The Trump crowds were impressive. Thousands of pot-clanging, cheering, jubilant, enthusiastic fans. 'Four more years, four more years' they shouted, throwing their hats in the air, embracing, raising their fists in defiance, solidarity, and support.
The Biden crowds were spare, supportive, but not enthusiastic, responsive at the right places - 'economy, democracy, fidelity', the President insisted; and the jumbotron behind him shouted in large, red-white-and-blue shimmering and shaking letters APPLAUSE!!!
It was hard to be enthusiastic about the man and his message - both tepid and shopworn, predictable and safe. Mumbo-jumbo mumbled and gargled about 'our great brown and black country', 'our diverse nation' and other verses from the hymnal about compassion, love, and neighborliness. The President was Mr. Rogers in the beginning, Jimmy Carter in the middle, and a marionette doing a St Vitus' dance and talking in tongues at the end.
Meanwhile 'Onward, Christian Soldiers' thundered over the crowds in Minneapolis as the former President spoke in rhythm with the band. He stood tall, head raised to the rafters, arms folded, loud and belligerent, and shouted 'Make America Great Again', and the crowds went wild. It was a rock concert, Rolling Stones at Altamont, Iron Maiden, Curt Cobain, and Alice Cooper all rolled up into one. It was pure theatre, a Sturm und Drang, sound and light extravaganza; a prairie revival, a ready-for-Jesus big top.
American political campaigns have never been temperate tea-and-crumpets reasonable affairs. They have always been raucous barn-burners, howling, stomping, drum-beating exorcisms. Joe Biden can only croak out a few scripted lines, thump the podium against the beat and hector like Uncle Harry. The man has no tune in his head, no toe-tapping rhythms to fall back on, just an up-and-down monotone while waiting for the crowd to add some pep.
'Mussolini' wrote the New York Times political campaign correspondent covering the Trump bandwagon. 'Hitler at a torchlight rally...Brown Shirts, Gestapo, SS, stormtroopers...', he wrote, hoping to fire up some enthusiasm for the paper's own man, the current President, the good man of rectitude, progressivism, and charity; but the more he fired off zingers from the field, the more readers became tired of his hysteria and breast-beating.
No matter how the Times spun it, January 6th was no insurrection, but a band of Idaho Panhandle crazies dressed in Viking helmets and fright wigs, wasted on meth, bored to shit in the badlands and needing the upper of a good gang-bang. The 'From Our Own Correspondent' dispatches drifted into little more than self-serving screeds.
And so it went from state to state, county fair to firehouse, from football field to Kingdom Halls - Trump supporters by the thousands, whooping and hollering, cheering for their man.
How could this be? the reporter, his editors, and the whole Eastern Liberal Establishment asked themselves. A man in the dock for treason, bribery, insurrection, manipulation, and fraud getting this attention? Did the crowds not see who they were supporting? That a traitor to democracy, a dictator-in-waiting, an evil fascist was within a few votes of the Presidency of the United States?
Every witch trial, every attempted burning at the stake, every legal trickery to bankrupt the man simply fired up his faithful. Each courtroom appearance was fuel for the fire; and Trump, master showman and political whiz that he is, made every minute showtime. When he was finished, the prosecutors, judges, and high-level politicians of New York, Georgia, and beyond were pilloried, laughed at, and dismissed. Trump was untamed, uncontrite, unrepentant, and defiant; and the more he attacked his attackers, the more money poured into his campaign coffers.
'Can A Jailbird Be President?' read the above-the-fold headline in the Times; and the following article listed the reasons why he couldn't be - or rather shouldn't be - for if there were any teeth in the judicial proceedings, he would already be behind bars. 'A sullied American image', said the Washington Post, ashamed for its readers around the world that American democracy could be threatened in such an uncomely, unseemly matter. It was one thing to have a serious counter-revolutionary movement in one's country, but another thing entirely to have it led by a buffoon.
Trump supporters were not, as presumed by the American Left, to be a bunch of baboons, but savvy voters who heard what the former President said, but paid no attention to how he said it. His attacks on Biden policies on border security, transgenderism, police decommissioning, taxation and trillion dollar spending, racial divisionism were not temperate, conditional pronouncements. They were ad hominem and ridiculing. In the face of such deliberate emasculation of America, only amped, punishing rhetoric would do. Would Trump do all the things he proposed? Of course not; and that was understood by the loving crowds who cheered him on.
Biden had no policy platform to speak of, and his entire campaign was simply one of fear-mongering. None of his so-called policies made sense - he had no border rationale nor any coherent strategy for Ukraine. He waffled on support for America's one and only world ally, Israel. He spent like a drunken sailor on sure-to-be corrupt infrastructure projects, failed and discredited social 'reforms', energy initiatives that both threatened America's fuel security and enforced shaky notions of environmental protection, and persistent affirmative action efforts that were, to the revulsion of most Americans, racist and anti-democratic.
It is only April and the election is not until November; but the Trump cavalcade marches on - despite the punitive bonds, flimsy accusations, and deflections. No one cares about hush money (of course he paid off the bitch), insurrection (a bad of crackers, backwoods creeps, and hog-tiers), or political meddling (dirty politics as always played in America). Most of the country has no interest in a Biden progressive Utopia - a pipe dream of political imbecility - and happily supports their man.
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