“Wait! Mom, wait!” I jumped out of my chair in the middle of a conversation with my mother and ran to my trusty laptop. “I figured it out! I have the answer that all of America has been waiting for!” After 59 years, my mother still needs a bit of adjustment to be around me.
I have decoded the Trump Formula to the Presidency. It is the same formula everybody’s favorite head of hair, RFK, Jr., is using.
Up until now the response to Trump’s grasping for power has been laughter turning into tears. While we sing to each other about the horror of Trump’s successful rhetoric, our melodies somehow never reduces its effect.
I understand how.
Saying awful things puts a person on a stage of condemnation that actually elevates them. The people who hate the goodie-two-shoes revel in our pain as we writhe on a sword Broken Rules. Everybody repeats the self-promoter’s name and that they said something awful. The name is soon all over the nation and somehow that disconnects from the awful at some point
By saying anti-semitic or racist things, a candidate creates a ladder of power and perch through the attention - even if it is negative. That is the technique that JFK, Jr. is using. It’s what Trump did. It’s what Kim Kardashian did with her Kimono brand. She deliberately provoked international outrage to raise the profile of her new company. Balenciaga did the same thing with its S & M advertising photo shoot with children.
To shock is to win.
Let’s try another tactic.
The next time RFK, Jr. wants a boost and says something else offensive, our response can be “Another Presidential candidate wanted attention and said something awful. You know, like a grade schooler.”
No names, no repeating the offensive remark.
No magnification.
Subscribe to The Tell with Christine Axsmith and I will make a Viking dress and dance in it.