The Reckoning
The Donald has a dilemma on his hands; the election did not go the way he wanted because “he was not on the ballot.” If, he says, he were on the ballot, it would have gone differently. None of the other candidates had his charm, his political appeal, his electability. But wait. He was on the ballot.
Voters got disillusioned, fed up with the perversity, the broken promises, his doing the opposite of what he said he would do. And the unbridled corruption, perhaps the most since the Harding administration. He said he would lower prices, keep us out of foreign wars, and keep out those “shithole” country immigrants who were defiling the nation’s blood, eating people’s pets. But wait a minute. Those people, hardworking, taxpaying immigrants were not what people were worried about. The xenophobia peddled by the president and his repulsive chief of staff, Stephen Miller, did not sell too well. Americans saw ICE agents shooting innocents, separating children from their parents, dragging citizens out of their cars, and did not like it. The fearmongering only goes so far, especially when life was costing more and the good citizens of red states had to cough up for their diesel tractors and gas-guzzling F-150s. Maybe the president was wrong about the scapegoats. The low information voters that Trump said he likes were not in the end so ignorant. They swept his enablers and election deniers from office in a landslide. The GOP is still reeling.
People were more concerned about their buying power, diminished by inflation and the price of gas and groceries. They found out that they had been sold another grift. And how does a president and his family make billions? Well, maybe it’s those investors, oligarchs and special interests that are contributing to the ballroom and the construction. And maybe it’s all those suckers who were investing in crypto because the president was manipulating the market? Or maybe the $500 million UAE investors buying a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial, a Trump family enterprise. Or maybe it was the luxury aircraft from those altruistic Qataris, who wanted nothing in return, or the selling of pardons or the removal of the inspectors general, or Todd Blanche persecuting Trump’s enemies. Folks, it is not rocket science. Even those people in flyover country finally got the picture.
It’s hard to believe that part of the American psychosis is that snake oil salesmen, carnival barkers, and fraudsters are so much a part of our culture. But Hollywood understood the confidence man.
Lonesome Rhodes, (Andy Griffith) in the great Elia Kazan film, “A Face in the Crowd,” says, “I’m not just an entertainer. I’m an influence, a wielder of opinion, a force…”. Lonesome sold himself and his fakery to a desperate audience. His victims needed to believe him. “The whole country’s just like my flock of sheep.”
Burt Lancaster, in “The Rainmaker,” promises to bring rain to a drought-stricken town—for a fee. And for “Elmer Gantry,” he won an Academy Award for playing a traveling salesman who reinvents himself as a fiery evangelist, for fame, money and women.
Corruption in American politics is not unique. The Teapot Dome scandal, where Albert Fall, Harding’s Interior secretary, secretly leased federal oil reserves to private companies in exchange for bribes. Many others. Watergate. Iran-Contra.
Vice President Spiro Agnew accepting envelopes of cash from a defense contractor. I could go on but won’t.
When RBG was asked about Donald Trump, she said she didn’t like him because he was a “faker.” Many thought this was inappropriate for a Justice of the Supreme Court to say. Many voters may have just thought she was right.
The demagogue is contemptuous of his sheep. And that is why Donald did the opposite of what his flock wished. But sometimes the sheep will not go where you want them to. Maybe sheep do not get disillusioned, but people do.
They have sampled the merchandise, and they voted to send it back.
