#MakeYouGreatAgain: Exposing The Gullibility of The Frustrated American

My friend Greg Swann and I have been alternating between hysterics and horror about the campaign of Donald Trump.  It’s less hysterics and more horror now that the Iowa Caucuses have started.  While the “we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore” vote is understandable, trading one soft tyrant for another is no restoration of our First Principles.  Phrases I hear from Trump supporters include:  “take a flamethrower to the whole thing” or “burn this b**** to the ground”.  That’s not a traditionally conservative response.

I loathe Hillary Clinton; I think she is as dangerous and sociopathic as Josef Stalin. Trading Stalin for Mussolini (whom I think Trump personifies) is no solution.  Greg and I have been trying to understand the appeal of the American Benito. Greg thinks Trump is motivated by a horrific event in his teens:

“But whether he’s trying to best his father or simply to win his respect, his is an impossible quest, and the frenzied need to achieve the impossible is what makes him so dangerous.

“You know he will rip through anyone and anything to prop up his phony blowhard “self-esteem” – and to pretend to hide from the world the scalding humiliation he has felt for every day of his wretched life. You know he will stop at nothing in his insane defense of his outraged insanity. And you know that, should you come out on the wrong side of Donald Trump, he will shred you – or your family – without a second thought – or a second of remorse.”

That may be true but I don’t care about what motivates TRUMP as much as I care about his voters.  I think most every politician is a wounded control-freak, desperately trying to compensate for some inadequacies (real or imagined).  Thus, my efforts have been to limit what they can or can’t do with the power we vest in them.  And yet, Trump supporters seem too willing to hand unlimited power to the American Benito.

What exactly is his appeal to people who generally want to be left alone rather than “led”?

Here is why he’s popular– people secretly want to be like him but possess the middle-class morality which prevents them from doing so.

You start a business, borrow money, and fail. Most people lament that they didn’t “pay themselves first” before the failure (Trump would have)–that is not how Americans are built.   Sure, it’s legal but most people worry about their reputations with the local pastor, mayor, and chamber of commerce. Trump doesn’t .

Most Americans are embarrassed that they bought an overvalued house, couldn’t afford it when they lost their job, and lost it to foreclosure. Trump isn’t.

Most Americans would not open a restaurant, with local investors’ money, and at the first sign of trouble move on to another, unrelated venture with new investors’ money. If they did, they would rightly be called con-men. Trump would.

Every town has a Trump but they generally get run out of towns and move to another one. What they do is legal but it borders on fraud. They are promoters rather than business people and the pastors, Rotarians, and chambers of commerce make them for what they are. Trump does this on such a large scale that he embarrasses most people for thinking with a middle-class morality. He’s a winner and we are all losers. He has more money than we do so it must be true (so goes the flawed thinking).

Ask yourself if you would invest with The local Trump in your town. You most likely wouldn’t.

Trump is the Walter Mitty fantasy of every middle-aged, decent, family man. Ruthlessly pursue irresponsible business projects and pay yourself first, chase younger women rather than build a life with a good one, take no responsibility for failure, never show weakness, self-promote to the point that you are a celebrity in every restaurant and golf course in your town. You will win so much that you’ll be tired of winning.

The 2016 election slogan is like a mantra from an internet self-improvement huckster; #MakeYouGreatAgain because you deserve it.

That scares me.