There are numerous reasons for the surprising success of Donald’s Trump’s racist bumfight of a campaign, something even the hideous hotelier himself didn’t really want. He impetuously entered the race to “burnish his brand,” which stinks like a cheap cologne concocted from sewer water. A troll NEVER really wants to be king.
The emotional homunculus was subsequently aided by myriad factors: the the drift into the fringe by the GOP base, the initially overcrowded field of lacklustre candidates, a racist backlash to the first African-American President and struggling media companies gladly accepting free content, no matter how ugly or inappropriate the Reality TV show was. It’s not that cable news should have ignored the rise of Trump, but it shouldn’t have abetted it to erase the red ink, either. But there was CNN, Jeff Zucker’s clown car of infotainment, pretending populism in the name of the bottom line, and Maureen Dowd realizing far too late that Trump had never been a “fun brand” and had actually become something fascistic. They were not alone in their opportunism or blissful ignorance.
Two passages about this Baba Booey of an election season, one from Markus Feldenkirchen in Spiegel and a couple of David Remnick quotes from The Hollywood Reporter.
From Feldenkirchen:
The political culture that is emerging here is a mixture of primary school, mafia, and porn industry. It alternates between cries of “He started it!,” brawls, misogyny, and penis size comparison. It’s almost as if guests at a formal dinner, where basic table manners were a given, suddenly began to belch and break wind without restraint. America is currently experiencing not only political but also moral bankruptcy. Dirty tricks are not new in US election campaigns, but the new lows to which the candidates are currently stooping are unprecedented.
It’s not just the two bullies at the top who are to blame. Their rise was made possible through a decline in values such as decency, honesty, tolerance and fairness — a process that has been hastened by the Republican Party more than anyone else. For too long, it has pursued fiscal, economic and social policies that served only companies and the rich, the financial backers of their election campaigns. At the same time, millions of Americans slid into precarity. Cultural declines are often the consequence of real economic decline. Propriety isn’t the primary concern of those with financial worries, those who are embittered and living without hope. Instead, the neglected long for a culture of radicalism and coarseness. Destruction, they believe, may presage something better.
Over the course of decades, the Republicans have likewise built up a culture of contempt for public goods and services. They argue for educational policies that exclude the non-privileged, instead pushing them towards stultification and barbarization. They allow billionaires like the Koch brothers to direct the party’s policy and appoint it’s key candidates. A few years ago, Republicans furthermore embraced the radical and destructive Tea Party movement, thus marking the party’s departure from any semblance of moderation.It is too late to turn back the clock.•
From Remnick:
“Donald Trump, for decades, occupied a kind of comic space in the New York ego-scape,” [Remnick] continued. “He was the guy who discovered, ‘If I just say outrageous things and behave like a cartoon of Louis XIV, I will become enormously famous. It doesn’t matter that I’m wrong or it doesn’t matter that I’m ill-informed and it doesn’t matter that I’m even racist. Some portion of people will find this hilarious.’ But now it’s not a question of whether or not he gets to put his name on the side of a skyscraper. It’s whether he has the nuclear codes.”
Not surprisingly, The New Yorker’s coverage of the presidential candidate has been withering. Remnick penned a piece in the March 14 issue of the magazine that dredged up some Trump bon mots that would make even the shameless billionaire wince (marveling about Melania’s bowel movements or his willingness to have sex with Princess Diana). “This is not a Seth Rogen movie; this is as real as mud,” Remnick wrote.
Regardless of the outcome, the 2016 presidential campaign will go down in the annals of politics thanks to Trump, Remnick told THR.
“I can’t believe that in 100 years, we won’t remember the bizarre, frightening, hilarious — did I mention bizarre? — quality of this race, and it begins and ends with Donald Trump,” he added. “You have an American demagogue getting very close to the Republican nomination. This is as close as an American demagogue has gotten to power in history. George Wallace, Huey Long, all those people never got as close as Donald Trump. We may laugh and find it all a gas. And for journalists, it’s a kind of welfare program. Everybody’s ratings get boosted and people read about it and everybody’s happy, but it’s pretty damn frightening.”•