An interesting article.
Trump has certainly tapped into something. There is a misery constituency in this country that has found a mouthpiece in him.
There has been a standard of living ebb in this country for decades. The American dream has eluded many people, and they don't understand why.
The problem, of course, is that the dream was only that: it was a bubble that occurred in the 50s and 60s, never to recur again. And it won't.
People, particularly those on the margins or those who see themselves slipping from year to year, desperately want to believe in the Dream and its vaunted restoration. They will follow a Pied Piper more from the need to believe in something rather than from a rational and sober acceptance of the truth of things.
They need and want to belong to a motorcycle gang, a cult, as it were, who will accept and love them, warts and all. Personal adversity has always created a common ground for membership in the same.
It is very difficult to dislodge Trump's followers with facts. That is because their infatuation with him is not BASED on facts. A substantial number of his followers are populated by those for whom smoke and mirrors ARE reality.
Trump brings out the worst in Americans. He legitimizes bigotry, xenophobia and insensitivity. Can you imagine 20 years ago a politician making fun of a disabled person in public, at a rally and in front of cameras!! It would have been unheard of!
And yet those anti-virtues still exist; They form part of the mindset of millions of people who try to figure out why the Good Life passes them by. They provide the fatuous reason and explanation why things don't go better for them.
That kindling has been there for a long time. It just needed a brush fire like Trump to ignite it and set it ablaze.
We have seen this before.
Trump may win this election but it will be the final harbinger of the imminent decline of America as a beacon of virtues and humanity in the world, the end of Pax Americana, the end of what looked like Camelot but became extinct in the same way it did.
