These are a
few observations and personal reflections about the Trump Rally on March 12th
in Dayton Ohio – the rally at which a protester, Thomas DiMassimo, charged the
stage. While I was there, I didn’t
actually see the attack. The event was
held in a large aircraft hangar and as soon as the commotion started everyone
stood on tiptoe to see – which meant that only people very near the stage saw
anything. In any case, there is plenty
to say about the event itself.
Above all
else, it is more than a little notable that thousands of people would gladly
come out and stand on a hard concrete floor, crowded together waiting for hours
on end, to watch a presidential candidate who, by any objective standards, is
no great orator. Trump likes to say
there is “alot of love” at his rallies, and from his perspective he is
right. The man is a political rock
star. He doesn’t get polite applause –
ever. He gets a deafening roar of
solidarity. I saw several people who had
obviously come to disrupt his speech simply lose heart and slink back through
the crowd to quietly leave. I did not,
by the way, see one of them impeded or threatened. It is fair to say that Trump supporters are
angry, but it is unfair to say they are a mob.
Having been to many Tea Party events where the average age was probably
close to sixty, it was refreshing to see a large turnout of people in their
twenties and thirties. I’m not going to
say the crowd was a perfect mirror of the latest US census in
racial terms, but frankly I am sick of caring.
There were Asians and Latinos here and there. There were a scattering of blacks, some of
whom had actually not come to shout the speaker down. I didn’t get any sense that anyone who
honestly came to listen was unwelcome.
The event
really had two salient features. The
first was Trump’s own rambling, off-the-cuff, idiosyncratic stump speech. The second was the premeditated, periodic
interruptions of protesters. I can
fairly say that most of the protests were little conspiracies in themselves
because when someone either raised an inflammatory sign or shouted some
self-righteous obscenity, there were almost always two or three others in
support, ready to capture the event on their cell phone cameras. The goal, I suppose, was either to become
heroes on YouTube or to get extra credit in their multicultural empowerment
studies classes. These people were
not beaten or pushed, but ushered off with swift efficiency by the Secret
Service. Usually they went out peaceably
and smiling, though one young gentleman left throwing mock punches at the
crowd, and hooting like an ape. I am
sorry, but I actually witnessed this.
Most of the protesters I saw were white college-age males with furry
faces and glasses – not that I want to be accused of profiling. Without talking to them, I admit I have no
idea with what race or gender they actually identified. I retain a measure of sympathy for the blind
idealism of youth, but it is strained pretty thin when it is treading on
someone else’s freedom of speech. Trump
supporters have not performed such antics at Bernie Sanders rallies.
The content of
Trump’s speech was an amalgam of things I’ve already heard him say, with a few
hard jabs at Governor Kasich who was, of course, Trump’s major competitor in
the state. Not very many thoughtful
people like all of Trump’s message, but there is much there to like if you give
him a fair hearing. Trump’s genius is
simply to state obvious things that all of the other candidates have been too
straitjacketed by consultants and donors to say, and he says these things over
and over again to the delight and reassurance of his supporters. We need a real border. Muslim immigration is a risky
proposition. Trade deals should be made
for economic rather than political reasons.
This makes Trump a reincarnation of Hitler – really? I looked hard, but did not see the little
mustache.
To be honest,
I am truly bothered when Trump reaffirms his advocacy of torture. Sometimes I wonder if I am ready to vote for
a man who does such a good imitation not of Hitler – but of Tony Soprano. He thinks that we should reinstate
waterboarding and worse, on the argument that ISIS is unconstrained by
moral qualms and our constraints make it impossible for us to fight them
effectively. George Orwell said it with
a bit more eloquence: “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only
because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” There is some truth to this species of
argument – made all the more credible by the Obama administration’s anemic
suggestion that the way to defeat ISIS is to somehow raise employment levels in
the Middle East. I think that torture
will always happen in war, and in certain cases really is the lesser of two
evils, but I have a problem with introducing it as a legally sanctioned
instrument of the government of a republic.
I fear that what is done to terrorists today may be done to ordinary
criminals tomorrow, and, eventually, to people who just hold politically
unpopular views. It bothers me. I worry.
It does not end my support for Trump, however.
It is not as
though the choice we have were Trump or Gerald Ford. We no longer live in a functioning, rational
republic – but a thoroughly degenerate kleptocracy. Apart from Trump, we have essentially two
choices. On the one hand, we have Bernie
Sanders – a comparatively honest ideologue who would have more-or-less the same
relationship to the US economy that an iceberg had to the Titanic. Hasn’t the world tried socialism often
enough? Why should we imagine that,
maybe this time, it will not lead to chronic economic lethargy at best – and
gulags and totalitarianism at worst. In
answer to my own question, most millenials simply don’t know any real
history. They believe in socialism
because they’ve been indoctrinated by a couple of generations of frustrated old
radicals. Socialism has always had a
pleasant icing of progress and idealism – it’s the rotten or iron-hard cake
underneath that always proves distasteful to digest. On the other hand, behind the other podiums
we have – everybody else. Cruz
supporters will probably fume that I would toss their perfectly-branded hero
into the same dirty basket with Hillary Clinton, but ultimately the two
associate with the same Council on Foreign Relations, the same Goldman Sachs,
and they both went to the same elitist, ultra-liberal universities. They are both surrounded by similar groups of
political consultants to craft their messages for maximum effect and minimum
culpability. They are, in short, just
members of different family branches of the same corrupt, inbred, politic class. Kasich is just an awkward uncle of the family
– out of touch and past his prime. I
have ceased to listen to what any of these people say because, frankly, their
words are empty. “Conservative,” from
the lips of a politician, means about as much as “racist” from the lips of
Melissa Harris-Perry. It’s a nonsense
word used solely for effect. Political
consultants have undoubtedly estimated the fraction of the public who will be
seduced by a particular lie, what fraction will check their facts, and if the
lie will probably net more votes from suckers than it will lose from
fact-checkers – any of these candidates will use it.
There is every
reason to believe the mother of all monetary crises lurks just over the
horizon. Running crushing deficits year
after year is unsustainable. An elitist,
lying, kleptocratic lawyer versus Tony Soprano with some real world experience
and an economics degree? Is that really
a hard choice? Which is more unpleasant –
the human suffering caused by an unchecked economic implosion or the
waterboarding of a few terrorists? The
latter does raise risks – the former is all but a certainty. Trump’s detractors may just wish they had a
strongman when the banks collapse again.
The ending of
the rally was surprisingly calm and quiet.
When the news cameras were put away, the protestors disappeared. Trump walked the edge of crowd, smiling and
shaking hands. A small cloud of signs
bent in his direction for autographs the way that plants bend toward the
light. He signed a few. From the side he could barely be seen among his
federal bodyguards – standing out only because of his distinctive hair. It is strange to witness the unlikely fulcrum
on which history appears about to pivot.
Tens of millions of people watch and pray.
