Public Occurrences has not covered the 2016 presidential race. That has been deliberate rather than oversight. Even in a normal election cycle we are still fifteen months away, about a year I would guess from the nominating conventions, the first primary or caucus votes won't be cast for six or seven months. This is also not a normal presidential election cycle, it is, for me, one American, the first presidential election since the Snowden revelations in 2013 and I don't think I'm going to vote, in 2016 or ever again. I have not voted in any election since 2012. So, I have deliberately not written about it for that reason also. However, this is not a normal election cycle in another sense and this abnormality leads me to write tonight.
The Great Republic had its soul distorted by the 9/11/01 attacks. You can just about see this soul change occur in real time on the face of Vice President Dick Cheney in the recently released photographs from 9/11/01. Cheney withdrew within himself on that day, he went to some deep, dark places in his own soul, departed for parts unknown at the time that night and stayed out of public, alone with his developing thoughts that went deep within to his soul's soul.
Cheney was the spearhead for the institutional changes that were made after 9/11/01 that Edward Snowden revealed in the summer of 2013. Americans became, and we remain, an uneasy, tentative, defensive, angry, more pessimistic, less trusting people. From its founding America has had a definable streak of paranoia in its soul. It has flared in full view of all at times, as in the McCarthy era, it has receded at others, but it has always been there. A positivistic anger, weirdly optimistic, in important ways the opposite of paranoia, has more consistently been a part of our politics.
In this era the first I was aware that our soul had been distorted again in these particularly American ways and that this old-new soul had flared out again from the fringes into the mainstream of American politics was when the Tea Party, a completely consistent name for this topic, first flared up. I don't remember now exactly when the Tea Party first registered with me but I remember how it did: those cartoon caricatures of President Obama as an African witch doctor with a bone through his nose, Obamacare I am pretty, but not 100% sure, for there were others, not linked in any way discernible to me to Obamacare, Obama as Chairman Mao for instance. Honestly, there was a time when painting the first Black American president as an African witch doctor with a bone through his nose would have been unacceptable as political discourse. The persons responsible would have been consigned by unanimous consent to the fringes. The Tea Party however has just about taken over the soul of the Republican Party and with that we come to the main topic of this post.
Donald Trump is (that I know of) not a Tea Party Republican at all, he is seeking the Republican Party's nomination for president but he is of course not a politician by trade, he is a businessman first, an entertainer but that seems to be more a hobby, a promoter, now a candidate, he is a lot of things. Politically he has been a registered Republican, a member of the "Reform Party" (don't know what that is or was), a Democrat, an Independent, and now a Republican again. Yes, he is sui generis but he has been so many things that he has become something of an Everyman in our times, in this era of the familiarly distorted American soul. He seems to me not an instantiation of the Tea Party soul, which seems to me to have more of the paranoid flavor to it, but rather of the anger mutation. He does appeal to many in the Tea Party though. He speaks their language--the language of anti-. He's anti- a lot of people and a lot of things. It has long been de rigueur for Republican presidential candidates to be anti-Washington. "I am anti-Washington, therefore I want to go to Washington" is now said without a trace of irony. If you don't talk that talk you aren't going to walk at the Republican Convention.
But Donald Trump isn't running an anti-Washington campaign. What is different about Trump is that he is attacking a lot of ordinary American people. There was a time when a person who says the things Donald Trump says, Hell, when a person with Donald Trump's "qualifications" for president, could not find a home in either of the two main political parties, would have been shunned by voters and other candidates alike. Since 9/11/01 there have been fewer and more elastic self-imposed rules on what the powerful can say and what they can do. Mitt Romney attacked 47% of the American people in 2012 as "takers." Romney was rebuked by other Republicans for that and all of the other Republican candidates except one have to various degrees, criticized Donald Trump's more personal attacks on people but they have not shunned him. They still appear on debate stages with him. The other candidates and many other Republicans are, to varying degrees, concerned about the damage Trump is doing to the Republican Party. But those who have been most critical of Trump, Rick Perry, Lindsey Graham, have seen their support dwindle to barely measurable levels, levels that kept them off sharing a recent debate stage with him.
Donald Trump leads all of the polls in the Republican Party right now, has since he started all his anti- talk. What he says and how he says it has the support of about 20% of Republican voters right now, even though he may be anti-Republican in the November, 2016 election. Twenty percent of Republicans support a man who says, among other things, that he might run against the Republican nominee for president. That is weird, no? Yes, it is.
There is some danger here. The George W. Bush administration did not know who the enemy was after 9/11/01, consequently nor who to attack, consequently Everyman, at home and abroad, became a potential enemy and was attacked militarily, diplomatically, or surreptiously through "data collection." Donald Trump is retailing Bush's wholesale attack and ignorance. Even at: (1) one-fifth of (2) the politically attentive members of (3) the smaller of America's two parties, (4) fifteen months from the election, that is not one nut case, that is not fringe appeal, it is not Everyman either, but Donald Trump speaks for, in speaking to, a lot of Americans, by speaking against a lot of Americans. There have been three or four or five things that Donald Trump has said already that the American political cognoscenti have predicted, "That's it! The Trump campaign is over!" Instead he has risen in the polls or has maintained his lead over the field. Which demonstrates that the danger comes from
Donald Trump's soul but more importantly from the souls of those Americans to whom he appeals. The danger comes from deep, dark, ugly places that have always been there in the soul of America and Donald Trump gives voice to them.
The Great Republic had its soul distorted by the 9/11/01 attacks. You can just about see this soul change occur in real time on the face of Vice President Dick Cheney in the recently released photographs from 9/11/01. Cheney withdrew within himself on that day, he went to some deep, dark places in his own soul, departed for parts unknown at the time that night and stayed out of public, alone with his developing thoughts that went deep within to his soul's soul.
Cheney was the spearhead for the institutional changes that were made after 9/11/01 that Edward Snowden revealed in the summer of 2013. Americans became, and we remain, an uneasy, tentative, defensive, angry, more pessimistic, less trusting people. From its founding America has had a definable streak of paranoia in its soul. It has flared in full view of all at times, as in the McCarthy era, it has receded at others, but it has always been there. A positivistic anger, weirdly optimistic, in important ways the opposite of paranoia, has more consistently been a part of our politics.
In this era the first I was aware that our soul had been distorted again in these particularly American ways and that this old-new soul had flared out again from the fringes into the mainstream of American politics was when the Tea Party, a completely consistent name for this topic, first flared up. I don't remember now exactly when the Tea Party first registered with me but I remember how it did: those cartoon caricatures of President Obama as an African witch doctor with a bone through his nose, Obamacare I am pretty, but not 100% sure, for there were others, not linked in any way discernible to me to Obamacare, Obama as Chairman Mao for instance. Honestly, there was a time when painting the first Black American president as an African witch doctor with a bone through his nose would have been unacceptable as political discourse. The persons responsible would have been consigned by unanimous consent to the fringes. The Tea Party however has just about taken over the soul of the Republican Party and with that we come to the main topic of this post.
Donald Trump is (that I know of) not a Tea Party Republican at all, he is seeking the Republican Party's nomination for president but he is of course not a politician by trade, he is a businessman first, an entertainer but that seems to be more a hobby, a promoter, now a candidate, he is a lot of things. Politically he has been a registered Republican, a member of the "Reform Party" (don't know what that is or was), a Democrat, an Independent, and now a Republican again. Yes, he is sui generis but he has been so many things that he has become something of an Everyman in our times, in this era of the familiarly distorted American soul. He seems to me not an instantiation of the Tea Party soul, which seems to me to have more of the paranoid flavor to it, but rather of the anger mutation. He does appeal to many in the Tea Party though. He speaks their language--the language of anti-. He's anti- a lot of people and a lot of things. It has long been de rigueur for Republican presidential candidates to be anti-Washington. "I am anti-Washington, therefore I want to go to Washington" is now said without a trace of irony. If you don't talk that talk you aren't going to walk at the Republican Convention.
But Donald Trump isn't running an anti-Washington campaign. What is different about Trump is that he is attacking a lot of ordinary American people. There was a time when a person who says the things Donald Trump says, Hell, when a person with Donald Trump's "qualifications" for president, could not find a home in either of the two main political parties, would have been shunned by voters and other candidates alike. Since 9/11/01 there have been fewer and more elastic self-imposed rules on what the powerful can say and what they can do. Mitt Romney attacked 47% of the American people in 2012 as "takers." Romney was rebuked by other Republicans for that and all of the other Republican candidates except one have to various degrees, criticized Donald Trump's more personal attacks on people but they have not shunned him. They still appear on debate stages with him. The other candidates and many other Republicans are, to varying degrees, concerned about the damage Trump is doing to the Republican Party. But those who have been most critical of Trump, Rick Perry, Lindsey Graham, have seen their support dwindle to barely measurable levels, levels that kept them off sharing a recent debate stage with him.
Donald Trump leads all of the polls in the Republican Party right now, has since he started all his anti- talk. What he says and how he says it has the support of about 20% of Republican voters right now, even though he may be anti-Republican in the November, 2016 election. Twenty percent of Republicans support a man who says, among other things, that he might run against the Republican nominee for president. That is weird, no? Yes, it is.
There is some danger here. The George W. Bush administration did not know who the enemy was after 9/11/01, consequently nor who to attack, consequently Everyman, at home and abroad, became a potential enemy and was attacked militarily, diplomatically, or surreptiously through "data collection." Donald Trump is retailing Bush's wholesale attack and ignorance. Even at: (1) one-fifth of (2) the politically attentive members of (3) the smaller of America's two parties, (4) fifteen months from the election, that is not one nut case, that is not fringe appeal, it is not Everyman either, but Donald Trump speaks for, in speaking to, a lot of Americans, by speaking against a lot of Americans. There have been three or four or five things that Donald Trump has said already that the American political cognoscenti have predicted, "That's it! The Trump campaign is over!" Instead he has risen in the polls or has maintained his lead over the field. Which demonstrates that the danger comes from
Donald Trump's soul but more importantly from the souls of those Americans to whom he appeals. The danger comes from deep, dark, ugly places that have always been there in the soul of America and Donald Trump gives voice to them.