Whiner Leader

The people who revere Donald Trump are routinely characterized as “angry,”and their anger is often characterized  -- even by those who think Trump a buffoon – as justifiable or at least understandable.  An editorial in the Washington Post put it this way: “The grievances they speak to are real: a sense that the economy has left too many people behind, that globalization and technological change are helping the few while stranding the many.”

Please.  Or to put it another way, globalization-schmobilazation.

These people are not angry.  What they are is whiny. If there is a whinier, more put-upon group of people than Donald Trump’s followers I don’t know who it would be.  They hold these two ideas to be sacred and self-evident: (1) They are unhappy; (2) It’s somebody else’s fault that they are unhappy.  They love their victimhood, and they relish the prospect of Trump vanquishing their tormentors.  They do this even as unemployment is at historical lows, interest rates are miniscule, inflation is non-existent, and more of the vehicles of choice for these folks, pickup trucks, are being sold than have ever been sold in the history of the world.

And yet, they say they are angry. Foot-stompingly, sneeringly, smoke-coming-out-of-their-ears angry. What is their problem?

In a previous post, I wrote: “Normal people are mystified by the way Donald Trump can repeatedly say bizarre, even irrational things – he witnessed something that didn’t happen, he thinks members of one religion should be kept out of the country -- and his poll numbers go up. It’s as if a light bulb goes on over the heads of these newest Trump converts: ‘Wow. I knew he was a blowhard and a bigot, but now I see he’s also delusional. I’m voting for him!’ Unexplainable, seemingly. But, of course, what his people see in him isn’t about any of that. It’s about his promise to ‘make America great again.’ And by ‘great’ what his mostly white male followers understand him to mean is a time when people who looked like them had all the good jobs; when there weren’t all these weird non-Christian religions around; when blacks, Hispanics, and women knew their place; when political correctness didn’t prohibit decent white folks from putting down racial and ethnic minorities.“

Meanwhile, if you needed further proof of how utterly clueless the Donald Trump true believers are – proof that includes all of the above plus his belief in a mythical giant wall, his affinity for throwing tens of thousands of people out of the country, his call for the murder of women and children in the Middle East, his calling an opponent a pussy for not embracing water boarding, and on and on -- his remark about shooting people provided it. This is a perfect double whammy: (1) When he said “I could shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters” he was absolutely right. His followers wouldn’t care if he committed such an act because they are oblivious to everything he says and everything he does, and respond only to the persona he projects, the one that does such a good job of playing to and nurturing their many resentments and imagined grievances; (2) They don’t get that when he said that, he was making fun of them. He was telling the world that his posse is so dense, so zombie-like in their adoration of him that he could do anything and they wouldn’t care. To be a blind follower of an intellectual and moral lightweight, and to not understand that you are being told by that person how blind you are and being ridiculed for it – that’s clueless.

Dear Trump peeps: If you are unhappy with the circumstances of your life you are absolutely free to improve on them. Nothing the government is doing or not doing is stopping you. Same with Wall Street big shots, the mainstream media, Muslims, immigrants, the Chinese, minorities, and so on. Your problems are of your own making, and so are the solutions. Electing your man to the presidency (or congress or the governorship or the school board) won’t make it all better. You won’t all of a sudden get the job of your dreams or get along better with your spouse. Your guy keeps telling you you’re being “ripped off,” something you clearly love to hear because you’re so fond of seeing yourselves as victims. Perhaps you can explain how you’re being ripped off. He can’t. Please be specific. Otherwise, you’ll just have to accept the New York Daily News’ characterization of Trump’s win in New Hampshire: “Dawn of the Brain Dead”.