"Not a Crazy Clown"
Perhaps you were watching Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday May 27th when Dilbert creator, Scott Adams, gave what was a most cogent explanation of Donald Trump's rise to prominence in the Republican Party. We who embrace rationality firmly believe that the best ideas prevail and that Hillary Clinton needs only to be herself to win the presidency. Adams calls on his training as a hypnotist and study of persuasion to frame Trump as a master manipulator and not the crazy buffoon whom none in the Republican primary clown car could so tar. And the subtext is that we kid ourselves to believe reason will win this campaign.
I never watched a single episode of The Apprentice and got all that I know about Trump's celebrity the same way as Kardashian nuggets, hip-hop wars, and the significance of Chuck Todd to the history of journalism. What the media deem important so shall we all, or so goes the logic. I wear cluelessness on those things like a gold medal. The bits that have leaked in inform me that Trump's qualifications to be president are equal in style and substance to his ratings successes.
When I probe deeper, I see what Senator Elizabeth Warren described in her speech before the Center for Popular Democracy and have to admit to struggling with sharing the awesome task of citizenship with anyone who could rally behind Donald Trump. "Insecure money-grubber" before "tells it like it is." Anyone who tells me I don't get it is instantly suspect in my book.
Hillary Clinton, or Senator Sanders should he buck the trends, isn't just a clever slogan away from defeating Trump; his reflexes are sharper than any highschooler ever was at rejoinder and put down. So "Dicey Donald" or insert-your-topper-here is doomed to failure because at its core is a calculation which one's citizenship scolds the inner voice for conjuring. Trump sniffs that stuff out quicker than a feral dog and with a drug tolerance sustainably on auto-pilot.
My inclination is to join in that fight to the death for the most real American values which the Trump candidacy demands - the founding values - and if that sounds like plagarism of Senator Warren then so be it. She said: "Whether we’re talking about Donald Trump or economic change – you can’t win if you don’t fight. So we’re in this fight—and we’re in it to win."
In the grand scheme of things, there are no degrees of being on the wrong side of history which make any difference.
