Just what is the underlying appeal?
- This guy is Santa, going to give ME everything I want.
- He’s all about White Privilege, and those Ns and LGBTQ will pay.
- He’s a big crook, but I’m part of his Cult, so I’LL come out ahead.
- He‘ll rip those liberals a new one, tear down authority, but I’ll be better off.
- Fascism? No problem when I’m one if his enforcers.
- He’s the Devil, but he’ll make Christianity the State Religion.
Do you want to know what Trump did to me? I’ll tell you anyway.
He’s shaken me to my core, because I did not realize the corrosive appeal this man had for millions of citizens ready to chuck everything thing the country is supposed to stand for If they think they personally will benefit from the catastrophe
Trump followers don't think they are a cult though. Some of his fans do believe that they are Americans who are simultaneously devalued and taken for granted. They may well see all the media coverage of "the others" --people who are finally getting their civil rights recognized-- as a mortal threat to their continued (and exclusive) definition of what it is to be "American." And there are always white supremacist groups around to whip that sentiment up, on the ground and in social media.
There's also a subset of Americans who have no real clue what the federal government does besides make you fill out a lot of paperwork to get a lousy $300 back on your income tax return, and tell you that you'll be fined if you spill a pint of oil on the ground while you're working on your truck. So there are people who like the idea of disrespecting the whole idea of a federal government. It's pitched to them like a burden they must shoulder and carry from the age of first job to the graveyard.
Trump picked up on that resentment, and pitched derailing the deep state. The deep state is actually people like the workers out at Hanford, who on this very night make sure that the crap in those leaky barrels of nuclear waste will not light up the whole northwest corner of the country --not tonight-- while their colleagues continue the decades-long struggle for a practical solution to that terrible problem.
Most of us never heard of those guys. Certainly they are underappreciated. In fact, they might be fans of Donald Trump, ironically enough. A lot of us are Walter Mitty types, ordinary people who daydream about a different life or who imagine living a more dramatic one, a more secure one, more fun, more money... and we don't daydream about making sure some barrel of radioactive sludge doesn't leak into your cousin's well water tonight, or connect with something that says "ah we have enough for a launch!"
In the USA we don't celebrate ordinary workers. We celebrate... yeah, celebrities.
Trump has filled the bill for some of us ordinary Americans, ones whose lives feel rather grey and circumscribed by barely adequate education, a so-so job with few or no bennies and stagnant wages, a possibly ramshackle house or a worse apartment, entertainment limited to eating out once in awhile and otherwise watching TV. Or maybe we have a nice house and pay all our bills and keep the yard nice but we haven't bought a new truck in 17 years. We are invisible except on sitcoms, where... we are the joke.
But then along comes a real star like Donald Trump, one who makes a point of being so over the top that he's actually like a TV show, but he's the real deal. He tells the whole planet to fuck off. The Walter Mitty Americans don't really expect much from him. They think he's very fine the way he has been. Entertaining, crude, politically incorrect, clever enough to juggle financial problems until time to hand them off and let lawyers pick up the mess, disdainful of restraints, seemingly free to stick it to pols and other heads of state alike and pay no price for it: he's the stuff of a Walter Mitty American's dream.
He didn't win in 2020 because the novelty wore off. Irresponsibility showed through the glitter. Laziness. The constant lying. The morphing from chutzpah to lawbreaking. The whining. Those start to wear on ordinary Americans in real life, because they don't get away with that and bottom line they don't like it. But there are still those Americans who remember the glory days of the rallies and flags and dreams of being somebody else. Somebody like Trump!
I share your feeling of being shaken to the core, because I realize there are other Trumps out there with more careful approaches to doing whatever the hell they want, erasing bits of the Constitution, scrabbling to the top past the eventual rubber stamps of courts and congress alike and sticking it to the USA when they get there. And there's a readymade set of followers too, as the appeal of Trump himself fades away.
