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The time to stop laughing at Trump's demagoguery and take it seriously is today
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/will-bunch/63476/from-howard-stern-to-donald-trump-as-democracy-amuses-itself-to-deathWith American manufacturing and the decent working-class jobs that went with it in a state of collapse, with the Watergate generation bitter and cynical about politic ans, young males -- primarily but not exclusively blue collar -- felt their world was under assault. In the popular view of Stern and his fellow "shock jocks," they were the only telling it like it is -- even if "like it is" was, at least during Stern's rise to fame in 1980s, before he toned it down a little, a toxic stew larded with homophobia, racism and sexism. He was using the freer speech wrought by the 1960s not to uplift, but to insult -- especially anyone who threatened white male heterosexual hegemony. In a foreshadowing of Trump, Stern's seeming "gaffes," like pretending to call Air Florida and ask for a one-way ticket to D.C.'s 14th Street Bridge after a jetliner crashed there in 1982, inevitably led to promotions and more riches...
Indeed, there's only one problem with the rise of Donald Trump. He's a demagogue -- arguably the most dangerous one that America has seen in generations. His "truth telling" and one-liners have been built atop of a brownfield of poisonous industrial-strength xenophobia. It's impossible to ignore the intentional non-gaffe that launched his campaign and sent his poll numbers skyward, calling Mexican immigrants criminals and "rapists." His motto "Make America Great Again" is in fact a thinly veiled threat against The Other. That threat that sprung to life this week as the Trump campaign unveiled an immigration policy that includes the forced march of 11 million people -- uprooting families that have been in America for years -- and also goes against 100 years of settled constitutional law regarding citizenship. His first so-called "policy plan" spits at the idea of Congress and consensus, spits harder at the U.S. Constitution, and puts its faith in just one thing: The cult of the personality of Donald Trump. And we've seen how that movie turns out.
Look, the odds remain strong that Trump loses -- that he goes all Ross Perot and quits over some petty grievance, or that the GOP establishment unifies in a stop-Trump effort (although it's hard to see where that level of political skill would come from). And even if Trump shocks the world and wins the Republican nomination, the so-called "Obama coalition" of non-whites, coastal educated professionals, "waitress moms" gays, young people, et cetera -- which gets bigger every four years -- will probably rally around the eventual Democratic nominee.
On the other hand, history's dustbin of the last 100 years is littered with despotic rulers who started out as a joke until they weren't, who ran on a platform of restoring national greatness against the alleged pollution of outsiders, of immigrants or ethnic minorities, who manipulated the real and perceived grievances of the masses to get their foot in the doorways of power, and who had little use for the niceties of diplomacy or even the rule of law once they got in. The time to stop laughing at Trump's demagoguery and take it seriously is today, not next July and heaven forbid not in November of 2016. When it comes to democracy in America, to quote Yogi Berra, it gets late early out there. American has survived civil war, slavery and segregation, and all types of crises. This is no time to amuse ourselves to death.
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