Donald Trump’s Great Big Bombastic Circus Act–Why Is The Left So Afraid?

He’s back! He’s never gone away.  

At the recent (May 2023) CNN Republican Town Hall Donald Trump was the old ringleader of The Greatest Show On Earth - a one-man Barnum & Bailey three ring extravaganza, side show, lion-taming, death-defying trapeze and high-wire act.  Donald Trump was the outrageous American president that the country always needed.  

No more of the quiet, religious, sanctimony of Jimmy Carter.  No more of the ‘I am the first black President, Cabinet that looks like America’ crown of thorns Bill Clinton, and especially no bumbling, tottering, deer-in-the-headlights Joe Biden. 

Donald Trump was finally America’s President, the real thing – lowbrow, arm candy, Las Vegas, Hollywood, NY real estate bully, and one of us.  No fireside chats, warm, worn sweaters, cigarette boat, Vineyard sailing pretentions.  Trump was crass, tinseled, over-the-top and grandiose.  He wanted nothing to do with the Washington Establishment, the powers that be, and least of all with progressive sanctimony and comic book Utopianism.

He has always been a man of the people – not like the humbly born and raised Truman, Nixon, or Reagan, but of the reality TV generation, the generation of make up, Botox, stiletto heels, and Las Vegas faux glamour and sexual innuendo. He was a hero to the trailer trash, gun-toting, church-on-Sunday, flag-waving, patriotic crowd which had no chance for his yachts, resorts, and beautiful women but who never resented the fact that he had them.  

Wanting these glitzy, showy, fancy things is at the very heart of the American dream.  Donald Trump has unapologetically  tapped into this back country, hillbilly, cracker mentality, and his constituents love it

He laughs at progressive sanctimony, gender politics, inclusivity, and multicultural absurdity,  He has no problem with the originalist idea of a heterogeneous society, but excoriates the absurdity of the Left’s exaggerations – a gay, transgender, black, feminist America.  He lambastes progressives for their naïve, moralistic assumptions, their disregard and dismissal of righteous middle Americans, and their vain hopes of Utopianism.  He is not a man of deep religious faith, but never one to gutterize it like the Left.  God or no God, religion will always have a prominence and essentiality far beyond political venality

Donald Trump is a snake oil salesman, a carny barker, and vaudevillian.  No one but the progressive Left takes him seriously.  He is a master prestidigitator, a circus clown, and the ringleader of a three-ring circus.  He is a borscht belt comedian, a late night talk show provocateur, and a TV jolly. 

So why is the Left so afraid of him? For four years while President they slammed him, branding him a racist, misogynist, homophobe; a man living in the gutter, a dumpster-diver, a rat, an insidious, dangerous bottom-feeder; and now they are at it again

He is more than a shibboleth, an incarnation of jackbooted Nazi storm troopers, or axe-handle wielding Bull Connor Southern thugs.  He is an evil visitation, a demon, the Devil himself.  If re-elected it will be the Second Coming from hell, the blackest, most dire, fearsome day of history.

Why?  Everyone but the Left sees Trump for the braggart that he is – pompous, arrogant, defiant, intolerant, and sure.   Of course he was a man who loved women and could have had them all, all glitz and mansions and yachts and money galore.  Of course he was a street fighter, a knife fighter, a brawler who took no prisoners and left them lying bleeding in the gutter. His book was not The Good Book.

His lessons were not those of love, charity, and compassion but the real lessons of Hammurabi, Watson, and Crick; lessons from the tangle of human DNA which has been  responsible for the perennial, frequent, predictable wars since the first human settlements.

His supporters do not take afternoon tea in Rittenhouse Square, Beacon Hill, or Park Avenue.  They are a raucous, unwashed lot who come out in fright wigs and Viking horns to rattle the cages of the Misses Grottlesex and the Harper Davenport IVs. 

As much as progressives hate to admit it, these rowdies are much more American than the fey of Short Hills.  Dangerous insurrectionists?  Coups require planning, strategy, sleeper cells, underground communication, a chain of command, discipline, rigor, and timeliness.  The mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6th were just a hairy, unruly, frenzied mob of teddy boys, soccer thugs, and bullies.  A Trump revolutionary guard like Paul Revere and the Minutemen?

Despite the Left’s persistent attempts to discredit, disparage, and dismiss the former President, nothing sticks because there is nothing there.  The civil suit against him for sexual assault of a journalist was a set up job, a ‘whack job’ by an old woman who after more than thirty years cannot get over an imagined episode with whom a national magazine had called ‘America’s sexiest man’.

After hounding him for years for his tax filings, the Democratic Congress won the right to look at them and found nothing.  The suit brought by the New York District attorney Letitia James for alleged illegal business practices and the hush money case brought by the New York City District Attorney have gone nowhere  

Of course Trump, former mad dog of the mean streets of New York, played fast and loose in real estate; and of course he paid off his trailer trash hooker.  Who wouldn’t, why is that surprising, and what does that say about the President other than he did what any powerful man would do – relevant perhaps to his wife, but not to the country?

Of course Trumpists disregard the ‘truth’, ‘objective’ reality, and the considerations of pundits and academics; but what is not appreciated or understood is the cultural expression of populism – the embrace of Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, and the Kardashians.  Americans have never believed or trusted NPR, MSNBC, the New York Times, or the Washington Post; and have preferred their news live, viral, hot, and subjective. A dismissal of cant, evasion, nicety, and prevarication.  

Trump supporters like his stance on Iran, North Korea, ISIS, Islamic terrorism, and the regimes which support and sponsor both.  They consider Black Live Matter attacks on the police untoward, the cries for inclusiveness and diversity exaggerated and divisive, and the insistence on 'choice' and limiting religious expression wrong and immoral.  They are not timid in expressing their convictions and want to see a President who is no different.

Beneath the braggadocio, Trump endorses sound conservative values.  Don’t listen to what he says, supporters say, but what he means. They are today’s deconstructionists who can disassemble, disaggregate, and parse the former President’s words and understand his policies.  Small government, limited regulation, low taxes, America-first, Machiavellian policies, conservative social values, strong border, energy independence…and much more.  Vote for Trump and you will get a clown but beneath the grease paint and red nose you will get a committed conservative.

If the Left were not so afraid of Trump they would just let him be and drift into obscurity.  Focus on their own agenda and national vision.  Because they are terrified of him, they have to out dirty trick Richard Nixon.  Anything goes when it comes to a moral reprobate.  Nothing doing.  Trump is back with a vengeance and not to be denied.