I first learned about the very existence of Mango Mussolini when he decided to run for the office of POTUS at the end of Obama’s second term. Until that time, I had no idea who he was or that he existed at all. Although I had read Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal several times at that time. It took a while, but I did eventually realize that Reacher Gilt is his parody, albeit with one difference – Reacher is intelligent and well informed, albeit ruthless and manipulative.
Trump has none of Reacher’s good qualities, only the bad ones.
I listened to some of his speeches at the beginning of his political career, and frankly, I was appalled at their quality, or more precisely, their lack thereof. From the very beginning, he demonstrated profound ignorance about history, current politics, law, economics, and indeed about how the world works in general. I became very quickly convinced that he is an idiot, and the only reason why he is neither in jail nor without a penny to his name is that he was born to riches and that has always shielded him from the most egregious negative consequences of his actions.
But although I was unimpressed with the content of his speeches from the very start, he was at least speaking coherently and staying on topic back then. It went downhill from that time on; his speeches deteriorated both in quality with regard to content, as well as regarding the execution. Nowadays, he trips over words, is unable to follow a coherent thought to the end, and rehashes old grievances all the time, all signs of dementia.
So IMO, he was always a fool, and now he is a demented fool. Yet he won the presidency twice, and just barely lost once. And to this day, many people keep saying that this is proof that he is neither demented nor a fool, but actually intelligent and a masterful manipulator. I disagree for several reasons.
Mainly, he did not actually have to manipulate the American public to vote for him. A sizable portion of said public was always racist, bigoted, ignorant, and resentful, and these “qualities” were nurtured and elevated as virtues by the USA right-wing pseudonews apparatus for decades prior to his entering the political arena. A self-feeding loop was thus created just prior to 9/11, and it has fed on itself ever since, culminating in the rise of the Tangerine Tyrant. He was at the exact cross of a crass, boorish, racist, ignorant, and resentful asshole and a dude whose riches served as an easy-to-understand shorthand for competence for the voter base to look up to. Because actual competence requires effort to recognize.
He was just lucky to be the exact guy that the already pre-manipulated masses of hateful peabrained bigots wanted. He did not win their vote because he was intelligent; he won it because he fit the mold of hate that was formed in their minds through decades of propaganda.
That he became president is not proof of his intelligence, knowledge, or competence. It is proof of a profound lack of all those qualities in the American public.
Recall also the context of the US public’s decades of “non-political” brainwashing by decades of television programming with the “meta” message that what they see on their screens matters more than what they experience in their lives, and the specific lie from “The Apprentice” that Trump-the-businessman always held control and never made mistakes.
Insert screaming emoji here.
Well said!
While I agree with you about Trump and his character, there are couple points where I don’t.
First, the crass and boorish anti-intellectualism among US voters didn’t start with Newt Gingrich and friends just before 9/11. It has been there for a long, long time. My own memory goes back to Reagan, who had good handlers, but was largely elected on a regressive ticket by regressive voters who were upset about civil rights and women’s lib. But you can trace this back further, through Nixon, and Goldwater. It is referenced by Hofstadter in his classic 1963 essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”. Menkin writes about it in 1920 his quote of, “As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
Prior to Menkin there was the Know-Nothing party, a very nationalistic, protectionist, political party which wanted to isolate the US from the rest of the world. Even prior to that, there was the election of Andrew Jackson in 1829, which was largely due to his popularity with the poor and ignorant voters who had previously never voted before.
There is a long tradition in the US of admiring ignorance and worshiping wealth.
The second point I would like to make is that while there are about 20% of voters who will always vote for the bully, I don’t think the majority of voters do so. The reasons why Trump garnered so many votes in three elections is not entirely due to that 20%, although I would agree that the 20% of know-nothings were the ones which pushed him over the top. There are many reasons why voters chose Trump over other candidates, racism and bigotry were certainly part of it, as was people listening to religious leaders. But there is also a great desire for change in the US and there was a significant number of Trump voters who also voted for Obama. The democratic party should have recognized this, and worried about it, and changed their presentation when Trump won the first time. Trump was always going to lose in 2020, I know people will say that he didn’t lose by as large a margin as he should have, but by 2020 he had lost a lot of support from a lot of groups. Why did he get elected again in 2024? Because the democratic party hadn’t learned the lesson; people are hurting and want change. That is why Obama was elected, and why Trump was elected in his first term. Obama couldn’t deliver, and Clinton 2 was going to be more of the same. Biden didn’t have a chance to deliver, as he was trying to fix the damage from Trump’s first term. Harris again promised no changes, stay the course.
There are more and more people in the US who are saying that maybe it would be better if the country crashed again, like in 1929, because maybe then some real change will occur. I don’t agree with them, it’s incredibly risky and that change may not go the way people want (and it’s now more likely than ever to drag much of the world with it), but if the options are slow strangulation at the hands of the rich or revolution, it will be revolution. The only question at that point is when.
Trump is an aging buffoon, surrounded by sycophants who are collecting great wealth and power by allowing him to be the lightning rod for the opprobrium they deserve. The republicans in congress are afraid of his tweets, because they are also afraid of being pushed off the gravy train. The democrats in congress are conservative, happy with the status quo and not listening to the people who say they are hurting. The people being elected who are called “progressive” and “socialist” are promoting policies which were democractic party platform planks in the 1970’s but were abandoned by the democractic party when the neoliberals took over the party in the 1990’s.
I would like to think that the US citizens are finally realizing that we are living koyaanisqatsi, and that changes in our society have to occur to avoid collapse. But, as another famous quote from Abba Eban goes, “Men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted all other resources.”
@flex, you certainly have more knowledge about how far back the moronic nature of US politics goes than I do. In Reagan’s time, I was still in elementary school, living behind the Iron Curtain, and I definitely had very limited knowledge. I started to pay attention to US politics in about 1999 before my travels there.
I just wish the US wasn’t so successful at exporting misery and stupidity to Europe.
Charly wrote, I just wish the US wasn’t so successful at exporting misery and stupidity to Europe.
So do I… So do I.