Trump Nation
I saw the newest cover of The New Yorker and it shows the seated picture of the Supreme Court with Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagen, Ketanji Brown Jackson and then six identical scowling Donald Trumps. The cover article is titled “The Face of Justice” and even without reading the article, I pretty much know what it will say. Now I want to ponder the why of all of this. I have been quite outspoken about the fact that Donald J. Trump does not have the sort of accomplished career and life to warrant adoration that he has and is getting. If this picture had Elon Musk’s face on it or Bill Gates’ face, I still would not like the implication, but at least I would understand it a bit more. America is supposed to be an extreme meritocracy, where the people who move into the Pantheon of history more or less deserve their center-stage positioning. No one really likes kings and bending rules and conventions to suit any individual mortal always feels at least a little bit wrong, but we allow for it on the understanding that even our egalitarian ways can allow for the exception of certain people who seem special enough to stand out. Elon is despised by some for his approach to free speech and Twitter, but generally, even those of us who grimace at his name have to acknowledge his brilliance in building Tesla and now SpaceX while charting the waters of tunneling (The Boring Co.) and AI (Neuralink) and God-knows whatever else is on his mind. Bill Gates focused on Microsoft and defined first an entire generation (alongside Steve Jobs) and then the noble concept of Die Broke Philanthropy. These are men who have earned their place in history.
But regardless of how you feel about the MAGA movement and conservative politics, it is very hard to deny the facts of Donald Trump’s life. He was an unaccomplished and troubled student (not necessarily so unique among great men) who went off to military school, got into a second-rate college, got advanced to a much better college with the help of his father’s donation, did not excel to the point of trying to shield evidence of his college grades, learned the worst of his father’s landlord traits (including discriminatory practices) that made him a major slumlord, took a bunch of dad’s money and made a play to become a higher profile developer in Manhattan (the sort of move the elder Trump knew instinctively to avoid), took on a big and controversial profile with glitz and glamor on the one hand and down and dirty racism on the other, expanded his territory to include a play on the slipperiest slope in real estate, Atlantic City casino real estate, came crashing to earth through excess and landed in bankruptcy, stripped his father’s estate by hijacking the inheritance of his siblings, began trying to parlay his “brand” in every direction imaginable with little or no success (and more bankruptcies) and plenty of continued controversy, got cast as an early reality TV star like Ozzy Osborne, more for his weird quirkiness than his accomplished history, became an outspoken political gadfly that was a caricature of a flashy businessman who liked dabbling in politics mostly for the headlines and no real serious ideological conviction (hence the shift from Democratic to Republican), and then ran for president almost as a public relations joke only to find that he had tapped into a hidden vein of disgruntlement amongst the most outcast and violent of our society. Now that I can stop the longest run-on sentence of my life, I will add that like with his TV show, flair and outrageousness were galvanizing to those who shared his inability to have meaningful accomplishments. And that is when the tactics of the undeserving kicked in. Fear and violence were the weapons to turn foes into friends. The lack of ethical fabric and ideological commitment made it easy to forgive and forget to win people over because they could be cast off with prejudice as easily as they were embraced. And that happened over and over and happens to this very moment. The pattern of no holds barred and no stain allowed to mar his brand is now a well established pattern and is assumed to be eternal.
Do not think that Trump has not had setbacks. His life is actually a series of setbacks far greater than most people ever encounter. His superpower seems to be his ability to ignore these setbacks and sometimes turn them into assets for his ongoing story. He doesn’t walk on water, but he does walk through mud puddles and yet we never notice his dirtied cuffs. In fact, part of his superpower armor is that he is always right and always the victim of the exact injustice that we all thought over and over again would be his comeuppance. But we need to get back to why this is happening. What makes such a man with such a track record appealing to so many? And what used to be the rank and file “deplorables” of Hillary Clinton’s 2016, have gradually and steadily turned into the broadest imaginable array of otherwise “normal” people who have decided that hitching themselves to his wagon is their salvation. I choose these words carefully, because unlike the Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Tim Scott, Steve Bannon, J.D. Vance opportunism, I see a more troubling breed of supporter that actually feels that Trump represents a form of salvation for their future that liberal democracy as we have known it, can no longer provide. Those who never had faith and those who aren’t looking for faith but want a free ride are much less troubling than those who are looking for something or someone to believe in and feel that Trump may offer them that missing ingredient for their lives.
In the language of pollsters, I think of those first two groups as comprising 30% of the electorate, give or take a few points. Its sad that such a large number of people live in that place, but history tells us that they have always been there, but they have been more invisible than they are now in the era of the smartphone and social media. But the real shame is the people who should know better and probably, in their heart of hearts, do know better, but are getting swept up into this latest Battle Royale. They are the not so innocent bystanders. In fact, they are becoming the enablers because they are the swing voters who will decide this epic race for the eternal soul of America. I know some find it melodramatic to think in such deep and permanent ways, but that’s what happens at tipping points and this certainly qualifies as a tipping point in our cultural history. The last time we had people threatening to leave the country over their disappointment in its direction was during the Vietnam War fifty years ago, and before that a century before. We are there again, not that a migratory trend is imminent, but that a deeply troubled national psyche is all too evident. When families come to blows, the concern over the rift is very real.
We need to find the clarity of expression to show those crucial swing voters that Trump is a false prophet, a golden idol that does not stand for the values they hold most dear, but quite the opposite. I hope my friends who believe more Americans are alike than different are right. Because if those similarities can be tuned into the reality that so starkly comes through on that cover of The New Yorker, none of them will choose to place that undeserving image on the pedestal of immortality, but will rather banish it to the obscurity it will certainly eventually attain once this national confusion clears.