Insurgency Incoming
I’d had personal dealings with politicians who revel in the crowd’s anger, so Trump freaked me out early. It’s visceral; the demagogue’s uncanny knack to provoke mob anger. He plays a teaser. He gets a rustle in the crowd, he repeats with another adjective, a little more tone. He's sounding them out. He gets a cheer, gives them more. He tunes them up like a fiddle, but it isn't dance music.
I wanted to shout at him, demanding he explain his words to a cheering rally on August 9th 2016.
"Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the Second Amendment––if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know––"
Seeing it in print does not convey the insinuating performance, cadence and inflection inflaming his most dangerous factions. There’s more examples, but––
We could expect such stupid noise from a loud drunk at a backyard barbecue. No context can make it okay from a presidential candidate. It is not a joke, not harmless rhetoric, not speculation, not merely hypothetical.
Crazies with guns are too ready in righteous response, as when Trump and others compounded the lunatic fringe Comet Ping Pong “pizzagate” conspiracy theory. To climax this vile propaganda, a follower fired bullets inside a family-fun pizza parlor.
His own appalling statements confirmed Trump’s brutality, so we should not have been surprised by the January 6th insurrection.
Now we are weeks away from a second chance for Trump. This time his people/handlers are more organized. Project 2025 is their governing plan. Their electoral plan includes adamantly partisan election authorities, blatant assaults on voting rights, traitors in Congress and dark money. The backup plan is those Second Amendment people.
Without conscience or scruples, the malignant narcissist will do anything for advantage. Religious and political labels don’t matter. Ideas don’t matter. People don’t matter. They are mere markers in his game. His core project is personal benefit. Schemers seize on Trump's animus and vanity to exploit his electorate. Our foreign adversaries manipulate him.
Malignant narcissist is a technical term used by highly qualified psychologists to describe Trump. We should all inform ourselves on the implications. Any mass of people includes a large minority subject to charismatic leaders. We are naive, with no cultural memory of evil regimes. Too many Americans can’t pick apart well-performed bullshit. His followers don’t care that he is an ignorant liar; the aggression excites and affirms them. His menacing incoherence is the lightning rod for authoritarians craving a thundering bully to set things right.
In June of 2023, University of Chicago research showed about 12 million voters believed violence would be justified to put Trump back in the Oval Office. This is enough to support an insurgency, rather more sinister than an afternoon’s insurrection. Win or lose in 2024, he will leverage that constituency.
Trump the Redeemer looms as the Black Swan Event in American history. A demagogue of anger. A corrupter of society and institutions. A dupe for dictators. He would enable the fascist overthrow that has been brewing for fifty years.