When Trump said he wanted to "hit them so hard their heads would spin," it struck me how much he sounded like an Italian gangster. Thin-skinned, violent, surrounded by sycophants, might makes right, punch first; ask questions later, shoot from the hip, intimidate, manipulate.
Is that a big part of his appeal? That swaggering, machismo power? (And we all know about the underlying weakness that excess machismo masks.) Is he the bully that can make things right again?
But what about the next part of the movie? You know, the gang wars (world wars)? I honestly don't understand how this part of the movie isn't anticipated. Sooner or later, touchy egos encounter other touchy egos and a war breaks out.
Maybe I have the wrong character in mind. Maybe it is more like Harrison Ford in Air Force One. "Get off of my plane!" His righteousness makes him triumph in the end. USA! USA! Is that it?
I turn to these popular characters, these cultural archetypes, as an attempt to understand Trump’s wide appeal. Even though I tend to see more validity in complex explanations rather than simple ones, I’ll admit being tempted to simply dismiss his admirers as racist. I’ve heard one recurrent explanation voiced by pundits on the right and the left: Trump taps into legitimate anger among those who feel they are getting the shaft economically. I have no difficulty accepting the premise that income inequality is alive and well in this country, yet I still have difficulty understanding the leap to Trump. And, truth be told, I think it is reductionist to place it in those terms. In order to make the leap from anger over getting a raw deal in a stacked economic system to Trump's arena, you have to be willing to join in having a common enemy, those people. You need to succumb to the black-and-white appeal that sweeps large groups of humanity into less than human. That's right, the ability to de-humanize the enemy, like many a soldier has had to do to fulfill his job.
But the soldier is in a war zone, and we are not. Trump's acceptance speech placed people into an imaginary war zone with promises to keep them safe from the Mexican rapists in the alley and the Muslim terrorist next door. I welcome people's thoughts on who among the angry and disenfranchised succumb to Trump's magic. What are the key vulnerabilities? And yes, I am saying there has to be some vulnerabilities to succumb to this con man’s “charm.”