Torontonians, at least, should have seen it coming.
After Rob Ford rode a combination of suburban pandering and broken identity politics into Toronto’s top municipal office, the path was clear for the next demagogue: just lie your way to victory.
Donald Trump will not make America great again. He will not build a wall along the Mexican border, he will not renegotiate international trade deals, he will not teach a nation how to “win” again. Donald Trump is only in it for Donald Trump he ran for President to boost his own brand. He will turn the Presidency into a four-year speaking tour, wandering around holding rallies and yelling at imaginary enemies (and making a few real ones) while his cabinet of hangers-on goes about perverting the course of a nation to make a few bucks in the short term.
Is America over?
As a dual citizen, I truly hope not. But the rise of Trump is a toxic shock, and there’s no point pretending otherwise.
Half of America – women, African-Americans, Latinos, the LGBT community – just heard there is no place for them in their own nation. That they don’t belong. That the dwindling white majority still carries enough hate and fear in its heart to push them away. Donald Trump spent the last year and a half running on anger and insults, speaking in empty aphorisms, offering not a single constructive policy platform – and they voted for him anyway. He will Make America Great Again! Bigly!
Trump’s election turns out to be the true legacy of Ronald Reagan.
Reagan gutted the department of education and ended the Fairness Doctrine, allowing for the rise of blindly partisan FOX News – and an audience that would happily swallow whatever propaganda that channel put into the world. And slowly, over the years, the nation got dumber and more pliable. Creationist museums, Biblical theme parks. Reality television.
Donald Trump – a megalomaniac Manhattan developer who’d turned himself into a living aspirational brand – latched onto reality TV like a lamprey, using The Apprentice to build his name recognition and enhance his stature. Millions of people watched every week.
When Barack Obama was elected President in 2008, triggering a racist awakening among conservatives incapable of accepting a black man as head of state, Trump saw another opportunity. He picked up the mantle of the Birthers and brought a fringe movement into mainstream discourse, questioning the Hawaiian-born Obama’s legitimacy – as if that was something Hillary Clinton wouldn’t have used to take Obama out in 2008 when they were chasing the Democratic nomination – and vaulted himself onto the political stage.
And then, in 2015, Trump shoved his way into the clown car of Republican Presidential contenders and simply started lying about his qualifications for the gig, spewing insults and loathing and anger and bullshit until he was the last man standing.
The Republican party made some noises about his vulgarities and his horrific disregard for conservative ideals, but eventually they got in line behind him the Republican party wanted the White House back.
Nevermind that Trump can’t articulate ideas, or that he’s so monumentally self-absorbed that the slightest insult (either real or imaginary) would send him scurrying to Twitter in the middle of the night to slander his perceived rivals. Never mind that he was a spectacular embarrassment in three consecutive debates with Hillary Clinton, who seemed not just Presidential but positively regal simply by refusing to indulge her ranting orange opponent.
You would think their audience would have noticed this. You would think that conservative Americans would have a come-to-Jesus moment, and realize that Trump was the Trojan horse he warned everyone about at his rallies, when he recited the lyrics to the 60s soul hit The Snake.
But no one cared. Like the Republican leadership, they saw their last, best chance at power in Trump and they seized it, not thinking past the immediate moment. Trump has no policy, no discipline, no real interest in anything not-Trump he’s obsessed with being treated “fairly”, which in his worldview means being allowed to do whatever he wants.
On CNN last night, as the numbers slowed down and the cable news channel suddenly became very, very careful about calling the race too early, commentator Van Jones described Trump’s surge as a “whitelash,” the desperation of white voters “against a changing country [and] a black President.” Racism, nativism, otherism, call it whatever you want. The misogyny turned out to be incidental, given how many college-educated women voted for him.
Donald Trump isn’t going to build a wall or deport all the Muslims or turn women into second-class citizens. He can’t really do that. The Constitution won’t allow it. But what he will do – what he’s already doing – is empowering his white male base to do it for him. They feel like they’re about to take their country back, which seems to mean dragging everyone back to the sort of 1950s small town that only existed on television – back when minority characters spoke in exaggerated, stereotypical accents (if they spoke at all) and when women were ornamental at best.
If you think America is in rough shape now, wait a few months and see what happens with Trump as the nation’s figurehead. Rob Ford wasn’t able to do more than shame Toronto and force the city’s infrastructure to stagnate while his overwhelming personal failings slowly consumed him. Trump has the support of the House and Senate. His fiefdom is an entire nation.
I don’t think he’ll take the country to war, but he can lead it to ruin in so many other ways certainly, all of the control Obama exercised over the financial and health-care sectors will be clawed back sooner rather than later, and it won’t be long before something triggers the next economic meltdown.
I don’t think Donald Trump wants to ruin America. I don’t think Donald Trump even really wants to be President. He just said he was the best and dared anyone to prove him wrong.
Hillary Clinton proved it, easily. But it didn’t matter.
normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner
