Having already gone over the real issues with supporting Hillary Clinton, I now turn to the presumptive (and he is nothing if not presumptive) Republican nominee, Donald Trump.
But what else can I say about Trump that hasn’t already been said? What new can I say that will not get me investigated by the Secret Service?
Well- as it turns out, Trump started the month of June with only $1.3 million in campaign cash. He is apparently so desperate for funds that his family has taken to requesting donations from British and Icelandic politicians, apparently not realizing that soliciting campaign funds from foreigners is slightly illegal. Trump is touting this bare-bones approach as part of a campaign strategy that has been working through the primaries, and says that he will rely on the Republican National Committee chests for national campaign money, even though a national party in a presidential election usually relies on the presidential nominee and their name recognition to raise funds for the “down-ballot” candidates in other races.
Basically, the Republicans led themselves to believe that Donald Trump and his “TEN BILLION DOLLARS” would be able to cover the costs of a national campaign, and having found out that he has a campaign chest in proportion to his hand size, they are now forced to hold the bag for Trump’s overleveraged and underfunded project. Like many of his other creditors. In short, they are starting to realize that Trump will do to their party what he did to Atlantic City.
However, Republicans can’t just admit this, because Trump’s predatory approach to business, like his brazen racism and sexism, is simply a bold embrace of a policy that more tactful and professional Republican politicians have been trying to foist on America by stealth for decades. And if they were to admit that strip-mining an institution until it has nothing left of value is a bad thing to do to their party, they might also have to admit that it is also destructive to both capitalism and government.
But the other reason that Republicans can’t get rid of Trump is that he DID win most of the primaries fair and square, and that’s largely because of that very brazen quality. He’s attracted a following through the old axiom “never apologize, never explain.” Trump’s fans like the fact that he fights for what he believes in, even when Trump himself doesn’t seem clear on what that is. “Trump’s honest!” they say. “He’s not afraid to be politically incorrect! He’s AUTHENTIC!!”
Oh yes, because nothing says authenticity like a circus-peanut tan that never quite reaches your eyelids.
But when the virtue of honesty is conflated with the vice of rudeness – often by a political class who have good reason to fear honesty – the result is that anyone who wishes to sell rudeness can do so by calling it honesty. And thus a population deprived of the virtue will embrace the vice. It’s like living in the most antiseptic circumstances and then finally being exposed to filth, and your immune system has no experience with it.
Other politicians, especially in the GOP, had tried a similar posture, but they were always limited by a human frailty called “shame.” For instance, Chris Christie had developed a certain level of popularity as Republican Governor of New Jersey by taking positions against conservative orthodoxy and also mixing it up with reporters who disagreed with him. Unfortunately as an elected governor, he was placed in the awkward position of having to govern, and this is the part where he fell down. Nevertheless he decided to run for president even at a point when “Bridgegate” and other domestic issues were bringing his popularity to new lows. Going into the New Hampshire primary, Christie’s campaign had been in a slump, and to revive media attention, he decided to take his East Coast Insult Comic persona and kick it up a notch. Sensing weakness in Marco Rubio, he decided to call him a “bubble boy” who couldn’t take criticism or withstand debate. This turned out to be the case, given that in the New Hampshire debate, Christie accused Rubio of repeating the same speech over and over and Rubio responded with the same talking point he’d used on another question. Unfortunately while this targeting did send Rubio to fifth place in New Hampshire, Christie placed sixth.
But while Christie decided to exit the race after this, Rubio pledged to hang on until the Florida primary. In a late February debate, Rubio picked up on Trump’s sensitivity at being called a “short-fingered vulgarian” long ago in Spy magazine. This scored him points with the media but allowed Trump to complain that Rubio “hit my hands” and made it rather clear on the debate stage that referring to his hand size was a phallic metaphor. Rubio escalated by making further such references including the implication of Trump’s small “size” and of his nervousness. Not only did this mean he was competing at Trump’s level (something Rubio later admitted he was not comfortable with), Trump escalated further by doing a speech that referred to Rubio’s reaching for a water bottle during a State of the Union response, where at one point the use of the bottle became an even more phallic metaphor. And then Trump won Florida, and Rubio had to drop out.
In the 1960s, both the Who and American Jimi Hendrix were making a name for themselves in Britain but had not yet made it big in the US. They both appeared at the 1967 Monterey Pop festival in California. At the time, the Who made their stage reputation from “auto-destruction” or smashing their instruments on stage. They had to flip a coin with The Jimi Hendrix Experience to see who would do their show first, and the Who won. After the Who set, the Jimi Hendrix set ended with Hendrix picking his guitar with his teeth, playing it behind his back, and then not just breaking the guitar but first pouring lighter fluid on it, setting it on fire and beckoning the flames like he was summoning a pagan god, before finally grabbing it by the strap, smashing it around and throwing the scraps into the audience. And one of the Who roadies looked at Who guitarist Pete Townsend and said, “Pete, he’s stealing your act.”
And Pete said, “He’s not just stealing my act, he’s DOING my act.”
Perhaps that explains why Chris Christie not only suspended his presidential campaign but has ever since followed Trump around with a truly bitchified look on his face. This is a man who has learned to walk in the steps of the true Master. Donald Trump did not invent the concept of the belligerent asshole politician. He merely perfected it.
The real impact of Trump’s candidacy will be in the long term effects on the culture, just as with any true trailblazer. Your dad or granddad might have been able to say, “I was at Monterey when I saw Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire.” Or, “I was in Detroit when I saw Iggy Pop crowdsurf for the first time.” This generation will be able to say, “I was watching TV when I saw Donald Trump accuse Megyn Kelly of being on the rag.”
Years after Hendrix’ death, he is still considered the greatest rock guitarist of all time. He practically built his own genre, and his influence extends even beyond that genre. Nowadays every song you hear on the radio is some teen-idol or EDM neo-disco shit, and yet half of those songs still have wild-ass guitar solos on the bridge even when they aren’t really needed, and nobody thinks anything of it because we’re all basically living in the house that Hendrix built. And so it will be with Trump.
Twenty years from now, college kids will be in the student union building, as some presidential candidate takes questions at a press conference while simultaneously fucking his mistress live on national TV, and the kids will look at the screen, and go, “Eh. It’s been done.”