Guardian: 'A cauldron of the baser instincts of humanity': inside Donald Trump's Nevada triumph
The Trump brand seems more than a little confused. Is he the populist hero giving voice to the blue-collar folks who feel lost in Barack Obama’s America? Or is he the man with a private jet and an overpriced collection of handbags on sale in the lobby of his hotel? It certainly doesn’t matter that, on his arrival before the opening of voting in Nevada on Tuesday – a state he later wins with a resounding victory – a group of activists from the Culinary Workers Union protest in front of the hotel over Trump’s unwillingness to negotiate with employees who recently voted to unionize. It’s all meaningless to Trump supporters, in no small part because they have banded together against a common enemy: the media.
Attending a Trump rally is a nervy thing for a journalist. Invariably, the Republican frontrunner will single out the cordoned-off media pen, pointing in our direction while declaring that we are mostly horrible people who are ruining the nation one word at a time. ... It is quite a feeling to be among a crowd of thousands who would gladly tear you to pieces, given the right circumstances. As Trump so callously tells one of the hecklers being escorted out of the rally, in the old days, he would have been taken out on a stretcher. The greying, overwhelmingly white audience might not actually be able to beat me up due to their age, but the spectre of menace is almost as potent as the real thing.
Ideology is almost beside the point with the people here in Nevada. Personality and temperament are what sway voters in this insane, apocalyptic election. Before Trump’s mortal enemy the media declare him the winner of the caucus, I speak to Tario Mills, a 19-year-old woman covered in tattoos. She came to the victory speech with her father. This is her first election and she is a firmly committed Trump voter. She wants to go into politics as a profession, but is concerned that her tattoos may make that difficult. “When Donald wants something, he’s going to fight for it. I need someone who’s going to fight for what I want too,” she says. When I ask which issue she cares about the most, she says LGBT rights. I mention that Trump’s not the most committed ally of the cause. “Hillary shifted in support of it. Maybe he will, too.” But what if he doesn’t? “Then he doesn’t do it, you know.” At this moment, I realise that there is a segment of the Trump base that doesn’t care what he says. They just trust him to be tough, like a surly father figure from whom you crave approval in between swats from a leather belt. “If I don’t agree with what he does, I’ll still love and support him.”
If it doesn’t matter what Trump believes, and if it doesn’t matter that he lives in a gold and marble palace while his employees earn less than a living wage, then he might just be unstoppable.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/24/a-cauldron-of-the-baser-instincts-of-humanity-inside-donald-trumps-nevada-triumph
"They just trust him to be tough, like a surly father figure from whom you crave approval in between swats from a leather belt. “If I don’t agree with what he does, I’ll still love and support him.” Seems to epitomize the conservative authoritarian mindset.
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