Desperation, Deceit and Demagoguery- the Case Against Donald Trump
When all is lost, and it appears that all the breaks are beginning to fall against the conventional wisdom of the so-called experts, the ugly triad of desperation, deceit and demagoguery enter from stage right, and the race to the bottom accelerates with fevered fervor. Such has become the theatre of the absurd that is the Republican Party, as it enters the ides of March.
Dozens of GOP insiders, ranging from failed candidates like Lindsey Graham, to failed nominees like Mitt Romney, to failed party leaders like Mitch McConnell and John McCain, to corporate icons like Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, are all conspiring to deny Donald Trump the Republican nomination for the United States presidency. In addition, many tens of millions of dollars have been spent, thus far by Republican super-PACs, in an effort to take down Donald Trump, and to de-legitimize his campaign- a campaign that has been run well outside the control of party apparatchiks, and without the blessing of the powers that be. The print newspapers, the National Review, and the major news networks have all joined in this initiative, as well, and it seems that there is an all-out effort to deny the American people the right to choose their candidate through popular voting.
Given the fact that all of these entities have seemingly soiled their britches at the very thought of a President Trump, is self-evident in the desperation, the deceit and the demagoguery of their efforts and it suggests one thing: “the Donald” can win the nomination and win the presidency. This possibility scares the living hell out of the established powers in both parties, because his nomination and his ultimate election would effectively end the influence of money and the special interests that have lorded over all three of the branches of government, as has unfortunately been the case long since before most of us can even recall.
While, as Hippocrates and Erasmus once observed that “desperate times call for desperate measures,” this dubious and dirty deed-doing has extended to the point that many of these Republican insiders would sooner see the election of Democrat Hillary Clinton than the election of Donald Trump…in other words these despicable desperados would sooner support a criminal under investigation by the FBI, than support an outsider who has added millions of new Republican voters and is attracting disaffected Democrats, independents, and a host of others to the nominating process, as no others have ever done. Such speaks to the fact that Hillary Clinton is one of “their own,” at long last, and partisan politics be damned.
Why? Is it because “the Donald” answers insult with insult? Is it because Trump eschews political correctness and nuance? Is it because they just don’t like him? Is it because he doesn’t stand, and doesn’t take, all of the excrement that has been thrown at him, from every direction?
Unartful as he is, as flawed as might be, as unpolished a portrait as he portrays, there is nothing in Donald Trump’s past that even begins to deserve the detritus that has been dumped on him, with charges of racism, sexism, misogyny, xenophobia, ad nauseam, by those who in truth, feel threatened at the prospect of his election and this may well be the secret to his allure. The people, long fed up with manipulation and being taken for granted, are starting a movement, yes a movement, to bring their own country away from the vested interests of the selfish and corrupt, and back under their own control- and it could not come at a better time, nor a more prescient moment, than the spring of 2016.
-Drew Nickell, 9 March 2016
© 2016 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.