In Barry Levinson’s classic comedy Diner, a pair of working-class Baltimore boys find themselves cruising the back roads of Maryland horse country during the early morning hours after a night out on the town. They spot a pert young woman, in full riding regalia, atop a horse loping across a green expanse.
Pondering this pastoral scene, one of the carousers turns to the other and asks, “Do you ever get the feeling that there’s something going on that we don’t know about?”
That’s a question I have posed frequently to myself over the past few months as the country closes in on the Nov. 5 presidential election. Regardless of the outcome, it’s a sure bet that upwards of 70 million people will vote to send to the White House an adjudicated rapist burdened by 34 felony convictions, who lies as frequently as most folks draw breath, and spent 12 minutes during a recent rally in Latrobe, PA, talking about a dead golfer and his … well … his package, if you know what I mean.
This candidate, let’s call him Donny, has vowed to unleash the Justice Department on his political enemies should his campaign prove successful. He has expressed a desire to sic the military on the “enemy from within,” aka those members of the American public with the temerity to disagree with him. He engages in frequent racist and bigoted taunts.
What’s more, Donny, at age 78, appears addled at times, taking the stage at a recent rally where, instead of discussing his plans for the future, he spent a half hour gyrating to tunes as if he were attending a dance party, pumping his arms, and lifting his feet a full quarter inch off the floor in one of the most embarrassing images of a public figure ever recorded.
Many of his proposals are patently absurd, including raising tariffs in a manner that could lead to economic collapse and engaging in a wholesale expulsion of undocumented immigrants that would cost billions of dollars and create chaos in the commercial markets.
Donny is a bully, a cheater, and a liar who engages in vulgar rants and speaks highly of Hitler because he had good generals at his disposal.
And there are tens of millions of Americans who think he’s the greatest thing since canned beer, who are not only willing to go to jail for him — consider those who engaged in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol that he instigated — but in some extreme cases expressing a willingness to die for him. That he isn’t just as good as Lincoln, he’s better.
So, obviously, there’s something going on that I don’t know about – how so many voters, during reasonable economic times, with a lower-than-average unemployment rate, can enthusiastically support a mad man, one Donald John Trump, to serve as president of these United States.
I haven’t a clue.
This is Trump’s third bid for the White House, grabbing the flag in 2016 but losing his re-election bid in 2020, although to this day he screeches that the prize was stolen from him in a “rigged” election, one where he sought to overturn the results, leading to at least one violent, infamous clash.
Regardless, as a result of his two previous campaigns, Trump has attracted more total votes for president – 137,208,803 – than anyone in the nation’s history, and he will only add to it on Nov. 5.
Trump is overwhelmingly popular in Kentucky and may well set a record in the Commonwealth. Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and Richard Nixon in 1972 collected greater vote percentages than the 62.52 percent Trump attained in 2016. Before that, you have to go back to the Civil War era when Democrat George McClelland ran up 69.8 percent of the vote against Lincoln, son of the native soil, in 1864. In 1868, Democrat Horacio Seymour received 74.5 percent of the vote against eventual winner U.S, Grant.
Trump’s total 2,529,617 votes is unparalleled in Kentucky’s presidential election history.
I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out the Cult of Trump and I don’t believe I’m any closer to reaching an understanding than I was when I started out. If nothing else, it’s clear that the attribute once known as “character” has little place on the American political scene nowadays. Trump has established he can act abominably, speak brutishly, spew profanity like a longshoreman, and run the racism, bigotry, and misogyny world without end and face few, if any, consequences.
Those dismissive of propriety as a necessary feature in a president cite the nation’s experience with former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat who disregarded his marriage vows on occasion,
But no president has ever jumped up-and-down and stomped on the concept of common decency to Trump’s degree. Remember his tryst with adult film star Stormy Daniels while his wife was at home tending to a newborn? Or his “grab ‘em by the” nether regions in discussing his general approach to women? And, of course, there was the rape.
One might expect a certain degree of decorum from the president of the United States. Apparently, to millions of Americans, that’s not the case.
A substantial number of religiously oriented folks, particularly those who embrace Christian Nationalism, have embraced Trump, who promotes himself as some sort of savior, although a savior from what is unclear since Christianity isn’t under any attack in this increasingly secular nation.
It’s hard to imagine a presidential candidate who is less religious than Donald J. Trump. The last time he was in a church may have been during one of his three marriages. But some who advocate stronger links to religion in public life view him is a modern incarnation of Constantine the Great, the pagan emperor of the Roman Empire in the early 300s who decriminalized Christianity and halted the persecution of believers.
Chances are Constantine, who eventually converted to Christianity, wasn’t the same sort of grifter as Trump, who is playing these religious folks for a bunch of saps. But the more irreligious Trump acts, the more hosannahs are thrown his way.
There are, of course, a lot of life-long Republicans who can’t get out of the habit of pulling the GOP lever on Election Day, folks like Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, of Louisville, who told Michael Tackett, the Associated Press journalist penning his biography, that Trump is “stupid,” a “sleezeball” and that he has “done a lot of damage to our party’s image and our ability to compete.”
Some recommendation.
But it seems that much of his support is coming from folks, mainly White males, who follow the maxim “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” They pledge allegiance to the flag of Trump because he is the most vociferous in hating the people they hate. It’s basically a concerted effort to, as they say, “own the libs.”
These folks realize Trump is lying when he says immigrants from Haiti are eating people’s dogs and cats, that immigrant criminal elements are overtaking large swaths of American cities, and that parents are sending their boys to school in the morning and they’re returning home as girls at night just to ridicule trans kids.
Nobody is stupid enough to believe any of that, well, except for maybe Jamie Comer. But they’re willing to go along with the gag to promote the big picture – the persecution of brown people who have crossed the border, the libel of Blacks who they perceive have engaged in unspeakable crimes, and the isolation of trans folks.
They dismiss the rape and criminal convictions as getting in the way of the real goal – power over folks they despise.
They want Trump to deploy the Justice Department against his opponents because those foes are their opponents too. Send in the military to clean things up. Stop support for Ukraine because they want nothing to do with foreign affairs.
It’s a message about what they hate. And it’s about unwarranted grievance.
How the nation has reached this stage, I have no idea.
What I do know is the presidential election will serve as a referendum on American exceptionalism. That whole idea may be put to bed soon.
--30--
Written by Bill Straub, a member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame. Cross-posted from the NKY Tribune.
Comments
