Let's be frank, Donald Trump is just another average Republican voter who happens to have property and wealth. He is ignorant, lazy, incurious, immature, paranoid and gullible, and thinks he is the most important thing in the universe. I don't know about you but I have met hundreds of these guys in my travels, combining the worst aspects of white supremacists with ignorant and superstitious peasants. They are quick to anger, irrational in action, and capable of believing anything as long as it confirms their biases. Trump was able to play King Dick among the bullies, beating down all challengers who tried straddling service to the economic elite with pandering to those same peasants by simply being who he is. He is one of them and that is why the peasants found him so attractive, therefore it is no wonder that Trump was the last one standing. But just as when rural folk come to the big city, now that Trump is in the general election it was inevitable that his bluster and hard-ass act would falter.
It only takes one trip to the big city for Joe Sixpack to realize that he is insignificant and the tough guy act does not work. An average redneck (just synonyms for peasant) may experience doubt and shame, then realize that he needs to tone it down and learn how things really work. Not Trump, first of all he was in the big city all of his life and has never butted up against reality. Never got his ass kicked figuratively or literally, never had to serve in the military (which also makes you a little fish in a big pond of other tough guys), or sacrifice anything. If a country boy tries to keep up the act in the big city the chances he gets killed, injured, or humiliated are pretty high. Now that Trump is not comfortably bullying everyone around him, he is experiencing doubts about his own power. Instead of shutting up and sitting down though, he is doubling down on the bullying and it has finally jumped the shark.
Which came first, calling on an even bigger bully to do the dirty work for him (Russian and her president/dictator Vladimir Putin), mocking and attacking Gold Star Parents, throwing a baby out of his rally, or claiming that the election is already rigged? It doesn't really matter, they are all symptoms of his recognition of limits to his power. In each instance, he or a surrogate did not admit a mistake or even just let the backfire go, they doubled down. You can read the work of psychologists that have written how everything Trump does is a dominance exercise, but anyone who has seen a bully work knows it when they see it. It drives him berserk when someone refuses to be scared, it will expose him as a fraud. Trump tried to be a bully with the Washington Post when he pulled their access, hoping the newspaper would roll over and beg for forgiveness but something interesting happened when they didn't. The Washington Post has simply kept writing about Trump unencumbered by the need to bend the knee or suck up to He, Trump. Consequently the Post's reporting on the race has become less sycophantic and that is a good thing.
Trump beat the other Republican contenders by threatening to blow their game. The Republican voters just want to beat on the poor, nonwhite, non-Christian, and non-conservative Americans. They want a bully who will do that, not cut taxes on the rich and make it easier for their boss to ship their jobs overseas. Which is what Republicans do, that is their nature, they just use the peasants to get into power. Trump dispensed with all the free market mythology, made his platform undisguised herrenvolk democracy, and was rewarded with the undying loyalty of every small town bully in America. Within the alienated, atomized bubble these bullies live in, anything is possible.
Luckily, outside that bubble people are starting to realize what a dope Trump really is. Beyond the hard core of bullies for Trump, enough people are questioning whether He, Trump really has their interests at heart or is just another con man trying to swindle them. To those of us paying attention it has always been an act performed by a reality TV star, the big lie confidence scam. But within that bubble the peasants eat up every word and believe that He, Trump will really kick ass on undocumented immigrants and ban Muslims, treat BLM like a terrorist group and bring their jobs back from China. The rest of us see a peasant, a rich one for sure, but still an incompetent buffoon. However dangerous his followers may be if organized, they will grow fewer in number with each passing day because peasants are not famous for their longevity.
We are likely to go through this ritual every four years now. There is simply not enough of a constituency for what the GOP is selling on the national stage and it will be increasingly hard to disguise the free market fundamentalism with wedge issues. It is also highly unlikely that, now that the bully lobby has had a taste of what fascism can do for them, the peasants will settle for lip service on their white supremacist issues from the likes of Scott Walker or Ted Cruz. The danger is that the next demagogue won't be as much of a peasant at Trump, or will be able to hire smart people to disguise it better.
In any case, Hillary Clinton and Democrats down the ticket have to run up the score. We need to turn out as many people to vote against Republicans as possible. Only by overwhelmingly defeating the small town bully peasants can we ever hope to make them get tired of politics to the point that they will only attack those few victims near them and leave us alone to fix their mess.
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