After
the election of Donald Trump as President I felt as if I had fallen asleep and
awakened into a dystopian America where Trump, The Clown, was in charge of a
bizarre circus called the Government. It seemed like a bad dream. I have a feeling
that millions of other people have experienced the same sensation.
When
Trump announced that he was running for President I, along with millions of
other people, thought it was some kind of hoax. Trump had distinguished himself
as a “Birther” by declaring that President Obama was not born in the United
States and was not eligible to be President. Trump showed no embarrassment when
Obama released his birth certificate and proved that he was born in Hawaii and
that Trump was an idiot. At that point the conservative columnist, George Will,
described Trump as a “Bloviating Ignoramus.” That expression is one of the best
I have ever read.
I had always
considered Trump to be a loud-mouthed, publicity-seeking, jerk, and could not
imagine him as a serious candidate for the White House. I guess I pretty much
thought that Jeb Bush of Florida would be the Republican candidate (That shows
how much I knew). When a Trump supporter asked me what I thought about Trump I
sneered that Trump was a “Joke.” My acquaintance was shocked.
I think that
millions of intelligent Americans still can’t believe that this ignorant,
crude, bullying, jackass actually won enough votes to be elected. We were
relying on polls that showed a majority of votes for Hillary Clinton. We didn’t
comprehend the mysteries of the Electoral College. We didn’t understand the
class-resentment that motivated so many uneducated blue-collar people to vote
for Trump. Some of the people I know who are Trump supporters actually
graduated from college. But if you were to inspect their homes you would be
hard-put to find a book. Many people graduate from college and that is the end
of all efforts at learning. Many colleges and universities grind-out alumni who
are virtually illiterate.
As a brilliant
writer and artist I know (My brother) said: “What we are experiencing is an anti-intellectual uprising
by ignorant people who wildly resent the fact that they are not taken seriously
(hence Trump's ‘elite’ references in his speeches). They may be educated
but they have no curiosity or interest in learning anything new. You might
recall Josef Goebbels' speech at the 1933 burning of books in which he
said that the age of Jewish intellectualism was at an end (substitute coastal
elites for Jewish). They love Trump because he does not read or pursue
intellectual ideas and so he gives them permission to be stupid.”
There is something
clownish about Trump. He looks like a clown with his orange hair implants and
his red face. When he speaks it seems like the speech of a high-school class
clown. He does not use the manner of speech we are used to hearing from
dignified international statesmen like Barack Obama. He likes to send daily
messages on Twitter, but he does not employ correct vocabulary, syntax, or
grammar. It appears that he is virtually illiterate. When he speaks, it is hard
to tell whether he is serious or not. Some speeches wander all over the place
as if he was mentally impaired. A number of his most outlandish statements have
had to be recalled by the White House on the assurance that he was only joking.
One observer described Trump’s behavior at the G-7 Summit as clowning around.
The New Yorker magazine portrayed Trump as a “Dangerous Clown” on
its October 30, 2017, issue. The New York Daily News cover
on Independence Day showed Trump wearing clown makeup and a broken crown. In The Week, Noah Millman wrote a piece
describing Trump as a “Sad Clown.” One wonders whether the movie “IT,” with its
scary monstrous clown, was meant to refer to Trump.
All of this would
not be so bad if it were not for the fact that he is the president of the most
powerful nation on Earth. I doubt that his supporters carefully considered the
likely results of having such a clown as President.
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