Sure, it requires massive cajones to stomach Donald Trump, but there's always that enemy-of-my-enemies thing to pump one up and see one through to the abysmal end, which, for everyone's sake, I hope isn't too soon. I need him, we need him, his party needs him and it's no stretch, I think, to say that America's political system needs him — as a cathartic.
Trump is the perfect expression of populism in its ugliest form — raw emotion exalted as policy, the drooling herd as a brain, bile as leadership. As political philosopher Pete Clemenza observed in The Godfather, "These things gotta happen every five years or so, ten years. Helps to get rid of the bad blood." Professor Clemenza was right, although he erred in his chronology. "These things" are more generational than decadal; we experienced Longism (and assorted Longisms) in the Great Depression, McCarthy-Goldwaterism in reaction to prevailing liberalism, Gingrichism as the voice of Everyman vulgarism. Populism leans to the right, though it's not exclusively a creature of the right.
And that, of course, is what makes Trump demagogically attractive to so much of the populace. He spans both ideological worlds; in his oratorical ramblings, he defends big government as the proper, socialist instrument of safety nets as well as the righteous, police-state protector of nationalism.
Are we getting the drift?
To help clarify, let's pick up where Prof. Clemenza left off: "Been ten years since the last one. You know, you gotta stop them at the beginning, like they should have stopped Hitler at Munich."
Or, perhaps as The Virtuous People should have stopped him five years earlier?
The little corporal had a diversionary trick, however, which I'd advise the GOP's big mouth to more closely emulate. Once politician Hitler sensed a populist affinity for his nationalist message, he began tempering his anti-Semitism. The latter remained on the campaign trail, but it remained there subdued. For Hitler realized that high office would not come through the bawdiest of racism. He focused instead on Germany's external demons. That really got the rubes (many of whom were not particularly anti-Semetic) going. In brief, Hitler needed to expand his base — and he did.
Trump already has the external-demons thing down, but he hasn't yet tempered his anti-Hispanicism. And as long as he sounds like as raving racist, he'll fall short in expanding his base. That would be a tragedy, since Trump needs to go all the nominating way before he can expose — for the grazing, chronically inattentive but one hopes educable electorate at large — just how decadent the GOP has become.
Like Adolf, the Donald would lose a broader democratic race. The little corporal never did triumph electorally; it was Germany's political system — one vastly differentiated from ours — that permitted him to gain and consolidate power. This potential does not exist in the American system, thus Trump is more the GOP's pathogen than he is the nation's. Fascism, my friend, does not stalk America — notwithstanding the click-baited cries of some writers.
I appreciate that some readers might mourn my seduction by Godwin's Law. The law itself is valid, but despair of its use is something I've never understood. Demagoguery follows a universal pattern; there was little uniqueness in Hitler's deployment of it, nor was there in Joe McCarthy's or Huey Long's, just as now there is striking familiarity in Donald Trump's. To invoke Hitler as a comparable master of the art is merely to set high standards when identifying the real thing, and to help guide the modern demagogue on his way.
Where, here, in the United States, he'll crash and burn — and this one will take the GOP with him. Glory be. I love this guy Trump.