I have redrawn my analysis of the 2016 presidential election cycle to its final, apocalyptic conclusion. It’s not pretty.
Donald J. Trump is inciting angry, frustrated White males to join his unholy crusade masquerading as a political campaign to redecide the outcome of the Civil War. That’s his message, unvarnished.
Trump and his kind will Make America Gross Again. Their jingoistic views will not make America great.
The Republican so-called “establishment,” which is now rushing to put lipstick on Trump — the pig their voters have chosen to lead them — the establishment is hoping that by hook or by crook, the voters will kiss their pig in November … spray tan and bad comb-over included.
After all, those Republican leaders themselves are nothing but shameful, climate-change deniers, anti-worker, race-baiting demagogues who likely agreed with Trump’s hateful, violent, dog-whistle-now-bullhorn-messages from the very beginning.
Now, in my humble opinion, every other rational White person who does not repudiate Trump and his presidential ambition is hastening by his/her silence, the equivalent of a 21st century attack on Ft. Sumter. (Reminder: That 19th century “Lost Cause” ended in “unconditional surrender” at Appomattox Courthouse four years later.)
As far as I’m concerned, what Trump has unleashed is gross, not great. It cannot succeed. It is nihilistic and will hasten this country’s downfall, not herald the “New American Greatness.”
Fraternity-sorority videos, photos, disgusting pranks; wanton police murders of unarmed Black people over and over and over again; cartoons and other insults which are beneath contempt depicting the African-American president of the United States and the first lady. These are now common occurrences. That is gross, not great.
Just because a plurality of White Republicans — I think of them as civilian Ku-Kluxers — voted for Trump, permitting him to outlast the more mealy-mouthed presidential candidates this year, doesn’t alter the calamitous error of the Trump message. The lasting numbers and loud voices of the Trump Troops does not make them correct. They are in error, in gross error.
“He’s an ignorant, amoral, dishonest and manipulative, misogynistic, philandering, hyper-litigious, isolationist, protectionist blowhard,” rich-guy-investor Michael K. Vlock, who has given more than $5 million to Republican candidates this campaign, said about Trump when he pledged not to contribute any money for his election in 2016.
Trump’s promise and the outcome from following his misguided policies is gross.
There can be no accommodation with Donald J. Trump and with what he represents. There is no middle ground. The Trump forces believe they can win and vanquish all dissent. They want war!
Those were not “great” days in the 1950s when Trump’s father, Frederick, was getting exceedingly wealthy, building segregated housing in New York. That was gross. That was not great. Folk singer Woody Guthrie even wrote a song back then protesting “Old Man Trump.”
In 1927, when that same Fred Trump was first charting his course, he was arrested at a Ku Klux Klan rally. That was gross. That was not great.
Those were not great days in the 1850s when even U.S. presidents owned slaves. That was gross. Today, a descendant of those same enslaved Africans is now first lady of the United States, and Trump & Co. are set on “taking America back”? “Back” from whom?
Trump believers are not guilty of rhetorical misstatements or exaggerations or grammatical or syntactical errors. They know exactly what they are saying, and they mean every word of it. The problem is their goals cannot be achieved, not at the expense of the growing demand for freedom, justice, and equality from those who have been deprived for so long.
We are not living in a time when White supremacy will flourish again, when White American people will once again get increasing shares of the world’s resources while everyone else gets less. Those days were gross, not great. Those days are over.
Sadly, however, rather than publicly condemn him as they should, corporate media manipulators will manage to spin this election as though Trump’s views are not as toxic and vile as they really are and that he actually might win the presidency, when mathematically, he has been all but out of the race from opening day.
If there are any beneficial views associated with Trump, they can’t even be deliberated until after The Donald and his allies in Congress, in governor’s mansions, in state legislatures and in city and county councils all over the country have been rousted from office and then only after a political wooden-stake is driven through their wicked hearts.
Let’s be clear: What’s happening on the presidential horizon is that too many folks are now marching lockstep behind Trump, whose leadership will surely Make America Gross Again.