversaries and make America great again through force of will.

This is a new phenomenon in American presidential politics, where for decades the media and voters have scrutinized every shift in presidential candidates for signs of "flip-flopping": the ultimate barrier to the Oval Office. Trump supporters seem to see through presidential posturing because they are all liars. Trump on the other hand lies freely because his supporters are "in" on his secret: nothing matters but making America great again.

Donald Trump is holding a magnified mirror to his supporters in which their grievances are gloriously enlarged: where every small and bulbous pressure must come to the surface, where conspiracy theories must bubble out, where germs must multiply so they can be seen and exorcized. In the Trump magnification, shared anger at personal reversals in the globalized economy are amplified. Insecurities will not be denied, not by fact or by a woman. Yes, Donald Trump learned his chops on reality TV; how to work the camera, how to bait his hook with mass audiences.

The Trump skill set has no place in presidential politics or any other level of American politics.

When it comes to leadership, desperate times -- as many Americans are experiencing -- do not require desperate measures. Desperate times require compassion, empathy, and a willingness to work together. We are stronger together. Every self-evident truth we value crumbles under lies, illogic, and passion supported by unjustified faith. When our nation is guided by fact, by reason and science, we can navigate toward common ground. When our nation is guided by lies in support of fictions, we are individuals thrown to the wolves.

Donald Trump is only qualified to lead voters in one direction: to the Trump brand; to his hotels, to his "university", to a way of doing business that depends on sleights-of-hand and broken contracts. Voters, beware. This truism holds: if you break it, you own it. Trump voters want a disrupter in the White House; what they would get, in a Trump America, is a wrecking ball in their bank accounts.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually, the "birther" movement was started and propagated by Hillary.

Anonymous said...

That is another LIE. Independent sources ( FactCheck. Org, CNN, and PolitiFact) checked it out, and again it is another LIE.

He knew the birther argument was a lie, but he pushed it anyway for years so he could consolidate the racists, and give them somewhere to go. They too should be concerned as they are so easily manipulated.

Anonymous said...

Every now and then I like to help my peeps out.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/08/penn-strategy-memo-march-19-2008/37952/

2008 Clinton campaign strategy.

Geniusofdespair said...

I went to your link and read the memo of a campaign handler. Implying Obama has a lack of American roots by demonstrating YOUR OWN roots in America, is not the same as saying Obama wasn't born here. Her staff wanted her to imply he was raised in Indonesia and Hawaii, places foreign to most Americans.

Anonymous said...

The day of reckoning is coming. You vote for a racist or you don't. If you vote for a racists then you are one, and you have to at least admit it to yourself. If you decide that you are not a racist and don't vote for him, then the choice is between Hilary, or throw your vote away with one of the lesser candidates. Hillary is the most qualified choice and the only one who has demonstrated capabilities to lead the country. To throw your vote away means you don't count, and when the nation really needed you, and you had a tough choice to make, you ran away from your responsibility, and left the heavy-lifting to others. Freedom is not free. We all have to work at it.