What the hell was all that about, then?
The candidacy of The Donald will forever be a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in hair and a little bit of media celebrity-worship. It is doubtful whether Trump was ever a serious candidate--after all, I simply don't think he ever mentioned anything that sounded like a clear policy position, other than "Obama is bad, I am good, and I can win," which is more like a policy for playing table tennis than running for office.
If the fake run at the presidential primary was intended as a bit of a hoax, what did it accomplish?
Well, it didn't make Trump or his tv show that much more popular.
It showed that name recognition could get a well-known candidate good poll numbers even if the candidate in question has 1) never been involved in politics before, 2) has a history of donating to Democrats and was putatively running as a Republican and 3) had a less-than-perfect "family values" personal history.
It highlighted the shameful way a completely bogus allegation regarding the birth of President Obama captivated the attention of too large a segment of the Republican base. (In my opinion, any would have been too large a segment believing in something so completely weird and unfounded.) I am reluctant to give Trump credit since he so easily took credit for it, but fine--maybe Obama released the certificate because Trump pressed the issue---
Maybe. But that he could produce it meant the allegation that he was not born here was always a lie.
Because Trump is a well-known figure, he had a lightning-rod effect on the press--they were drawn to what he did. He also had an effect on the bloggerati--we watched, and we posted. But I'll be damned if I understand even now WTF happened.
Maybe some degree of clarification is to come--I have some weird thoughts. Either Trump was an egomaniac who decided the GOP needed a hero, and realized at the last moment he was not the guy for the job, or--follow me with this, he was a bored billionaire with some Democratic leanings because of all the gay and black friends and those types of Hollywood people he knew and hung out with, and decided to do a thing, that wouldn't even cost him a lot--that would wreck the Republican Party by exposing the hypocrisy regarding family values and flip-flopping, and revealing the conspiracy-theory-mongering, entrenched bigotry and divisiveness at its core--by temporarily playing on all those things. By being Trump. By being loud and attention-getting, and saying the things the GOP was only whispering and dog-whistling about. There's a thought, huh?
So, either Trump was a misguided egomaniac, or an unsung hero of liberalism, for all the damage he did to the GOP. All he could possibly do for an encore would be run--do the Ross Perot. Go Independent, never look back, feel the the wind in his hair if possible, and peeeeeelll those votes off the Romney/Pawlenty ticket we're gonna get. And then, I will write a song for him. A tribute to a puckish humor that sucked up a lot of poison-on purpose? On accident? Anyway, that made a lot of people weep tears of "Oh fuck, here's another load of racist, xenophobic nonsense from a privileged white dude." He toyed with the body politic, tickling it in its' most uncomfortable spots. He left even seasoned political watchers like myownself saying:
"WHAT...the..hhmmmph?"
Was he for real? Was it a cynical joke? I really do not know. I almost don't want to know.
No comments:
Post a Comment