By Marc Jampole
Like many people who don’t inhabit the alternative universe
known as 21st century American conservatism, I have been cogitating a lot about
why Donald Trump has sustained his popularity among those who affiliate with
the Republican Party. After poring over a list of his stands on and approaches
to the issues, his background, his attitudes towards politics, his demeanor,
speaking style and other pertinent aspects of his candidacy, the answer hit me
with the strength of an epiphany.
Donald Trump is popular because he is just like Ronald
Reagan in all significant ways, except for one: Reagan spoke with a smile of
hope, whereas Trump prefers a frown of angry fear.
Let’s take a look at the many ways Trump resembles Reagan.
Trump is still active, but I’ll make my comparisons in the past tense for ease
of reading:
Both served as omniscient hosts for television shows. Before
TV, both had mediocre careers, Reagan as a B movie actor and Trump as a real estate
developer who sent properties into bankruptcy multiple times, lost billions of
his investors’ dollars, and achieved a net worth about half of what it would
have been if he had passively invested the hundreds of millions he inherited
from his father into stocks.
Both started as progressives, but then moved far right
before beginning their political career. Both campaigned as anti-establishment,
anti-government outsiders, cultivating dissatisfied and resentful voters who
were convinced someone or something had taken away their birthright, a group
comprising to a large degree whites without a college education who voted the
Democratic Party line before 1980.
Both were divorced, non-observant secularists with what some
might label amoral pasts who nevertheless found lots of support among very
religious Christians.
The economic platform of both depended on lowering taxes and
removing government regulations to transfer wealth and income from the middle
and lower classes up the socio-economic ladder to the rich and super-rich.
Both supported building up our armed forces and advocated a
robust use of the military to resolve foreign conflicts and prosecute foreign
policy. Both articulated foreign policy stands with bluster.
Both painted a vision of America based on a mythical past
and declared confidently that he would return the country to those halcyon
days.
Both demonized innocent groups and turned perceived enemies
into one-sided all-evil comic book villains. Both appealed to our worst natures in matters
involving race and charity for the poor. One minor difference here that
reflects our loss of civility in the public sector—Reagan would always talk in polite,
a well-understood code, such as “welfare queens,” whereas Trump mixes code with
vulgar explicitness.
Neither was a master, or even an apprentice, of the everyday
details of developing and pursuing policies, preferring to talk about and
consider only the larger picture.
Although one cultivated a westerner’s demeanor and the other
thought he epitomized the Big Apple, both were old-fashioned, town-and-country,
meat-and-potatoes, American songbook types who reflected a pre-rock-and-roll
mentality and zeitgeist, one in which women play an inherently inferior role. Neither
gave a hint of enjoying intellectual pursuits. Both artificially processed
their hair to appear younger.
Both tended to make their points using anecdotes instead of
facts. Both proved to be quite able to fabricate realistic-sounding lies to
support their views. Neither ever backed down from a lie once told, and often
doubled-down by insisting on the veracity of his false statements. Consider the
similarities between Reagan’s denials on the Iran-Contra scandal and Trump
insisting that thousands in New Jersey cheered on rooftops as the Twin Towers
toppled on 9/11.
The one salient difference between The Gipper and The Donald
is that Reagan delivered his messages with a smile that told us that he was
confident about the future. Reagan spoke optimistically about the glorious,
limitless utopia in store for the country upon his election, which contrasted
with four years of Jimmy Carter’s sour wailing about how bad things were. Now
it’s Trump who is bemoaning the present, but instead of whining as the cartoonish
media image of Carter did, Trump bellows aggressively, shows his teeth and
brandishes his bloodlust, much as Segismundo in Calderón’s classic drama “Life is a Dream.” Interestingly
enough, every Republican candidate is painting a similarly dire picture of the
U.S. economy and society in alarmist terms that makes it seem as if we are on
the verge of a complete collapse and invasion.
Facial expression aside, though, Trump is heir to the Reagan mantle. But times have changed. Conditions have worsened for most Americans, thanks in whole to the policies that Reagan advocated.
Trump’s bellicose sky-is-falling approach matches our
anxious zeitgeist. Trump feeds off the panic felt by several groups: by
evangelicals as they see the country accept gay marriage and a woman’s right to
an abortion; by blue collar whites as they see manufacturing jobs continue to
disappear and the ones that still exist generate less purchasing power than
before; by nativists and racists who fear immigrants and minorities are taking
over the country and that the government is giving away their hard earned
dollars to support those they believe to be inferior; by gun owners fearful of
a coming wave of gun control ordinances as Americans grow tired of gun deaths
and injuries. Overriding all these anxieties is the fear felt by most Americans
of another terror attack, which has caused some to become xenophobic and
anti-Islam.
No comments:
Post a Comment