You should do away with the idea that the danger of a Trump-candidacy is that his positions are crazy and extreme, the real danger is that they appear normal and sensible.
Allow me to explain by giving you a few examples:
Recently in Sweden, a group of parents lead a protest saying that they didn’t want they’re children sharing a dining room (or any facilities) with children of Syrian refugees resulting in the school board forcing the children to use “less agreeable facilities” and they cited that the reason for this was safety concerns from the parents. This might appear strange given that Sweden has never been subjected to violent attacks nor threatened with them from people in the middle-east and they haven’t been genuinely involved in any recent conflict. Even more strange when you read Sweden has their own mass surveillance law that their defense minister is currently trying to expand despite it being admonished by the EU parliament.
Then you read a report on Sweden from Committee for Elimination of Racial Discrimination (United Nations) and you’ll notice that one of the criticism they’ve received is that their media has created a violent image of people from the middle-east by highlighting only extremism in their daily news insinuating a link between that and the culture of Islam as well muslims in general.
To be blunt: they’ve imposed segregation in a school solely on the basis of media-induced fear, sounds familiar?
Let’s take a more palpable example from the UK in 2013:
Despite a decrease in crime overall during that period there was an article published showing there was an increase in the fear of crime. They concluded in that it was mostly due to the subversion of reality through network interactions (or in Layman’s term: media) as well as socio-economic problems (we had Reagan, they had Thatcher) and by increasing the surveillance-state they succeeded increased the fear (this wasn’t unique for the US after 9/11). This then explained the outcry and the demand the public was having at the time for more crime-related legislature simply on the basis of media-induced fear.
This, if nothing else, should be familiar.
As far as politics goes in Sweden; the party that is rapidly becoming to become the largest, Sweden Democrats (SD), is lead their very own version of Trump by the name of Jimmie Åkesson. He, and his party, are essentially outright racists (particularly towards muslims), entrenched in various fraud wherever they hold office, succeeded in insulting just about every other human being on earth (aside from white men)…..and yet the party is still growing (other parties are adapting some of their rhetoric towards immigrants to gain voters anew). One thing that is rather interesting for this Swedish-Trump and US-Trump supporters comparison is that while faith in mainstream media is not detrimental in Sweden (average 76%) all the independent media that exists are wing-nuts like Breitbart and that is, of course, where the majority of SD supporters get their news.
Same thing happening in the UK; you have Nigel Farage and his UKIP progressing beautifully with policies on par with SD, they’ve actually formed a racist coalition in the EU parliament along with Marine Le Pen, the French version of Trump, and I almost forgot that she actually endorsed him.
At his “best”, Farage also insulted women and virtually everybody and smiled happily while denying an apology, and yes: his party is growing as well.
These aren’t isolated incidents: In Austria they almost elected their own Trump called Norbert Hofer (he got 49.7% of the popular vote on election night).
And as for the prize-winner right now, it is the current prime-minister of Denmark: you’ll get fined if you’re brave enough to receive Syrian refugees and help them to another country because they are basically banned in your own country (a temporary ban on muslims shouldn’t seem so far fetched now, right?). Even if they are received by government officials they are forced into inhumane detention camps, you can read it yourself in the CERD report if interested. This is partly a result of threats they received from various extremist groups for the drawing of a particular cartoon but mostly driven by the media, which then painted all muslims with that narrative (just like everywhere else in the west). This is now resulting in such things as an activist for children’s rights is being punished for doing something humanitarian in the time of a moral crisis.
There are more examples of these people popping all over the world and while I would urge you to explore the world for various nut-cases but I hope you see the point I’m trying to make when it comes to Donald J Trump. Our very own media is currently multitasking between their commitment to Ailes and Nixon policies and while integrating latin-americans and muslims into the conversation. Although Donald Trumps policies are wrong and immoral, to say the least, they are policies that speaks to the genuine feelings of fear and anxiety whether they're based in reality (like inequality, racism etc.) or media-induced (like the fear of ‘minorities’ whether here or abroad).
As long as a nation accumulates enough fear and anxiety about the safety of their lives as well as the prospects for the future, and has been harboring that kind feeling for over 40 years, you shouldn’t underestimate the danger of a Trump-like character.
Luckily, our Trump is more incendiary and less articulate then the others as far as behaviour/rhetoric goes but on the other hand his brand makes him quite powerful to the point of subduing an entire network despite the network having displayed some minor indications of journalistic integrity for the first time in history. That is something that no other presidential candidate has exhibited in recent memory, I’ve yet to read a story on another Trump-character achieving something similar and it is most likely something uniquely dangerous about our Trump: He even succeeded in making Bill O’Rilley (the ultimate television-bully) to submit and call himself a “traditional populist” after suggesting that Bill should see a psychiatrist on live TV.
So while our Trump is a bit special, even by comparison to the other clones, but on the other hand the same goes for our income inequality, the highest in any western society, and as well as our culture of fear; how else are you supposed to convince an entire nation to pursue and remain in perpetual war in the middle-east or pass such things as the crime bill, patriot act or suggest building a wall to stop immigrants and so on.
So while this particular ‘Trump’ will hopefully not win this election, unless we address what Trump’s candidacy really represents in a serious manner rather than the various versions of “OMG, look at stupid! Isn’t he stupid?! He can’t possibly become president! Hahaha!” that I keep seeing so far there is a genuine possibility of him winning. If you think I’m mistaken then feel free to compare the efficacy of this kind of criticism towards the other Trumps-characters of the world and see how they effective they were (to save you time: they didn’t work).
Unless significant changes happen in our society the inauguration of a Trump-like character becomes a question of ‘when’, not ‘how’.