It’s jarring to even ask this question, so let me explain where it came from:
I was embarrassed when Trump announced he was running for President again. The announcement didn’t seem to warrant much more than an eye-roll, but I thought I’d gripe about it anyway. While expressing my disgust over his candidacy to a couple friends over beers and a really long game of pool, one friend suggested something that has rung in my ears since: “maybe America deserves Trump.”
Shocked, I immediately started listing ways a misogynist, racist buffoon as President would be terrible and destructive to America, but my ears have been left ringing with that question since I heard it. The implications of a Trump presidency could include: the real threat of nuclear war, reversal of fundamental civil rights, violent suppression of free speech. The only comfort is to think that he would likely do something to get himself quickly impeached. While my friend didn’t disagree with any of my points, that wasn’t his point. Let’s put the assessment of those risks aside for a moment, and let ourselves ask: what if we do deserve Trump?
What if America’s political ignorance and apathy have manifested themselves in Trump? As the Republican nominee-to-be, it can hardly be denied that he does accurately represent much of America: a. he has no clue how government works, just like Americans. b. America loves trashy TV. They'll get trashy TV coming to us live from Washington until he gets impeached. c. America is obsessed with loud, ignorant people (e.g. Jerry Springer et al). We’d get plenty more of that. d. He seems to get away with saying and doing anything he wants to anyone without consequences. This isn’t just representative of American brats, but also reflects our government’s M.O. in world affairs. Is Trump the most representative candidate of the people of America?
We can’t ignore the fact that so much of our population is actually choosing him. We can’t disregard the fact this part of our population exists. Is it time to let America’s ignorance and apathy run its course now? Is it time to let the fucking moron in so that we have to watch the consequences of our buffoonery and ignorance and apathy. Wouldn’t our flaws become so blatantly obvious to every one of us that we would have to wise up and save ourselves from our horrible choice? Could we stand to benefit from Trump by things getting so bad that a revolt against this idiot and the Oligarchic system that produced him would become an absolute necessity? Could he finally lay our flaws out bare in front of us?
I had hoped that I would never have had to press this question further than an unpleasant musing during a very long game of pool, but this election season has forced me to consider Trump’s legitimate chance at the White House. It’s forced me to imagine a silver lining to that possibility.
The last rhetorical questions I have: would keeping America from getting what it wants now only serve to delay the inevitable? If we manage to keep Trump out of the White House now, would another -possibly worse insurgency of idiocy- be just 4 years away?
It’s sad that there may be no good answers to any of these rhetorical questions. Answers could reveal what we don’t want to know about ourselves in the suppressed -now emergent- aspects of the disturbed psyche of our society. Trump or not, however, we have a lot of social-political self-assessment to do after this 2016 election.