Donald Trump, President of the United States?
Donald Trump won a huge victory in Nevada last night. The interesting thing is that he won just about every demographic voting in the primary. He even won Latinos. Yes, the numbers are low but I will tell you from personal experience, it could actually be probative for the Latinos who vote.
A few days ago I shadowed and reported on Dreamer Cesar Vargas who visited Houston to help with outreach in the Latino community. Vargas and Houston Bernie Sanders supporters were canvassing Latino neighborhoods. Here is a short video of the event.
It was shocking to observe the son of the owner of a home who said he was a conservative Republican with a college education and wanted to have no discussion. More shocking were the statements he made echoing Donald Trump almost verbatim. There is a vile dynamic that is occurring that is not seeing in polls but seen all over communities exposed to the Trump infection.
One can now hear various black people saying President Obama has done little for them. Some even say they will vote for Donald Trump. They are echoing the man’s speeches that the media gives much coverage to.
Donald Trump was at first a joke. The mainstream media made a whole lot of money promoting him. His spectacle gets eyeballs. But in the process they made him viable.
The media is attributing his victory to the anger in America over the establishment. An article in The Guardian said it best.
But that disgusting behavior gets paired with the sight of Trump humiliating establishment empty suits like Scott Walker, stuffed shirts like Jeb Bush, party pets like Marco Rubio and habitual liars like Ted Cruz. The fact that Trump himself is frequently lying doesn’t matter to those that see themselves as the establishment’s victims if he’s lying in service of exposing another government predator.
As tacky and thuggish as it might be, Trump plays the hero to people that the wise warriors of the system have abandoned. He’s the ultimate Gary Stu character: a billionaire beholden to no one and able to abuse every disingenuous and pettifogging remora latched headfirst on the nation and sucking upward.
And as long as people can enjoy the elbow-throwing wish-fulfillment of watching him in action, most of the rest doesn’t matter to them – not the bombast, not the war-mongering, not the unfeasibility of even his signature promises and certainly not the consequences if he keeps them. If the system is already so broken that it abandoned you, its preservation is not your concern. Hell, burning it down might be what you want most.
Anger has a clarity all its own. It renders most detail extraneous, and it animates like nothing else. It is not to be underestimated, and, at this point, we will probably have to wait until November to find out if it truly has been.
If the grassroots leaders in America do not begin a concerted effort to educate, Donald Trump could be president. The plutocracy would not blink an eye as they know he is a part of them.