The Man, The Myth, The Charisma, The Appeal
Trump Deconstructed
It remains an enduring mystery why about half of American voters idolise a convicted felon, philanderer, pathological liar, and failed businessman. Liberals struggle to comprehend the mood in the mythical ‘American heartland’ – more of a cultural entity than a landmass and usually defined as comprising the twelve landlocked states of the Midwest plus eastern portions of the Mountain States and bits of the Southern States up to West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
Urbanite liberals cannot make sense of the apparent disconnect between the well-documented misconduct of Donald Trump and the traditional ethical values espoused with great devotion by heartland conservatives.
Cognitive dissonance, the mismatch between behaviour and belief, is far too easy an explanation for Mr Trump’s popularity amongst heartland voters. Here, his many transgressions are routinely dismissed as plots hatched by opponents who lurk in an imaginary swamp, preying on people’s guns, freedoms, and pocket books. The exoneration may be considered rather silly, but contains within an iron logic not easily disproved.
Phenomenal Tenacity
Two failed assassination attempts later, Mr Trump rides high, squeezing his narrow escapes for all they’re worth, and reaffirming his reputation as the proverbial comeback kid who cannot be defeated – not even by bullets. His supporters just love the bluster and swagger with which he bulldozes ahead, shoving all opponents aside with implacable ruthlessness.
Notwithstanding his many personal and business failings, one must admit that such tenacity is admirable. Here is a man who will battle any odds, deny any inconvenient fact, and stick to any lie for as long as it takes to turn it into an alternative truth. In the Trump personality cult there is no room for bit players, doubt, subtlety, or second opinions: only The Man himself matters.
If one didn’t know better, Mr Trump would appear an avid student of the cultist rulers that preceded him, particularly Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin who insisted on being admired as deities despite their many failings, oddball ideas, and disastrous policies.
Mr Trump now promises to emulate many of the practices perfected by assorted authoritarians such as purging the public administration of civil servants deemed ‘disloyal’, persecuting political opponents, and muzzling the free press for propagating truths that deviate from the ruler’s narrative.
Mr Trump doesn’t hide his intentions and spells them out almost daily. Yet, many inhabitants of the ‘home of the brave and land of the free’ eagerly lap it up and dream of the day that liberty dies. Go figure.
Five Words
The 1992 US presidential election was decided on just four (ok, maybe five) words: ”It’s the economy, stupid!” That brilliant phrase clinched the election for Bill Clinton and saw the highly intelligent and suave, yet rather hapless, president George H Bush confined to history as a ‘one-termer’, a dismal fate that Mr Trump now wants to evade at any cost.
Donald Trump is, in a sense, a most welcoming phenomenon in these more ‘politically enlightened’ times: He’s a man’s man. And a completely unapologetic one too. His unreformed masculinity is part of a primal allure that appeals to both male and female voters.
Pot-bellied guys and peroxide blond milfs are a staple at Mr Trump’s campaign rallies, often bellowing the lyrics to James Brown’s ‘It’s a man’s man’s man’s world’ with great gusto. These people brew Folgers coffee as opposed to sipping latte macchiatos, gulp Budweiser instead of Stella Artois, and prefer chicken nuggets and steak to tofu and avocados. Most barely hide their disdain for, if not contempt of, trendy urban hipsters and ‘sissies’ that rush to a safe space whenever someone uses an inappropriate gender pronoun.
Rocky, Rambo & Tony Forever
In this demographic, Rocky still reigns supreme as does Rambo, clutching his awesome machine gun whilst flexing his impressive assemblage of raw muscle power. These are examples Mr Trump is familiar with and happy to emulate. The way he ascends the stage and engages the crowd is eerily reminiscent of Rocky Balboa’s gait and demeanour as he climbed into the rink with an iron determination to floor whomever cowered in the opposite corner.
Successful professional women steeped in risqué office banter, mostly dismiss Mr Trump’s sexually-tinted remarks – “grab ‘em by the pussy” – as typical and inoffensive. “That’s just how they talk,” explained Lisa Gasper, a Philadelphia realtor who is “looking for a leader” and found one in Mr Trump.
Earlier this year, James Carville, the campaign strategist who coined the phrase that swung the 1992 election in the Democrats’ favour, caused considerable furore after publicly complaining that his party is being dominated by “preachy females” pushing messages that are “too feminine.” Though Mr Carville hit the nail on its head, his unsolicited advice was not appreciated.
In contrast, Donald Trump loves tough guys. In 1981, he famously hired Matthew Calamari, a bulky college football player, after he physically hauled a heckler out of the stadium. Mr Calamari was hired on the spot as a bodyguard and has since become one of Mr Trump’s closest confidants.
Trump fans marvel at their idol’s ability to face down his assailants in and out of court, and his supreme arrogance which is widely considered a sign of strength rather than of insecurity. Then again, Mr Trump invokes the qualities of Tony Soprano, the fictional New Jersey mafia boss of the HBO television series, who is ruthless on most days but a clueless father and husband on others.
Manly Tears
At Trump rallies it is surprisingly common to watch grown men shed a tear or two as they discover hope lost in the words of their hero. Many come from far and wide to hear Mr Trump speak. Sara Abbott from LaGrange in Georgia drove two hours to attend a campaign event in Rome, also in Georgia, a small town nestled in the Appalachian foothills.
“You get a feeling of belonging to something special and much bigger. And you leave feeling upbeat, inspired, and unified,” Ms Abbott clarified. Whilst in Rome, Mr Trump didn’t disappoint and spoke for a full two hours, drawing thunderous applause from the crowd and wild chants of staples such as ‘Drill, Baby, Drill!’, ‘Build the Wall!’, and of course ‘Fuck Joe Biden!’
Mr Trump also has his own groupies such as the early-bird ‘Front Row Joes’ and the ‘Women from North Carolina’ who follow the former president everywhere just like a small army of Deadheads clinging to the remnants of the Grateful Dead. Once on stage, Mr Trump will unfailingly joke: “I don’t know what their husbands do.” It works every time.
Trump campaign events often have the look and feel of an impromptu tailgate party where all share similar thoughts, outlooks, fears, and distrusts – and a ravenous appetite for telling truth to power. Here, anti-vaxxers mingle amongst the like-minded to bitch about transgender rights, agree on quasi-racists statements, and denounce anyone outside their happy bubble as a ‘communist’ which lumps together all inhabitants of New York and New England to the east and California and Oregon to the west.
To great acclaim, Mr Trump usually speaks at length about the mainstream media, ‘fake media’; the apocalypse America will suffer if he doesn’t return to the White House; and of course illegal immigrants – his favourite topic. He depicts undocumented immigrants in unequivocal terms: “Every day these crazed monsters kill innocent Americans.”
Deliverance
He goes on to solemnly promise deliverance from the plague: “The largest deportation ever in the history of the country.” When someone in the crowd shouts “Do Something!” and sets the place alight, Mr Trump answers the call to action without missing a beat and directly, not mincing words: “This nation belongs to you. This is your home. This is your heritage. Fight!”
In a country where nearly seventy percent of people believe in angels, heaven, and the power of prayer, it is perhaps no surprise that voters look to identify with candidates on a more spiritual level too. Liberals often wonder how devout christians, born-again or otherwise, can justify their support for a notorious sinner.
Yet, the bedrock of Mr Trump’s following is formed by white evangelicals who strongly believe that the bible contains the inerrant word of god. In this demographic, the Republican candidate’s support exceeds eighty percent. Here, Donald Trump reigns supreme, almost a divinity in his own right.
His chequered legal and financial past, poor church attendance record, ostentatious lifestyle, groping of women, marital infidelity, and other iffy personal practices account for nothing, zilch, nada. Whatever personal flaws Mr Trump may possess, these are either slurs hurled at him by envious elites or insignificant blemishes in light of his perceived accomplishments. Besides: ‘He that is without sin amongst you, let him first cast a stone’ [John 8:7-11].
In fact, his many peccadilloes are easily forgiven, or stubbornly ignored, for the greater good of delivering on abortion and the stalwart defence of ‘christian culture’. He may not personally espouse those values, but is seen to protect them anyway.
Christian Gratitude
At the christian Calvin University, in Michigan, history professor Kristin Kobes emphasises that evangelicals have fought for decades to overturn Roe vs Wade, something finally made possible thanks to the conservative judges nominated by Trump to the US Supreme Court. “This is something evangelicals will not soon forget,” surmises Prof Kobes.
However, the First Amendment to the US Constitution is lost on most evangelical christians who usually prefer the second one which guarantees their right to ‘keep and bear’ arms. Yet, that first amendment – promulgated in 1791 and part of a series of ten that forms the Bill of Rights – bars the US government from establishing a state religion or from limiting the free exercise of religion, including ‘the right not to worship any god at all’.
One of the best-selling paraphernalia at Trump rallies is a t-shirt that proudly announces: ‘Jesus is my saviour, Trump is my president.’ Though a nihilist of long standing, Mr Trump knows how to play the christian crowd. After surviving his first assassination attempt, he brazenly claimed that “god alone” had saved him. During a meeting with church leaders in Washington, Mr Trump indicated that his body had “wounds all over,” alluding to the Passion of Christ. The assembled clerical dignitaries seemed awestruck and nodded in approval.
So far, Mr Trump has managed to walk the tightrope of abortion with remarkable panache, catering to both thou-shalt-not-kill pro-lifers and his more moderate pro-choice supporters, offering vague assurances to both.
On immigration, the candidate is of course much more outspoken. Here too, evangelicals are in broad agreement which baffles outsiders all the more. After all, the gospel is rife with appeals to love, care, and shelter strangers. Again, the explanation need not be overly complex: christians favour tradition and share a respect for the law which, they argue not unreasonably, is being violated by illegal immigrants.
Nostalgia
Mr Trump’s fanbase appears to suffer from periodic bouts of nostalgia. Pittsburg steelworkers, Detroit autoworkers, and the coalminers of Appalachia all want their livelihoods back and return to pre-opioid times when poverty was rare, good-paying blue collar jobs easy to secure, unions took care of business, and life was generally pleasant and simple as memorably captured in The Deer Hunter – before that idyl was dispelled by war and corporate greed.
Though Mr Trump promised to reopen shuttered coal mines and bring back the millions of jobs lost to the migration of businesses to low-wage and low-regulatory countries, nothing of the sort happened during his four-year term in office. Coal production, and the workforce needed to extract it, dwindled throughout the Trump Presidency. The re-shoring of car and electronics manufacturing and steel production likewise went nowhere.
Mr Trump’s claim that he rescued a ‘dead’ steel industry, and transformed it into a ‘thriving’ one, falls flat if facts are entered into the equation. But that’s not how Mr Trump operates. He is in the business of shaping public perception – not handing out spreadsheets. His imposition of a 25% tariff on steel imports is said to have brought prosperity to a moribund industry. Whilst mill executives rejoiced, those of Detroit carmakers despaired as their costs rose, forcing price hikes on the public. Import tariffs are always paid for by the end-consumer.
However, that is not how Mr Trump’s supporters see it. Any explanation that involves two or more steps is usually lost on them. Such it is with inflation, a campaign hot topic. No matter that the profligate spending of the Trump Administration sparked inflation and that the Biden Administration’s more parsimonious approach to federal spending got it under control; the perception is that ‘Sleepy Joe’ dropped the ball and made American families suffer. Also, no matter that under the Democrats, the purchasing power of the average wage outpaced price increases by a comfortable margin: the mantra continues to be ‘everything was better under Trump’.
Fact-Free
This is, in a way, a tribute to a candidate who never allowed facts to seep into, and contaminate, his narrative. Should Mr Trump manage to stay focussed on immigration and the cost of living, a big ask, he can still be a shoe-in for the White House. In a few ‘swing states’ such as Arizona and Nevada, inflation has hit pocketbooks harder than in most.
Towards the end of 2019, fully two-thirds of the houses on sale in Phoenix was accessible to families on a median income. Such a family can now afford only about a quarter of the homes listed for sale in the city. A fair share of Arizona voters cannot be bothered with the details of their predicament: “Everything is more expensive now, so I’m voting Trump,” concludes Judy Moorhead, a retired teacher.
Donald Trump generates both messianic fever and revulsion in equal measure. Here is a serial liar and wife cheater adored by upright evangelicals; a convicted felon thirty-four times over who enjoys strong support amongst law-and-order devotees; a champion of the working class who is whisked to his New York City penthouse in a gold-panelled lift; a member of the New York establishment who promises to ‘drain the swamp’; and a groper of women who is adored by a majority of respectable middle class white ladies.
To call Donald Trump an enigma is to miss the point. Mr Trump doesn’t knowingly tap into certain demographics of gender, race, or class but presents a discourse that cuts across the entire society and frames most topics of concern to voters into a simple and easy to understand ‘us versus them’ package.
Belonging
Moreover, Mr Trump possesses the uncanny ability to instinctively identify with specific groups of voters, becoming part of them without alienating other groups. This is what makes Trump supporters feel unified and understood – they belong. After all, who doesn’t resonate with the slogan Make America Great Again?
Though a classic populist trope, and recurring feature of politics, Mr Trump has hit on a novel way to exploit the contrast between ‘the establishment’ and ‘the people’. His ‘establishment’ casts a wide net and includes not just politicians, journalists, judges, and scientists but also outsiders such as the Chinese (unfair and sneaky rivals), Europeans (free-loading snobs), Arabs (America-haters), and immigrants (murderers, rapists, and pet-eaters).
Whereas Barack Obama’s ‘Yes, We Can’ slogan implied a certain responsibility for self-empowerment, Mr Trump offers a much less onerous ‘Yes, I Can’ alternative, suggesting that the ‘people’ stand in need of a saviour – and he heard their call.
Whereas most wealthy toffs use their fortune to erect walls to keep the riffraff out of sight (and out of mind), Mr Trump deploys his wealth, albeit somewhat less impressive than suggested, to draw closer to common folk. The argument goes that Mr Trump is so incredibly rich and successful that he simply cannot be ‘bought’ as his less well-off opponents are.
He, the story continues, can work for ‘the people’, further their interests, deliver them from swamp creatures, and champion their cause without paying heed to corporate interests or those of the establishment.
Uncouth
Mr Trump’s breaking of rules and convention – his crude language, vicious rants, offensive slurs, endless misdemeanours, incessant philandering – only serve to emphasise and substantiate his status as an outsider, if not an outlaw comparable to the likes of Robin Hood, Jesse James, Butch Cassidy, Ned Kelly or any other folk hero/gunslinger battling, Quixote-like, the powers-that-be – and, whilst at it, lining their own pockets with the loot taken from the hypocrites putting on airs of respectability.
This also helps explain why, despite numerous convictions in court, Mr Trump’s reputation remains undented amongst his followers. He, the saviour of America, towers far above the political fray. Each charge levelled at the Republican candidate merely confirms his status as a hero assailed by an establishment terrified of judgment day – which of course is a-coming.
Another attitude that mystifies and confounds many liberals is Mr Trump’s insistence that the 2020 presidential election was ‘stolen’ from him. Even though he lost all of the sixty-plus lawsuits filed by his lawyers over voting irregularities, Mr Trump maintains that he is the victim of a grand conspiracy orchestrated by the ‘crooked’ Biden family.
Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host who played Donald Trump as a fiddle and often refused to take calls from the White House just to show off his powers to its occupant, kept the Big Steal story alive for months on end even though he knew it to be false.
Mr Carlson earned untold millions by trafficking in the alt-truths that eventually cost his employer $787 million in damages. Fox News, tormented by lawsuits, decided to settle out of court a case brought against the network by the manufacturer of the voting machines that Mr Carlson had continuously denounced as enablers of ‘The Steal’.
Bandwagon
Fired from the channel, Mr Carlson – unperturbed where others might have displayed shame and embarrassment – started his own television station on the platform previously known as Twitter. He scored a scoop of sorts with an interview with Russian president Vladimir Putin and paraded a host of other odd guests in front of his audience. The lineup included Nazi apologist Darryl Cooper who sanctifies Adolf Hitler as Europe’s ‘misunderstood peacemaker’ and recasts Winston Churchill as the ‘inveterate warmonger.’
By jumping on the Trump bandwagon, alt-truth merchants benefit from the ability to propagate crackpot ideas, deny self-evident facts, propagate lies, and justify repugnant behaviour – all under the guise of being heroic outsiders, just like their hero, leader, and saviour; challenging the establishment in its most cherished opinions and denouncing their swamp as a dark pool of vice and corruption, not unlike the Rome of the tyrant emperors Caligula and Nero before the city’s fall.
The tragic fate of Rome and its empire, determined and sealed by years of decadence and depravity, offers Donald Trump an excellent analogy: Present-day America, he argues, is destined to succumb under the weight of its corrupt, decadent, and depraved elites that feast on the carcass of the nation, fiddling and dancing whilst Washington burns.
Modern-Day Caesar
He – Donald Trump – is the Julius Caesar of the 21st century who will cross the Rubicon and restore the American empire to the greatness squandered by squabbling elites. However, the analogy must not be fully disclosed.
After Julius Caesar and his armies crossed the Rubicon River, he marched on Rome, precipitated a civil war, hijacked the Senate, and built himself a throne to rule as a semi-divine sovereign. Most historians agree that Caesar’s dismantling of political structures set in motion the later collapse of the republic.
Just like Mr Trump, Caesar was already a celebrity – the conqueror of Gaul (France) – when he took power. The ruling class he had skilfully outmanoeuvred openly despised him and questioned his fitness for high office. In turn, Caesar governed under his own rules, did away with established procedure and protocol – and adjusted the law to fit his personal ambition.
Perhaps even more disconcerting, Caesar displayed numerous personal foibles, was ridiculed for his vanity, and featured in countless sex scandals that shocked Roman mores. He also used to address the people of Rome directly, whipping up resentment against the elites whilst flaunting his own personal wealth.
To top it off, Caesar also frequently complained of noncitizens taking jobs from Romans. He met his end – Et tu, Brutus? – at the hands of disgruntled senators led by the emperor’s close ally and personal friend Marcus Junius Brutus. Caesar was stabbed 23 times by the conspirators. However, the conspirators failed to resurrect the republic.
Sometimes, history finds ways to repeat itself.
Trompe L’œil
The Trump universe is a topsy-turvy edifice wherein nothing is straightforward or quite as it looks from the outside. People such as Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and the other grandees of the Republican Party, now reshaped in Mr Trump’s image, are not stupid, nor delusional, mentally deranged, or otherwise impaired.
They are savvy political operators chasing power – the more, the better – with all the tools and weapons at their disposal – and with a complete disregard for the interests of the nation, its people, or truth. All of that may of course also be explained as keeping a laser-sharp focus on outcomes or a single-minded dedication to success.
These people are (street) smart, manipulative, and ruthless in exploiting the legitimate concerns of voters with a hollow discourse, mostly strung together from slogans and one-liners, that plays on the fears, insecurities, and existential angst running through America’s heartland.
That heartland constitutes a bleak and almost dystopian canvas of abandoned farms and homesteads, towns with boarded-up main streets, yards featuring the carcasses of wrecked cars and abandoned household appliances, crumbling homes fronted by creaking porches, and pharmacies turned into veritable fortresses to guard against desperate opioid addicts.
In short, here lie the shards of the legendary American Dream that was destroyed, dismantled, and discarded by the insatiable thirst for profit of corporates and their shareholders – the urban elites so despised by Mr Trump’s followers.
The American Way
Whilst the banks foreclosed on farms and homesteads, factories either shuttered or moved across the border, once bustling main streets became deserted as custom vanished. Disowned farmers went to work for the large agricultural conglomerates who had gobbled up the land, former shopkeepers found employ as ‘associates’ at the big box stores that forced them out of business, and others either pulled up stakes or descended into the stupor caused by addiction and substance abuse.
‘It’s the American way,’ became the lame excuse that justified the brutal exploitation and appropriation of the commons in what had once been the New Jerusalem on the Hill. And those poor and clueless liberals and progressives in their care-free urban bubbles still wonder why some people just want to Make America Great Again?
It doesn’t at all matter that the clock cannot be turned back to the happy days of the Eisenhower Administration, nor does it matter that Donald Trump is the true and ultimate enemy of ‘the people’ and won’t lift a finger to help them improve their life – or that Mr Trump has not yet found a foe he’s unwilling to gift a white flag as he did to the Taliban.
All that matters is the perception of Mr Trump as the long-awaited saviour who will deliver Middle America from its suffering; crush any enemy that dares stand in the way of ‘god’s own country’; and kick out all those who do not belong. If not Donald Trump, than the first politician who can genuinely connect with the heartland, understand its decline, and promise to revert it.
To understand the motivation of Trump voters is not particularly difficult once one leaves the urban jungle behind and travels America’s endless interior. Listen to its people, explore its recent history, grasp its ethics, understand its culture, and recognise that the heartland has been dealt an impossible hand and gotten a raw deal. A quick look at the results of 2020 presidential election clarifies all: depicted on a map, the central parts of the US are coloured a solid red with blue concentrated along the western and northeastern seaboards and the Great Lakes Region.
A Peek at Pike
For an even deeper understanding of the emotions that drive voters into Mr Trump’s arms, have a peek at Pike County at the eastern edge of Kentucky. The hollows and valleys of its mountains and hills carry exceptionally rich coal seams, yet Pike County is home to the nation’s second-poorest congressional district and is also its ‘whitest’ with 98.35% of its population self-reporting as white (here, the term ‘caucasian’ is frowned upon).
Pike County used to be coloured deep blue. Lyndon B Jonson, John F Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, and John Kerry all carried the district by comfortable margins over their Republican rivals. In fact, between the 1932 (Franklin D Roosevelt vs Herbert Hoover) and the 2004 (George W Bush vs John Kerry) presidential elections, Pike County voted blue (Democrat) every time but in 1956 (Dwight D Eisenhower) and 1972 (Richard Nixon).
That voting preference flipped in 2008 when Pike County went solidly Republican. It has turned a deeper red since. Whilst in 2008, some 56% of the county voted for John McCain (or against Barack Obama), in the 2012, 2016, and 2020 presidential elections around 80% of Pike County voters saw – almost literally – red. Here, the Democratic Party has been almost fully eclipsed and its candidates are no longer welcome.
The shift was, and continues to be, inspired by shame and a loss of pride. Once fierce and proud coalminers, truck drivers, and other discarded workers now perform menial jobs preparing sandwiches at Subway, mowing lawns, collecting trash, or manning the reception desk at rundown motels. They are much worse off than their fathers.
How Decline Works
A grandson of a local coal miner explained the inner workings of decline: “First, a guy gets a pink slip and blames his stupid supervisor. Next, he shakes his fist at the government for its war on coal and its pushing of an environmental agenda. Then, he is caught short by low unemployment benefits and has to accept ‘girly jobs’ in order to survive. His sense of self-worth is by now gone. The outlook is bleak. He gets depressed and tries to escape reality through alcohol or drugs. He hears on the news that city-folk call him ignorant, racist, sexist, homophobic, and a deadbeat. Now he’s no longer ashamed put whopping mad and consumed by rage. And finally, a guy shows up who shares his anger, feels his pain, understands his suffering, and promises to wipe away all those fancy people who abandoned and insulted him. In short: vengeance as in payback time.”
Pike County people believe in god and the protestant work ethic: ‘if you work and succeed, you reap the rewards; if you fail, you take the blame.’ The sour irony is that research has shown that 69% of Democrats believe that failure is mostly caused by circumstances beyond a person’s control, whilst 78% of Republicans are convinced that failure represents a personal defeat rather than a societal one.
Though their predicament was caused by external forces – a tougher economy, automation, growing concerns over global warming – the former coalminers of Pike County blame themselves in a agonising ritual of self-flagellation imposed by cultural values. This ‘pride paradox’ explains the irresistible appeal of Donald Trump not only in Pike County but anyplace in the country that feels left behind.
From Shame to Blame
Mr Trump helps shift the shame felt by many of his followers to blame. His MAGA movement seeks to remove and redress the distress felt by many and promises a quick turnaround in the fortunes of the country. Precise policy details are not required: it is sufficient to understand the anxieties felt in rural and small-town America. Before Trump, if presidential hopefuls cared at all, they merely went through the motions before speeding off in their caravans of black Suburbans and Navigators.
Many voters in Pike County, and elsewhere throughout the heartland, vividly remember Hillary Clinton describing them on national television as ‘a basket of deplorables’, and Bette Midler helpfully portraying West Virginians as ‘poor, illiterate, and strung out’.
The plight of working class America, and how it empowered the fringes of the body politic, is meticulously laid out in Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right, the instant classic of Arlie Russell Hochschild published earlier this year and mandatory reading for any candidate daring to venture into Appalachia and beyond.
Donald Trump is not the problem America faces. He is but the symptom of a society cast adrift from its moorings. Whilst a back-to-the-future approach is unlikely to address the mismatch between reality and expectation, it would be advisable not to dismiss Mr Trump and brand his legion of followers as delusional, ignorant, or even misguided. These people merely want to be seen and heard; and ask for an opportunity to succeed. Their anger is easy to explain and easier still to feel. That anger is what drives Donald Trump and may well pave his path to the White House.
Cover photo: Former president Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona.
Photo credits
- © 2020 photo of Mr Trump at Arizona rally by Gage Skidmore
- © 2017 photo of abandoned coal mine by EcoWatch
- © 2019 photo of bulldozer shovelling on coal heap by WMYT
- © 2010 photo of Rambo firing an M60 by Ben41
- © 1971 photo of Paul Harrington, coal miner, by Michael Coers of the Courier Journal
