The past few days have been tough on just about everybody who pays even passing attention to media.
In case you've been living in a cave under a mountain in Antarctica, what's got people stirred up lately is Donald Trump, the loudmouth Cheeto-Colored drunk at the end of the bar who decided late last year to run for President, just for shits and giggles.
Well, it turns out he's pretty good at whipping up a certain sort of American person; so good at whipping these people up in fact that his rallies have been getting more and more unapologetically violent and more and more reminiscent of a phenomenon specific to the fall of Weimar Germany, circa 1933 and after.
I admit it got to me too, especially the mess Trump created, on purpose, in Chicago Saturday evening March 12th. As I write this, Trump is threatening to send "his people" to rallies for Bernie Sanders, a not at all veiled threat that gives his Trump-shirted devotees yet another green light to create chaos, do bodily harm, and spread hate.
But I've had a day to calm down and take some deep breaths, and listen to me carefully:
Donald Trump will never be President of the United States.
Why not, you ask?
Hey, I'm glad you asked that question!
Here's five good reasons why not:
1) Trump is courting the wrong demographic. Pissed off racist white people are now, believe it or not, in the minority in the U.S. The United States is already solidly multicultural, and within the next ten to fifteen years many academic types predict that there will be more brown people than white people here. Those of us who live and work in cities are not alarmed about this--we work and live side by side with the very people Trump demonizes. Neither time nor history is on Trump's side. He's talking to the past, literally beating a dead horse.
2) Millennials own the future, and Trump is the antithesis of what Millennials want. Most young people today know that their parents and grandparents generation pretty much wrecked the economy and the political system, which you might expect to make them bitter, but no. Millennials have embraced multiculturalism, racial equality and harmony, flexible work and gender roles, ecological responsibility, and creative endeavors. Trump is old. He's ugly. And his fans are longing for the bad old days. Not a good way to get the kids on board.
3) Trump can't do any of the things he's promising. Mexico is not going to build a wall all the way across the Southern border. The very experienced and often brilliant generals in the US military are not going to follow the orders of a demagogue. (Many have already said so.) Half of the country is not going to listen to him, even if by some cataclysmic accident he 'became' President. He can't govern. He can only shoot off his mouth and lose his temper.
4) This is not the Weimar Republic, this is the United States. Most of us came here to get away from the kind of government that Trump wants. Our ancestors (sometimes our parents or even us) took grave risks and started with nothing to speak of, just to escape that kind of totalitarian nightmare. Another large portion of the US population was brought here against their will to build this country and pick its cotton and clean its homes and more, only gaining their freedom after hundreds of years of slavery and abuse. We remember the bad times, and we don't want them back. We won't have that.
5) The RNC doesn't have to give the nomination to Trump. A brokered convention could hand the nomination to anyone, regardless of how many delegates Trump gets and regardless of how much spittle his deranged fans leave on windows and camera lenses. And if Trump, lacking the nomination, runs as an Independent, great. Split the vote, end of story, the Democrat wins.
So that, my friends, is that.
This Trump BS has really gotten in the way of my Rick Snyder vendetta, and things at the state level with Governor Mealy Mouth and his progress in not fixing Flint are really heating up in dramatic ways that deserve way more attention than bloated middle-aged demagogues who import trophy wives from Slavic countries.
Oh yes, and,
6) Mrs.Trump as First Lady? Girlfriend, please.
Might as well have Kanye West as Secretary of State.
Kim Kardashian as Head of FEMA.
Bruce Jenner as Vice President.
So let the press keep coming all over itself while covering this maniac.
The rest of us have real problems to deal with, and they need our immediate and focused attention.
