The Witness Chronicles, May 13, 2024

Why does anyone take this guy seriously? Maybe The Apprentice?

Photo by TopSphere Media on Unsplash

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Trump is a Creep. So, Why is He So Popular?

It’s the biggest question this election year

As I read the news each morning, I’m mentally scratching my head over this one. One of our candidates is about as big a sleaze ball as you’ll find in any public figure, and that is saying a lot.

The list of negatives is almost too long to list here. The misogyny. The lack of any loyalty to anyone other than himself. The endless pitching of junk adorned with his image. The middle of the night social rants about imagined insults and plots against him. The string of childish nicknames for enemies and friends. The infidelity. The endless lies, some 70,000 since being elected in 2016. His support for murderous dictators. The endless lawsuits.

Herein lies the mystery. Until Trump won in 2016, helped by Hillary Clinton’s inept and tone deaf campaign, he was largely seen as an egotistic fool and a reality TV star. Then he won, promised miraculous fixes for all the problems of the country, and then accomplished none of them except a huge tax cut for the very wealthy that nearly bankrupted our government.

Tiny sections of his vaunted wall were all that was built at the southern border. His recurring promise that something called Infrastructure Week would be here soon that never materialized. His recommendation that we inject bleach into ourselves to kill the Covid virus that ravaged the country. The endless days of golf when we were paying him to run the country.

And then the loss in 2020 to Joe Biden, the claims of election fraud when his own people were perpetrating it at his orders, and the January Sixth attempted insurrection where Capitol police were killed and beaten by a mob of his followers, thousands of whom have been convicted and jailed.

And now we have the sordid spectacle of his criminal trial for covering up evidence of his own infidelities with a porn star and a Playbook Playmate while married to a wife caring for a newborn child. Those charges are not for trying to cover up his actions by bribing Stormy Daniels but for claiming the money was spent on legal fees to ensure he did not lose the women’s vote and the election.

Yet after all that and much more, he maintains a slight lead in the polls over Biden, who has a rock solid list of real accomplishments. To dissect this we have to look at Americans’ fascination with freak shows, and with a man who knows no guilt about anything and cares about nothing but his own adulation.

A man who has methodically divided the country, generating unfounded hate between his followers and basically anyone they find different in any way. One theory put forth is that many Americans who watched him play a character on The Apprentice actually thought the show was real life and the man he played was really doing business before the cameras.

They showed a hard-fisted man who could make hard choices and be ruthless at every turn to get things done, things that never actually existed in the real world. To these willfully naive watchers this looked like a man who could shape up the country, slap down those who are different, and be a John Wayne style macho hero in the Oval Office.

The fact that he was almost totally incompetent and petty was not portrayed in the fantasy scripted series, which was one of his few experiences that made him real money. We elected an actor who portrayed a competent leader on TV, but who in real life was a multiple bankrupt who inherited a fortune as a young man and basically squandered most of it.

The Apprentice and its accompanying fame is the only explanation I can find to explain the enduring myth of his competence at anything. He appeared to be making decisions each week, when in fact he was just showing up and reading his lines.

I will credit Trump with one thing: he had the balls to fake his way to the top despite endless scandals and actions that would take down any politician prior to the Trump years. He changed the standard for elected officials to the point where any dirtbag could get elected while blatantly lying, cheating, and enriching themselves while in office.

And that opened the doors for the haters and bullies which he was quick to leverage to bring the worst of America into the limelight and make it acceptable. We no longer need to be civil, courteous, respect the law, or respect those we disagree with.

You can argue legitimately that he gave a huge portion of the population permission to be their worst selves, without paying any price for it, and a lot of people liked it. We could be petulant children forever, a trait we used to see as something people and the country had grown out of.

As a commentator on the political events of the day and the decade, this is all enough to lose faith in the essential goodness in humans and to realize that we are not some kind of higher beings working to make life and the planet a better place for everyone.

Trump bet that going low would work and he was right. We can only hope as we watch his trials and this election unfold that voters start to see the real man, not the reality star or more correctly, the unreality star playing a role and giving the rubes a show while he cashes in.

~ I write The Grasshopper, a letter for creatives, The Witness Chronicles, a place for my articles on politics and climate, and The Remarkable, a recovery letter, about my addiction and reentry experience. All are weekly and free, however this is how I live and I strongly believe all writers and creatives should get paid, if we provide value. Your upgrade to a paid subscription helps make that happen.

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