Really? In 2016. How can this racist, bigoted, sexist misogynist rise to be the official presidential nominee for one of our two national political parties? And how the hell did he do it by being… racist, bigoted, sexist, misogynistic, and everything else? How did he get a majority of the vote in the Republican primary? Sure, the other GOP candidates sucked but come on. It’s not like Trump had a well-oiled, efficient, and competent campaign.
I’ve used various anecdotal information in the past to note the number of dead-enders in the Republican Party. These voters are the ones who will vote for the Republican nominee no matter what shape or form that person takes. They are the ones who provide that 30% polling or voting bloc that just seems to hang with a Republican candidate no matter what scandals befall them. And they are the heartiest of voters, expressing their views in votes whenever they get a chance. We should be so lucky with that kind of consistency.
The rise of Donald Trump has surprised me and it’s made me realize a few things that I just refused to come to terms with until now. I didn’t want to admit that at least one third of our electorate (not necessarily our total population, but our voting public) is racist or sexist or intolerant — however you want to describe it. There’s no other policy reason for supporting Trump. It’s pretty depressing actually. We fancy that our nation is advanced, and we are in terms of every metric out there. But in terms of social progress, it’s not that we’re behind but we haven’t made as much progress as our science and technological prowess would imply.
I had this infantile misconception that the rise to power of authoritarians like Hitler or Mussolini or Stalin or Tojo was a phenomenon confined to other continents. They were elements of special conditions that were only possible outside of America. But it looks like it’s very possible to replicate those conditions here. And if it’s possible here, it’s possible (again) anywhere in the world.
Maybe Trump is only playing a part and he doesn’t really believe what he’s saying. But that’s rather irrelevant, isn’t it? Because his most ardent supporters believe what Trump is peddling, which means they want the vision that Trump is bringing with his campaign. I’m sure many of the citizens of Germany, Italy, the Soviet Union, and Japan were also in disbelief that an authoritarian ruler could rise in their countries in the post-War World I period; and in greater disbelief that anyone would look to outdo the enormous destruction of World War I by fighting another world war.
With the rise of Donald Trump, I think it’s time we suspend our disbelief that these things cannot happen in the United States. President Obama is fond of saying that there are more things that unite us than divide us, and I think that’s very true. But many of those factors are taken for granted by this dead-ender 30% of the voting public and honestly I doubt they care about unity as long as they get their own way. I would have thought that the Ted Cruz contingent of the Republican Party would account for such nihilism but it appears that Trump has truly tapped into the basest parts of our national make-up and what has appeared out of the shadows is disturbing and destructive.
It must be stamped out with a peaceful electoral walloping of epic proportions by our first major party female candidate, to follow up on the dual electoral pastings that these voters have had at the hands of our first African American President. At any rate, there’s no way to put this genie back in the bottle. These elements of our country must be dealt with using the full weight of our government… by extending social programs into every part of the country that can lift people out of poverty and show them that there is a different way to progress in this country than just hating on different people. Our populace needs to be fully educated and not left to the idiocy of voucher schools or private schools outside of the reach of our educational standards and practices. We don’t need any more separate but equal crap in this country. It will take generations for these racists to die off, especially if they’re making use of our health care system (forever extending the life expectancy of kind and gentle people or sexists bastards alike, and rightfully so) but at some point that dead-ender percentage will fall to 20% and then to 10% and hopefully go lower still. I hope I’m alive to see the day.