The Trump rally in the heart of still wealthy Connecticut --
Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, located in Connecticut’s uber-rich “Gold
Coast” – was hot in both the literal and metaphorical sense.
Five thousand supporters of Donald Trump braving the heat,
100 degrees and climbing, were packed like sardines at the University awaiting
the saving word. Trump rallies are political chautauqua events. What’s a
chautauqua rally without steaming hot crowds, eh? A flop, that’s what.
It is Trump, not the recently defanged Vermont socialist
Bernie Sanders, who evokes a William Jennings Bryan excitement in crowds.
Dismissed from the Democratic race following an amusingly uneventful Democratic
National Convention, Mr. Sanders on cue sheepishly endorsed Hillary Clinton –
the Bonnie of the Bonnie and Clyde Clinton Foundation – bagged a $600,000 third
home on Lake Champlain and ambled off to a quiet retirement. His will be a
pleasant exile: Bill Curry will not call;
Salon will move on; the phone will not ring.
The national media, chronically unable to step in front of
its own prejudices, hasn’t quite figured Trump out yet.
Mr. Trump connects with the political “everyman” – the
unwashed masses who have not yet succumbed to the irresistible editorials of
Eastern seaboard progressives -- adopting his thought patterns and speech codes
which, need it be said, are not the thought patterns and speech codes of 99
percent of the editorial boards of major newspapers in the dis-United States.
Mr. Trump’s opposite is not, as has been supposed, the boring pin-striped
Republican of yore, but the universally disdained “main-stream media” and, of
course, incumbent establishment politicians, both Republican and Democrat, who
have made a ruin of domestic and foreign policy. Lately, Mr. Trump has identified
President Barack Obama as the CEO of ISIS, scattering the wits of the usual
political TV commentators.
When Mr. Trump paused several times in his stock stump
sermon to castigate the establishment Media – “Honestly, I’m not running
against Crooked Hillary. I’m running against the crooked media” – electric
applause rumbled through the crowd. The anti-media rhetoric was red meat thrown
to lions.
But what really resonated was the notion that inherent and
creaky incumbent power structures are by definition the cause and not the
solution to our problems. This is a flag stolen from the iron grip of the
journalistic ancient regime.
One “white male” in the crowd was carrying a sign announcing
he was an “intelligent college graduate,” – take that New York Times! -- a
disappointment no doubt to those who insist Mr. Trump’s support comes from
redneck rubes clinging to their Christian God and guns. Another
celebrant, Mitch Beck, a 54-year-old executive recruiter from Monroe, summed
up the
long “winter of our discontent” with remarkable precision: “If
Bush [the younger] put the economy in the grave, Obama put the dirt on top of
it. I hope Trump has a shovel,” presumably to dig the rest of us out from under
the rubble.
The furry and primitive notion of Mr. Trump is that he
represents some sort of viral reaction – but to what and for what no one knows.
Comparisons with the recently exiled Mr. Sanders persist: Mr. Trump is a
populist of rare vintage; he is a herculean outsider come to clean the Augean
Stables in Washington DC; like all Caesars, he likes walls; he is either
the spear-point of some unknowable advance in human nature, or an imbecile. He
stirs ancient prejudices in the governing class. He is a political Pan piping a
new tune. He is a future full of frankincense and myrrh. He is Attila at the
gates.
Mr. Trump’s overreach – Mr. Obama is not literally the CEO
of ISIS – bleached from the news evidence of Democratic Presidential nominee
Hillary Clinton's persistent corruption – her “crookedness.” Gilbert Chagoury,
Lebanese billionaire who contributed one to five million to the Clinton
foundation, found that his business endeavors in Nigeria were being hampered by
the U.S. State Department’s designation of Islamic terrorist organization Boko
Haram as a terrorist organization. The designation, some think, may have
been delayed
following Mr. Chagoury’s generous contribution. At best, the
politically toxic contribution points to an invitation to corruption that lies
at the center of the Clinton Foundation, mostly a private slush fund connecting
former Secretary of State Clinton with her own campaign fundraising.
Trump supporters are not imbecilic: They understand
perfectly well the difference between a wedding invitation and a wedding, but
they also understand that a wedding invitation is a strong indicator that a
wedding is at hand.
Mr. Trump speaks their language and shouts in the public
arena what politicians whisper in closets – which is why he has a larger and
more attentive audience than the editorial board of the New York Times.
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