This is a full reprint of a piece I published on January 20, 2017, the day that Donald Trump took office. The original title was “Trump Is Attuned To The Zeitgeist of Darkness and Despair; That Is The America He Spoke To, Not Us.” You may remember hearing Trump’s American Carnage speech that day, which was addressed to his America, the people living in fear, resentment and rage, whose zeitgeist he captured when he ran for office — but not to all Americans. It’s a custom for newly inaugurated presidents to speak inclusively, to one and all, to bring the nation together — at least it’s a gesture that is made. But not the day Donald Trump took office.
I’ll speak specifically of El Paso at the end of the piece. The mood of the nation today so resembles January 20, 2017 that I wanted to revisit that day and my thoughts at that time, before speaking of our latest American mass murder.
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Trump’s inauguration speech was dark, militant, and paranoid, not surprisingly. Steve Bannon unquestionably authored it and one thing I’ll give to Steve Bannon is that he has his finger firmly on the pulse of the chaotic and despairing mindset of a great many Americans in 2017. Bannon understands the impotent rage and frustration which so many average Americans feel. They feel forgotten and passed over by a world that has left them behind and that’s why they voted for Donald Trump; to strike back at a society they feel abandoned them.
Months ago when it seemed evident that he would get the nomination, I saw Trump as a cult leader. He fit all the basic criteria, a charismatic figure preaching a shockingly different message that captured the imagination of marginalized people and made them feel that they belonged again; or perhaps for the first time ever. Now I think that Trump is an idiot savant, because of his gift for tapping into the irrational fear that exists in the darkest recesses of the cultural psyche, his ability to extract it, and then mainline it back into his voters again, and again like a drug. That is how he built his popularity with one outrage after another, by tapping into the reptilian brain and unthinking, emotional response of his voters.
Trump unconsciously tapped into the currents of repressed rage that flow just beneath the surface of our culture. He cracked the ice and that rage geysered upwards and continues to geyser upwards. It is no secret that Trump’s supporters have taken his election as a cultural carte blanche to misbehave in any manner which they see fit. Just the other day, Texas Congressman and Democrat Filemon Vela reported that a group of migrant children which he brought to Washington, D.C. for the inauguration were disparaged by Trump voters who called them, “beaners,” “burritos,” and even spit on them.
Trump is the pied piper for these people. His gauche vulgarity and excess may mesmerize the normal minded and cause us to ask, jaw droppingly, what is wrong with these people? What is wrong? They’re enraged and they’re totally lost, that’s what’s wrong. And what is really wrong is that they are totally alienated from their government. They feel that their government is a thing apart from themselves, that their government doesn’t care, and that they cannot affect their government. Donald Trump is the first person to come along in their entire lives making any kind of sense to them, with his 200 word vocabulary, articulating their rage. Just like the Howard Beal character in the movie, “Network.” Trump is the, “messianic jedemiah, articulating the rage of the common man,” as the Faye Dunaway character put it. It’s as simple, and as terrifying in it’s import, as that.
When I was in college I read a treatise which said that all of modern society’s ills are traceable to one cause alone and that is that technological advances, starting with the industrial revolution, have all happened much faster than the ability of society to adjust. So technology and society have gotten progressively out of step since 1760. Since the rise of the computer as a tool of premiere importance in our society, vast numbers of people have become disenchanted and disenfranchised.
The advance of the computer is the single most important factor in the societal malaise that our culture is now telling us, darkly, is reality by electing Trump. The computer has taken away the “forgotten man’s” traditional livelihood and his self esteem — or so the legend goes. Televangelist Franklin Graham was quoted a few weeks ago, saying, however absurdly, that there, “was no pride in computer programming, and that the ‘men’ wanted the same jobs as their fathers and grandfathers,” i.e. coal mining jobs; a thankless hazardous pursuit which apparently Franklin Graham sees as quite dignified. Dying at age 40 from black lung disease is perhaps dignified in Graham’s worldview as well, who knows?
In all events, these same men were lied to by Trump, who promised the coal mining jobs back, and the coal miners couldn’t be bothered with looking at the true facts of their position, because Trump voters don’t deal in facts. Anybody who was looking for facts during the 2016 campaign found them and ended up voting the Democratic ticket. The Trump voters didn’t bother with the facts, which would have told them, again, back to the coal miners, that their jobs were not gone due to an evil government outsourcing them overseas, but that attrition had taken their jobs in a complex global economy where natural gas and solar power are much cheaper alternatives than coal and the coal mining jobs were never coming back, no matter who is in the White House. The current status of the coal mining industry in the world is that robot labor will be doing that task to the extent that it is done at all.
The Hillary campaign never grasped the numbers of voters that were enraged and lost. Hillary herself never saw this at all. She relied upon textbook debating techniques and campaign strategies like she who can raise the most money wins. She was totally out of touch with the real zeitgeist of America and that is why she lost. Hillary was upbeat and positive and seeing the glass as half full not half empty. No. The glass is broken and in shards, in the view of John and Jane Q. Public. Now the facts may indeed indicate otherwise. Yes, we may have in fact had a drop in crime in the past eight years and in fact had a substantial increase in jobs and rise in employment in America, and in fact the ACA is the best thing to happen in this country since sliced bread. But facts are not feelings and people vote for candidates based on emotional buttons which either get pushed or don’t get pushed and in this case, Donald Trump managed to push the buttons, bigly. The Trump voters are a bunch of lobotomized Luke Skywalkers, muddling through life, “trusting their feelings,” doing what their fee fees say to do and they don’t know about facts. But they still get to vote and that’s why we’re in the mess we’re in and that’s why this horrible man was sworn in at noon today.
Whether Trump is legitimately president or not he is legitimately terrifying. Today a milestone in American culture was reached; in essence, the nadir of democracy, and the pit of American politics, one hopes. H.L. Mencken most presciently predicted this day when he said, “As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” Yes, just plain folks won the 2016 election, indisputably, and a great man left the White House today and a greatly inferior man entered it. We can only wait for the next shoe to drop. Now is truly the winter of our discontent.
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Nothing has changed from January 20, 2017 until today, except to get worse. In Cincinnati, a Trump supporter got out of his truck and attacked a much older man, presumably because he wasn’t also a MAGAt. Today in El Paso, another Trump supporter opened fire in a WalMart, slaying 20 people and injuring 26 others.
What do these two incidents have in common? Simple. Donald Trump told them both that this was right. Trump told people at one of his rallies to go ahead and beat up protesters and he would “pay the legal bills.” Trump said that immigrants from south of the border are “rapists” and “drug dealers” and “criminals.” He said, “They’re not sending their best people.” In Cincinnati he mocked the visa lottery system saying, “Oh, another murderer. Fine. Bring him in.” It requires no leap of logic or imagination to say that this divisive rhetoric directly inspired today’s shooting.
To Trump, it’s all a joke. Life is but a dream. The only reality he knows is his gilt-plated penthouse and his golden toilet. The hate speech that he spews, is to him merely improvised dialogue in a skit. None of this is real to him. He does not get the connection between what he says, and what happens in the society. The words of an American president have always mattered, not just here, but world wide. It is sickening that this petty, perverse, mindless and moral-less man occupies the highest office in our nation and that his words matter. But they do.
Words have power. They direct thought, excite emotions and inspire action. Look at what the words of Donald Trump hath wrought today, in El Paso.
You’re deranged
Care to elaborate?
Conversely, you sound scared.
As you know, I could bounce this troll into the cornfield with a mere swipe of my paw — but maybe he’ll show back up and defend his idiocy and we can point and laugh.
The entire piece is written by someone with a loose grasp on reality. Hillary Clinton upbeat? 63 million lobotomized Luke Skywalkers? What does that even mean?
Lol!
Why don’t you write a better piece? We have a community page here, and you are welcome to post. Merely follow the instructions on the newsletter and as long as your post complies with basics, we’ll let you have your say.
Hey fuckface, remember this date…January 20, 2017. That is the date this country started on it’s way to being the 21st century version of Nazi Germany, now I don’t know if your just another young punk with a big mouth and no balls, or another old white bigoted racist with a big mouth and no balls but either way when/if you ever, or can, finally grasp the reality of it all but your so called hero is a crook, a liar, a corrupt piece of shit, he is a multi failed shitty businessman, he is in bed with the Russians for money, the Saudi’s for money, anyone and everyone he can extort for money he will, at your expense, he has started a stupid fucking trade war with China that benefits no one, it only serves to drive up the price of most everything that you will need to buy, like your beloved assault rifles that have no fucking business being sold to the general public, they are not sport rifles they are tools of death, he has alienated most all of this countries allies, he is a joke, an assclown, a sexual predator, and probable pedophile, not to mention a complete prick of a dick in the eyes of the world, the real world mind you, he has given legitimacy to a brutal murderous dictator in North Korea, he hides behind other criminals he has surrounded himself with, he continues to try to extort and steal more money from the US Treasury for his own benefit, lying to us all for this useless wall he so famously promised Mexico would pay for, he praises your compatriots, the Neo-Nazis who murder innocent men women and children, when/if you young ignorant SA stormtrooper or old white piece of shit, get to the age of Social Security eligibility, it will not be there for you as the master thief and his GOP (KGB) brethren you know, like Moscow Mitch? Leningrad Lindsley? will have already drained, stolen, extorted and stashed it all in a hidden bank account so good luck and I hope dead horse meat suits you as you are already a horse’s ass so it might very well. Oh and um? Fuck off, for like ever, K? And don’t be a coward come back and throw some more shit at us, it’ll never stick but then again we already know you won’t, you trolls have no guts, no balls, no future, and certainly no common sense. Oh and have I told you to fuck off forever? Ok, fuck off forever. Have a shitty day over there in Moscow and tell Moscow Mitch and Leningrad Lindsley to fuck off forever too. Vlad? Don the con will never pay you back, as Gus Fring once said, “never trust a drug addict”
That means you’re a brainless idiot who was conned by your adderal addled assclown who sits on his golden toilet and tweets ignorant racist rants, then has people like you come wipe his nasty ass.
stick an AK up your ass and jump up and down.
Now, Wolfie, I understand your passion, but we don’t advocate violence around here. That’s for Donald Trump and his effed up base, not us.
Well, I didn’t say to load it!
Ok Ok I know…
“Pyongyang Pompeo”
put that one in your notebook, maybe you can use it down the road.
When it comes to Mencken and what’s been going on since it was clear Trump might actually get the GOP nomination there’s a quote of his that to me at least speaks volumes. While I almost never visit FB anymore I didn’t delete my account for reasons I won’t bother to explain. However, my avatar there contains this particular Mencken quote as so many folks where I grew up (southern Illinois) and lived for ten years (WV) before moving to NC:
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
Never heard that one before. Thank you.
There’s another Mencken quote that stands as a warning to us as we struggle to go forward: “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong.”
That’s the very essence of Trumpism. I didn’t know H.L. Mencken figured it out first.
Sadly, it has also been too many of the firebrands on our side too. It has been discouraging to see them surrender to their worst instincts.
Putting Trump in the Oval took a perfect storm of dishonesty, from decades of Clinton bashing and Hillary hating to GOP voter suppression to Russian hacking to Comey’s ego-fed bad judgment to Bernie’s ego and Bernie Bros to Hillary and her team’s blindnesses and poor judgment. Even with all that, she actually WON but was prevented from taking office by undemocratic process 100 years out of date.
But indeed it appears that America got what it deserved: a moron in the Oval (in place of the most qualified person of my life). In a civil, or sane, society, she would have been elected in a landslide by educated, intelligent, community-minded voters and all the frauds wouldn’t have mattered.
I see no reason to think Russia and Republicans won’t do it to us all again. What is truly saddest is that the DT/McConnell crowd is so QUICKLY destroying not just the entire fabric of society and the Republic itself but the soil and air and water and food supply. I doubt it can take four more years.
There was quite a confluence of factors that caused this aberration in government that we live with now, that’s for sure. And you certainly have enumerated most of them.
We just need to excise this cancer before it gets worse.