I wrote the following a year ago. I have not touched it since 31 January 2016. I publish it now because I want to cite it in a discussion. I did not publish it then, because I did not see it doing any good. Now I think I can afford the harm it may do me. To preserve the value of this offering, I have not changed a thing, except to review the spelling.
Apologia pro Trump
This is not a declaration of support, but rather an attempt to understand the incomprehensible. The intelligentsia has taken the nuanced view that Trump is a jerk, and his supporters are idiots. I propose to investigate if there is an explanation of this phenomenon that so many have completely misread again, and again, but now have satisfactorily deciphered, using the same tools that have failed them repeatedly.
Trump is infra dig; he is non-U. That is reason sufficient to hate him, for some. For others it is closer to reason to like him. It is interesting that he is well educated in elite schools, with apparent success, but he has not trimmed his sails to the fashion of the day, and that is a mortal sin. He grew his business into a large corporation, creating many jobs and . . .
Then he decided to run for President of the United States in a year when many voters are completely fed up with “Washington”, “the elites”. “the ruling class”, in short those they hold responsible for the condition of the country, and recent inability of voters to make their representatives listen. Conventional wisdom was: 1) that he was not serious, that he would make a splash to stroke his ego, and 2) that he would be “taken out” by serious candidates with experience in the political profession, such as Jeb Bush. As usual, conventional wisdom was correct.
One of the recognized powers of the president is the bully pulpit, named for another rich trouble maker from New York. Candidates vie for the opportunity to occupy the White House so that they can transmit their ideas and dreams to the American public. Trump clearly does not need the title, nor the apparatus, to get his message across. How he does so is not well understood, but clearly he can command the attention of the nation.
There are at least two competing views of a presidential election, and of the presidency that results therefrom: on the one hand, the commentators, pundits, anchors, news persons, political consultants, lobbyists, politicians, and all those who make up “Washington”, or as seen from the country: “they”, determine the salient issues, discuss them and subject the candidates to a competitive exam, where the right answers are not determined by reality, or the voters, but by the establishment, in aid of preserving its stranglehold on the seat of power. Trump has not answered the questions to their satisfaction, but the expected decline in his acceptability is still hanging fire. Trump has given them more opportunities than they would need to excommunicate him, and they have declared him unfit for office, but for some reason the world is turned upside down.
As a theatrical aside, the establishment seems to feel that the United States, as a general proposition is lacking in that it differs from “the rest of the developed world”, that we need to get right with people who really know how to run a country, the old country. It is worthy of note that when General Cornwallis surrendered, his band played “The World Turned Upside Down.”
On the other hand, while I do not know that he has ever articulated it (Trump is an unorthodox commander in that he does not understand the necessity of telling your opponent exactly what you are going to do, so that he can prepare his response) Trump has pursued a different vision. He clearly believes that it is the privilege, or job, of the candidate, and subsequently the President, to determine which issues are important, in consultation with the people, and communicate them. From the outset Trump declared that immigration was one of two most important issues facing this country: from his point of view, without a successful immigration policy, we do not have a country, and it seems pretty clear that the nation agreed. At the same time, he enacted without articulating it a belief that political correctness was a cancer that would destroy this country if not eradicated. Again large numbers of the votes agreed. It is worthy of note that many of the Washington crowd (including the national news organizations) complain about political correctness, but they insist that decorum requires that its dictates be respected nevertheless. Trump clearly concluded that to free the country of the yoke of intolerance it needed to be transgressed, and transgress he did. If you study his outrageous pronouncements, I think you will find that, while they are indeed outrageous, they are much less so than they seem not to say than they can be made to seem and have been so by his detractors, but because of his command of the communications channels, his supporters can see that he is being misquoted, and that what he actually says is often only a little over the line, an opening salvo to clear the air, and the way for a no-holds-barred discussion of the issue.