Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Donald Trump's Popularity: Symptom of a Disease



The more outrageous Donald Trump’s statements are , the more popular he becomes. Some say that the Media are at fault.

The tragedy here is not Trump himself. He is only a buffoon and a mediocrity. He had the usual head start which almost all millionaires/billionaires enjoy (his father was a major real estate developer) then he had some luck, so he accumulated wealth. Big deal. I am not impressed. Nothing distinguishes him very much from millions of other mediocrities, as far as abilities or character are concerned. So much for the persistent wish among Americans to see wealth as evidence of and the result of exceptional moral fiber. 

The tragedy is the growing popularity Trump enjoys as a result of his asinine behavior. Millions of Republicans like his crass statements about Mexican immigrants often being rapists, about Senator John McCain not being a war hero because he was captured, and his refusal to apologize. The disease is in the people, not in Donald Trump. And a disease it is.


Countries sometimes catch a virus. It happened most prominently in Germany in the 1930s, the most civilized country in the world, the country of Beethoven and Goethe. It has happened elsewhere throughout history. A recent example is Rwanda, where the Hutus exterminated a million Tutsis in 1994.

While Americans are not exterminating each other, and are unlikely to do so in the near future, many of them have contracted the disease of which I speak. This is a virus-like contagion whose symptoms consist of rage, resentment, envy, hatred and nihilism. It attacks those who feel threatened, those who perceive themselves as slipping, as being overtaken by new groups. These people are largely middle-class and white. They are used to thinking of themselves as being better than others, but now they see that others are moving ahead. They develop hatred for various groups, for designated racial and ethnic categories, for various “elites,” such as intellectuals and the “liberal media.” This is the disease of REACTION, and in the worst case scenario, REACTIONARY FASCISM. Its main fuel consists of PARANOIA and HATRED. It attacks the middle class more than other strata, men more than women, the middle-aged and the old more than the young. What triggers the disease is some threat or some misfortune, for example economic recession, foreigners pouring in, or domestic lower classes and hitherto oppressed minorities agitating for better treatment. Demagoguery is a powerful palliative and aphrodisiac for such patients. When one watches someone like Rush Limbaugh, the pathology is clearly in evidence. The broadcaster’s behavior is reminiscent of documentary footage of Hitler’s and Joe McCarthy’s speeches.

The same virus is now also spreading across Europe. Nativism and xenophobia are spreading in France, the Netherlands, Hungary and elsewhere.

The prototype of such a lethal contagion occurred in Europe in the 1930s. The epicenter was Germany, but the epidemic was continent-wide. Most European countries had vigorous Nazi and Fascist parties. Norway had its Quisling, the Dutch had the NSB, there were millions of collaborators in France, the governments of Italy, Hungary, Austria, Spain and Portugal were fascist. While heroic Dutchmen hid Anne Frank and her family, other despicable Dutchmen turned them in to the Gestapo. In Germany during the 1930s, the epidemic at first was minor. Many saw Hitler as a joke, not to be taken seriously.

Hopefully, America is much too diverse for this disease to contaminate everyone, or to attract enough people to elect such a government. Hopefully, the disease of “REACTION” currently affecting millions of Americans will not spread to the point of producing a murderous totalitarian regime. Hopefully, the country’s rightward move will stop short of that, even as it increasingly resembles some of the deeply stratified and oppressive countries that have dotted Latin America, Eastern Europe and parts of Asia throughout history.

But there is no doubt that the disease, while hopefully less virulent, is generically similar to the one that led Germany to Armageddon from 1933 to 1945.

© Tom Kando 2015

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