Talk Loudly and Carry a Big Schtick

I wasn’t going to write about Donald Trump, as everyone else has, ad nauseum.  But a few days ago a PPP poll revealed that the Donald is the leading Republican candidate among North Carolina voters.  Embarrassed by the state in which I live (and write), I needed to say something about the Trumpomania festering in this sweltering summer or else I’d be ashamed of myself.

Bring on the shame.  Trump (or more accurately, the burgeoning cover-and-comment-about-Trump industry) has defeated me. In a sort of reverse Heisenberg maneuver, the media noise levels about this candidacy are competing with the candidate’s own high-decibel braying.  By emulating Trump’s ‘discuss-by-talking-more-loudly-and-often’ approach to political discourse, the air-and-print waves are so saturated with Trumpanalysis that, at this point, there’s really not much left to offer. 

              Except referencing Spinal Tap, which is always a good thing to do when one is contemplating Eleven on the loudness scale.

              Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?

              Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.

              Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?

              Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?

              Marty DiBergi: I don't know.

Squelched Consideration #1:  Is this a serious candidacy or a self-aggrandizing schtick?  Not only is this now a done-to-death thing-to-contemplate, it’s an ill-posed question or at least an irrelevant one.  Donald Trump is obviously serious about his schtick as a mega-successful bellowing vulgarian busker who can make free media dance to whatever loudly discordant tune he decides to play.  But who cares whether Trump is delusional, megalomaniacal, or a self-gratifying charlatan? Isn’t it more useful to think about why he’s in this (one hopes) transient position of power, and what effects the Trump candidacy may have on on the fortunes and future of the Republican Party or on the upcoming Presidential race?

Squelched Consideration #2:  Donald Trump is a product of a Republican Party that’s pandered not only to its most angry ‘low-info’ base but also to the Donald himself.  This is obvious (recall Mitt Romney’s humiliating 2012 genuflection to the power/money that is Trump).  That the rest of the Republican Presidential field has been at best belated and at worst spineless in denouncing Trump’s demagoguery does not bode well for the GOP’s ability to win national elections in the future. This is also obvious.  

Trump is not only the Republican Party’s Frankenstein’s monster.  He is also Dr. Frankenstein, who created the monster by pushing himself and his money and his ‘influence’ into the GOP mainstream. Creator and Creature: nifty double move.

Squelched Consideration #3:  Everyone’s talking about the effects Trump’s candidacy will have on the 2016 Presidential race.  Conventional pundicratic wisdom has been that Trump will not be the GOP standard-bearer but that he will either screw up the field so monumentally that (presumably) Hillary Clinton will win overwhelmingly or that he acts as a mouth-frothing foil to other Republican candidates, who will seem relatively measured and sane in contrast (and one of them may win). 

In the last day or so, there’s a new scenario: Trump running as an independent.  O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’  Hillary (or Bernie, or Joe, or even more improbably, Martin or Jim or Linc) in a landslide!  I don’t disagree, so I don’t have much to add.  I’m old enough to remember Ross Perot looking under the hood. 

The wrecking ball swings both ways.  It can make other GOPers look reasonable, for now, or it can destroy the current and perhaps future Republican Party.  South-of-the-border immigrant-bashing is not a smart long-term strategy. 

It’s hard to satirize, parody, or caricature Donald Trump because he presents himself as a comic-book figure . . . one composed of self-validated financial, intellectual, rhetorical, patriotic, self-confident, and virile laminae topped with a honey-badger toupee crowning a distinctively belligerent face.

I mention Trump’s profoundly cartoonish look because it makes me think of the only new thing I have to offer about the Donald phenomenon: similarities with Benito Mussolini.

Some parallels may not be more than chin deep. Mussolini had two wives, many mistresses, and five (known) children; Trump has three wives and five (known) children. For both men, personal conduct has little connection with public pronouncements about morality.  More important, both men easily reverse political positions. Mussolini was an ardent and active socialist before he was a fascist; Trump was an equal-opportunity campaign donor and a pro-choice, vaguely liberal businessman before he became a radical birtherite and, eventually, the reactionary Presidential candidate we’re confronted with today.  A potent combination of nationalism and xenophobia seems to have served (to be serving) Mussolini and Trump well. 

Certainly, they look alike.  Much more distressing, they may think alike, and Trump may think like the mainstream of his party. As Benito Mussolini stated, “Fascism should be more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.” 

Mussolini tapped into Italy’s deep interwar malaise, rose to power, and made deals with the devil.  Trump is trying to do (or simulate) the same thing, at least in reference to the small but politically important (and maybe GOP-primaries-crucial) section of the electorate that wants a loud voice to articulate its aggrieved and fearful ignorance, and to make the demographic-change trains run backwards, on lost time.  

That’s all I got.