“Tis the times’ plague, when madmen lead the blind.” – William Shakespeare, King Lear
“Thereafter mighty forces were adrift, the void was open, and into that void after a pause there strode a maniac of ferocious genius, the repository and expression of the most virulent hatreds that have ever corroded the human breast—Corporal Hitler.”
Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm
No, Donald Trump is no genius. Trump is a moron. The ferocious evil genius resides, I believe, in the two Stephens–Bannon and Miller. I think it is they who are the “…repository and expression of the most virulent hatreds that have ever corroded the human breast,” save that of Corporal Hitler. I believe it is they who, in the earliest, darkest hours of the morning, had Trump’s ear as he punched out tweets, goading him on to exploit the most virulent hatreds resident on the underbelly of the American psyche.
“We don’t believe there is a functional conservative party in this country and we certainly don’t think the Republican Party is that,” Bannon told a gathering of conservatives in Washington, D.C. “It’s going to be an insurgent, center-right populist movement that is virulently anti-establishment, and it’s going to continue to hammer this city, both the progressive left and the institutional Republican Party.” Stephen Bannon, The Atlantic, August 2016
“The future of the Republican Party should be tapping into… the feeling of belonging and meaning and pride that comes with being part of this whole ‘America First’ movement.” – Stephen Miller
Certainly, Bannon and Miller advised that the next best thing to running against an old, decrepit Joe Biden was to run against a woman—any woman, but in this case, Kamala Harris. Exploiting that part of America’s underbelly, which has always been and will probably always be dominated by men, a machismo that, when threatened, rears up on its hind legs and assets itself with a blind ferocity and singular intent–a Manifest Destiny, if you will, that conquered the west, destroyed the savages, and created an America for Americans only.
Witness the Madison Square Garden rally.
That women would rise against the demise of Roe v Wade was mistakenly seen as categorical. Many rose. Probably more didn’t. And those who didn’t did as they always have–stood by their men. Tammy Wynette had long ago taught them that lesson. Indeed, the entire American Experience until Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony had a different idea, placed women on an imaginary pedestal without voting rights, without property rights, without acknowledgment that they too could have an opinion, that they could affect the course of history.
We can argue that Trump won because of the cost of bread and T-bone steaks. Or that God chose him to be president. Or billions to Ukraine and illegals that could have best served Americans in America who just wanted to upgrade to a giant color TV or a new pickup with all the bells and whistles or to send their kids to schools where their kind of history is taught rather than that which suggest that, yes, slavery was a horrible mess, or that 400 million firearms, 120 guns for every 100 Americans, is conducive to peace and tranquility, or you had better keep a good eye on your kids as Paul could go to public school one day and come home as Paulette.
Or we could argue any of ten thousand reasons, many of which came out of the Orange Bloviator’s mouth during the campaign. But what about that underbelly that, before the Trump Era, remained quietly seething but too obtuse, too nasty, too hateful, and too divisive to bring to the surface? Something that most Americans realized must stay where it was because, if it were roused to the surface, the republic would suffer, perhaps to ruin. Democratic ideals would be lost to the mania of retribution for generations of slights, real or not.
I said in a prior post I wasn’t even going to try to figure out Trump’s win. But the persistent nag in my mind cannot be quelled. Why? Why? Why?
Trump’s win takes us to a very dark and dangerous abyss. It exposes the perceived truths that half of Americans are now comfortable with and even feel entitled to express with impunity. This mandate will reconfigure our republic. It will be as fundamentally transmogrifying to the republic as was the Civil War.
The moron at the center of it all remains a moron. He was only as good as his act, his perfection of politics as performance art. His ability to con so many was his particular genius.
Much more dangerous than the moron is the Yale grad twiddling his thumbs, anticipating his moment in the Oval Office.
The éminence grise, or grey eminence, is the ferocious genius in this saga. It will serve the unrequited dark passions of that one half of America that, yes, embraces America First, most of the time without the hoods.
Where does that leave us? We didn’t buy the con. We know what’s behind the America First rhetoric. We believe in science, studied history, the Constitution, free speech, free press, religious freedom, and democratic ideals embedded in our republic. We know that mindless nationalism is idolatry, a toxic fetish that exalts symbolism rather than the essential guts of a place. It births jingoism and demagoguery. It replaces history with lore. From whole cloth or mere kernels of truth, it grows pernicious fantasies, conspiracies, and lies to justify itself. It struts its righteousness with the claim of divine intervention and sanction. We know that patriotism is knowing the guts of a place and its history. It is knowing the truth of a place, whether good or bad, knowing that the bad can be and has been changed for the good. Patriotism is gratitude for your nation and home and the undying dedication to preserving what sparks that gratitude. Patriotism is not wrapping yourself in a flag; it is embracing the fabric of the place you love, the essence of what it is, not the phantom it isn’t.
Yes, that’s where we’re left. Our patriotic passion for fighting the good fight will persevere, and we will fight. We will.
