What in the living hell did I just watch? pic.twitter.com/...
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) October 10, 2016
A brief summary of how we got here and where Trump will go next. The short answer is he is not trying to win an election but build a cult following. It helps understand where he goes next.
First watch the 30 second video.
For 28 seconds you'll think he's crazy.
In the last 2 seconds you'll realize he is completely sane.
How we got to this fever swamp:
1) Grifters like Alex Jones in this video (or Limbaugh, Ingraham, Coulter, etc.) sell to the fringe- a fringe they foster with their 'reporting' of Obama's Muslim connections,Hillary killing people, etc. News that is only accurate if it happens to fit the predetermined narrative.
2) These fringe beliefs becomes normalized enough that the establishment adopts them to appease the masses. It is seen as a necessary, even useful, tool.
3) The grifters need to increase the intensity of their lies in order to incite the same reaction (and viewership and sponsorship $) from their niche audience and of course to compete with the endless stream of new players to the game.
4) Repeat 2 and 3 for decades. Decades. The party itself becomes increasingly radicalized to satisfy the base, forcing compromise from the Moderates.
5) Eventually the masses aren't satisfied with people playing at being their brand of crazy. They want one of their own representing them - someone who either always pretends to or really does live in the fake reality of the right-wing noise empire and is therefore unmoored from verifiable and objective facts. Belief is their fact.
6) The greatest grifter of all then enters the arena. After 8 years of a black president, and the threat of 8 years of a woman president. After decades of living in their own carefully crafted reality in which they are under constant and increasing existential threats from outside forces. Where every piece of news is now just selling a paranoid brand, not imparting accurate information.
What Happens Next:
Trump is the end game, He does not care in the slightest if he destroys the GOP. And there will never be a pivot. He will keep escalating because his future depends on the continued loyalty of his most extreme followers, not on the moderate members who will just move on from him after the election.
A loyal following of deplorables will line his coffers and those of his co-conspirators for the rest of his life. These are the only voters he cares about. He will be seen as a near mythic hero wherever he goes, so long as he stays in that reality. He will get to live in a society largely created by him (along with stalwarts like Ailes, Guiliani, Gingrich, etc.), where sexual abuse is normalized and respect for authoritarian leadership is paramount. I'm sorry to say that Trump will win his game even if he loses the election.
The whole thing was just making a sale. It is the one thing Trump is genuinely brilliant at, and so it is the one thing he was always doing. Of course he can't run a campaign. He can't even run a casino in Atlantic City. But he always manages to come out ahead with someone else footing the bill whenever he destroys something.
What worries me most is that I am 100% sure that he will continue to escalate. His best move now is to create a smaller but uniformly loyal support base. And the more ostracized his supporters are from mainstream America, the better it is for Trump. He wants them their beliefs to be so depolorable only other like-minded people will accept their views in open conversation. He doesn't want his followers to get information from anywhere outside the bubble (he has them literally turn around and yell at reporters at rallies), so he must make every non-Trump American not an opponent but an enemy.
You may argue that he is pure ID and he walked into this rather than crafted it. Perhaps there is some truth to that. But Ailes is someone who could craft pure ID into a profitable strategy. Same with Bannon. They are running the campaign. Think about it — what else would two right-wing media guys be doing but right-wing media?
He needs to blame someone or something for his loss — rigged voting and GOP establishment. He needs to destroy his followers belief in any institution but Trump — everything else must be rigged against them and evil. Only their bubble will exist anymore.
Where does this end? That's what worries me. Truly an enemy from within.