What puzzles me is why anyone would follow a creep like Donald Trump. What’s the attraction? We’re now seeing everything that makes and made him a creep and people–ordinary citizens and state and federal legislators–continuing to like him and give him power over the Republican Party. And there is every indication that many of his endorsed candidates will win in ’22 and that he may even regain the presidency in ’24.
Upon reflection, a few things come to mind. For one, his followers care little about the concept of democracy. It’s far from the reality of their lives which are essentially self and possibly family centered. As long as their pocketbooks are intact and in order they barely know what democracy is or how it relates to their lives. Leaders haven’t done a particularly good job in selling democracy and showing people why its maintenance is important to their lives. The crowd most representative of this are the white supremacist rioters who breached the walls of the Capitol on Jan. 6. And many of Trump’s supporters, including legislators, still consider those traitors as patriots, essentially defenders of Donald Trump’s lies and manipulations to put more money in his pocket. Simply put they are cult members who would support Trump regardless of anything he says or does. Anything.
Like Trump,they are self serving, caring little for the poor, the disabled, immigrants, the homeless, minorities, those of different religions, and those of more liberal politics. Trump plays on these differences expertly at his rallies and on his tweets and statements. He knows the pulse of his people well, tests it often, and knows how to quicken that pulse at will. He would have made a great traveling snake oil salesman in the 19th century. I could see him as a wealthy Southern plantation owner convincing poor Southern white boys to fight to the death for the slavery that kept that wealth intact. His followers, whether Proud Boys or Good Ole Boys also have something of that slaveowner in their psyche.
There is too the use of a tactic that is particularly scurrilous associated with Trump lovers: the death threat against anyone who opposes their leader in any way. In any way. Trump encouraged harm come to Mike Pence if he didn’t do as he commanded, and the Proud Boys conceded that they would have murdered Pence on Jan. 6 if they’d been able to capture him–a planned act that was inspired by Trump, according to his loyal legions. But usually Trump just needs to stay silent about death threats to condone them via omission and not commission. I’ve never heard or read him, or any of his immediate family, discouraging his followers issuing death threats against his opponents and/or their families. It’s a tactic the Mafia, the KKK, Hitler, Stalin, and Vladimir Putin have used quite effectively over the years.
Is that the kind of country we want: run by a Mafia boss like Donald Trump? Can we not stop this creep from ruining our country? I ask that question of Trump’s followers, his Republican Party allies, and Attorney General Merrick Garland. And I write this post to sound the alarm so Democrats will awaken to the continued ever-growing threat of Trump-infused influence on every aspect of our government from election officials who have the power to change the results of a democratically held election to a president who can and will inject fascism into our government previously “of the people, for the people, and by the people.”
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