Trump Imperator - Progressives' Inchoate Fear And Misunderstanding Of America

The Left is simply befuddled by Donald Trump.  After almost ten years of seeing this bombastic interloper, this untamable, irresistible one-man three-ring circus; Borscht Belt tummler, oversized caricature of the lowest-brow impulses of America, they do not get it.  Trump is America. 

No one in the Establishment wants to admit that we are really like this, that there could be tens of millions of Americans who dream of Trump's yachts, mansions, resorts, and arm candy and want them, in fact desire them without hesitation, with no reservations, no reflection. 

Although Donald Trump appeals to the Republican conservatism of Middle America - an America that still has religion as its foundation, a belief in family, work, individualism, and enterprise - he appeals as much to their resentment of liberal arrogance.  

For four years they have been hectored, hammered, and badgered about imagined white supremacy, sexual variation, climate apocalypse, diversity and inclusion until they are sick and tired of being the whipping boys, political outcasts, and cast as dumb backwoods crackers.

Donald Trump, man of Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the mean streets of New York has never wanted any part of progressive cant, faux rectitude, or pseudo-intellectual arrogance. He knows that America's business is a dirty one, and that wealth, recognition, and power come only with deals made with the Devil.  

Capitalism is a nasty business, and lies, trickery, exaggeration, and misinformation are the stock in trade of hustlers, con men, entrepreneurs, Hollywood moguls, and real estate kings,  To pretend otherwise is transparent - a convenient truth, a shadow play, a fiction.  

Progressives demand 'integrity'! when this has always been conditional, subject to codicils and caveats. Martin Luther King, hero and saint; and John F Kennedy, golden boy, were serial adulterers, Lotharios, insatiably hungry men. Kennedy's father, scion and patriarch of the family was a high-class bootlegger, Nazi sympathizer, and Irish thug who got his son elected.

Gates, Jobs, Bezos, and Buffett did not get where they are by making nice.  The business of America is business, said Engine Charlie Wilson, and he got it almost right, for the business of America is dirty business.

Politics, the more visible component of the American machine, is no better and seemingly far worse.  The lies, syndicated misrepresentations, and downright bald-faced chicanery are par for the course.  Every President has had his moments, and Congress has been a sinkhole of venality and personalized greed for two centuries. 

Municipal governments have been bottom feeders and corruption has been a way of life. Former DC Mayor Marion Barry was the epitome of political misrule. His tenure was one of walkin' around money, no show jobs, and raw political patronage not seen since Chicago mayors made ward politics a masterful shell game and collusion with gangsters, mafiosi, and gunrunners de rigueur. 

 

Integrity? What integrity?

The Left agrees that America hasn't been exactly perfect and not the world's model democracy it has purported to be; but progressivism will do the trick.  Give us a chance, say progressives, and we will make things right.

Americans do not want the the culture of Camelot, Rittenhouse Square, or Beacon Hill.  No Pablo Casals or Robert Frost.  No Sartre, Kierkegaard, or Kant.  No interminably boring music of Brahms or Schubert. We are a nation of pop culture, low-brow humor, rhinestones, glitz, runway glamour, showy women, and loud music. 

Trump has just won the Iowa caucuses (1/24), the first step to the Republican nomination.  Not only did he win but garnered over 50 percent of the vote which was more than that of the other four candidates combined.  How can this be, lamented progressives? Although Nikki Haley is not a liberal, she is certainly a moderate Republican and would at least govern responsibly; and yet the voters of Iowa gave her a pittance.  Why?

More concerning to progressives is the fact that Trump has been indicted for numerous crimes and misdemeanors from tax fraud to treason; and yet his popularity in the United States is now higher than Biden's.  Do they not realize what a dangerous, destructive man their candidate is? 

Nothing of course is black and white, and proof of Trump's role or even complicity in the January 6th brouhaha is absent.  Whatever he did was not treasonous and the Supreme Court will soon rule in his favor.  The other court cases smack of political witch hunting and have been ignored and dismissed by most Americans.  'So sue me' is perhaps America's most heard meme, a sign of capitalist on-the-edge living; so Trump is unfazed by the legal assault and his benefactors unconcerned. 

Again, how can this duplicitous, dangerous, evil man get even one vote? cry the Left.  Because he is nothing of sort, Trumpists shout back. 

Perhaps the hardest thing for the Left to swallow is that the country has been ready for a Trump for a long time - a real American, like them low-brow, unintimidated, a man of the streets, a man of image, a cultural icon. He and the new president of Argentina, Javier Milei, and the former president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte are cut from the same cloth - confident of their resonance and appeal and bound and determined to set, hold, and promote a radically conservative agenda.  Showmen, tummlers, wild men with an agenda. 

Americans have for too long felt stifled by political correctness; and want the veil lifted.  They want to say what they think as they always had before the miasma of wokeness settled over the country. Any culturally revolutionary leader will ruffle feathers, and will anger and infuriate those who insist on holding on to old, faded, spare ways. 

So Trump will likely be elected again, both for his policies and for his outrageousness.  Americans are tired of pretentious moralizing and schoolmarmish lecturing.  Government was never envisaged this way by Jefferson and the Founding Fathers.  It was a facilitator at best, a defender, and a supporter but never an actor let alone such an intrusive, badgering one. 

'Government is not the solution', said Ronald Reagan. 'It is the problem' and under Joe Biden it has become a royal pain in the ass.