and in the ensuing conflagration badly burns the Republican party. That is probably the best way to describe his column for today’s New York Times, which is titled Donald Trump, the Worst of America.
As you might expect, it is written in light of the most recent of Trump’s various bloviations, including his attacking the women who have come out against him, the most recent (town hall) debate, and his denigration of our electoral processes.
Consider Blow’s beginning two paragraphs:
Donald Trump has virtually stopped trying to win this election by any conventional metric and is instead stacking logs of grievance on the funeral pyre with the great anticipation of setting it ablaze if current polls turn out to be predictive.
There is something calamitous in the air that surrounds the campaign, a hostile fatalism that bespeaks a man convinced that the end is near and aiming his anger at all within reach.
Trust me when I say that this opening is mild compared to what Blow gives us as he continues.
He describes Trump’s response to the women coming out against him as showing a stunning lack of grace, contrition and empathy, much like Trump himself is, then burns him with
Instead, he is doubling down on sexism.
and goes on to illustrate with three of the statements we have heard from Trump over the past week. After doing so, before transitioning to the next topic, he fans the flames he has already started by writing of Trump
It’s as if the man is on a mission to demonstrate to voters the staggering magnitude of his social vulgarity and emotional ineptitude. He has dispensed with all semblances of wanting to appear presidential and embraced what seems to be most natural to him: acting like a pig.
Let’s stop for a moment and consider just a few of the burn marks in that block quote:
his social vulgarity
emotional ineptitude
acting like a pig
One MIGHT be merciful for someone who demonstrates the 2nd of those if the person had never had a proper chance to learn, but Trump simply does not care. I might quibble at the common usage of the third, because real porcines are highly intelligent and sociable animals, and I have my doubts about Trump on both scores, but the point is well made.
The transition mentioned is that Blow pivots to Trump’s complaining about everything being rigged against him, threatening to sue the paper in which this column appears, and raising the question of a drug test, before writing
These are the ravings of a lunatic.
Blow recognizes how sad this is but evinces no sympathy for Trump given how during the entire campaign the candidate attacked others for political advantage, but now wants to cry “woe-is-me” to gain the sympathy of others. To this Blow responds at the end of one paragraph and the entirety of the next
Slim chance, big guy.
The coarseness of your character has been put on full display, and now the electorate has come to cash the check you wrote.
Feeling the heat as the flames get higher?
But we are only just heating up.
Next come two paragraphs, framed in the context of the tv show Mad Men, each of which ends with another zinger, first
He looks pathetic.
and then
He is brash to mask his fragility.
before transitioning with another one-liner paragraph:
But in a way, Trump was authentically made in America.
Blow reminds us that in America we tend to romanticize playboys as much as cowboys, reminds us of the long string of Trump behavior (for which he deliberately sought publicity in the tabloids) as a way of presenting himself through his bad boy behavior, then burning him again with
But he’s not a kid; he’s a cad.
Here I take a step back to note that the caddish behavior is very much part of Trump’s character well beyond his behavior with women. The term can certainly be applied to how he has dealt with suppliers, with regulations on charities, with investors.
Blow takes a slightly different tack. He does discuss how Trump seems to think rules are for others. He writes of how Trump is a logical extentions of toxic masculinity and misogyny, rampant racism, wealth worship, and anti-intellectualism, which means
Trump is the logical extension of the worst of America.
About that line I note that it explains some of Trump’s appeal to a portion of the electorate that is unhappy with how America has progressed since the days of Mad Men.
It is at this point that Blow spreads the conflagration to include the Republican Party, where he says it was logical for Trump to park himself.
I encourage you to read the entire piece. There is only a small section on why the Republican party is the place for Trump. In very few words he hits it on multiple issues, including continued opposition to Obama after his election, viewing government as something to be stopped, and there is also a delicious short paragraph about Christian conservatives. The flames now thoroughly engulf much of the Republican coalition, especially its leaders, which seems appropriate given how many refuse to disavow Trump.
But I cannot end this without getting to Blow’s final paragraph, which seems a fit conclusion, one that enables us to sit back and enjoy the bonfire:
Trump is fundamentally altering American politics — coarsening them, corrupting them, cratering them. And America, particularly conservative America, has only itself to blame.
Which is why it is appropriate to include all in this bonfire.