Donald Trump’s popularity continues to baffle the neo-Puritanical progressives. And, per the pollsters, baffle many suburban womyn.
Let’s throw them a lifeline. MALCOM KYEYUNE at Unherd reports:
“Trump’s ‘popularity seems nearly impossible to justify, and thus people come up with equally fantastical or belittling explanations for his success. To some, Trump appears like some sort of hypnotist, a snake charmer who has simply mesmerised much of the electorate.”
Kyeyune probably is here referring to Dilbert’s creator, Scott Adams, a trained hypnotist who has propounded this insight. And to me, professionally recognized as one of the world’s top 100 nonclinical hypnotists, who has propounded this idea at Newsmax, Fortune, Forbes and the Journal of Hypnotism.
May have been fantastical. Not belittling.
So. Let’s cue up Bach’s Sleepers Awake and get our clueless progressives woke to the fount of Trump’s astonishing popularity.
Most Americans love rascals way more than we love choirboys. Evidence is that 74,216,728 Americans do, anyway.
As I wrote in 2016 at Forbes, “It surely is no coincidence that Trump’s emergence comes in the era where Breaking Bad entered the Guinness Book of World Records as ‘the highest rated TV series’ of all time. Popular culture now is dominated by stories of antiheroes: Walter White, Don Draper, Barksdale, Frank Underwood, Tony Soprano …”
Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, considered by many the Great American Novel, is composed of many stories about Tom’s mischievous exploits. Mischievous, not malicious.
We barely recall Tom’s half-brother Sid. Tom, not Sid, is the protagonist and beloved icon.
Per Public Domain Superheroes: “Tom’s half-brother. Sid is a goody-goody who enjoys getting Tom into trouble. He is mean-spirited but, presents a superficial show of model behavior. He is thus the opposite of Tom, who is warmhearted but, behaves badly.”
Tom is the embodiment of the “antihero.” As I wrote here at Newsmax in 2020:
“Our era has abandoned heroes. Rather than embracing villains we have embraced the antihero. As Dr. H. Eric Bender wrote in Psychology Today, ‘Antiheroes liberate us. They reject societal constraints and expectations imposed upon us. Antiheroes give our grievances a voice. They make us feel like something right is being done, even if it is legally wrong. Antiheroes do things we're afraid to do. They are who they are and they do as they want — without apology.’
“So, let's look at the 2020 election as a fight between America's superego, Joe Biden, and America's id, Donald Trump. America's superego narrowly prevailed. Still, in our prevailing culture of anti-heroism, Donald J. Trump, political anti-hero, lives on, fascinating the teeming masses.”
Clues to Trump’s popular appeal are hidden in plain sight.
Consider Rhett Butler, suitor of the glamorous, narcissistic Scarlett O’Hara. Rhett is the cynical, yet noble, anti-hero of Gone with the Wind.
Unlike the virtuous Ashley Wilkes, Rhett makes women swoon. America loves bad (not evil) boys.
And consider Casablanca. The sentimental cynic Rick engages us (and Ilsa) more than does the noble resistance hero, Victor Laszlo.
Or consider the lovable Bugs, “wascally wabbit” Bunny. Bugs commands a far greater fan club than does Elmer “Be vewwy vewwy quiet, I’m hunting wabbits” Fudd.
Consider professional wrestling, to which Donald Trump is well connected. Huge contingents cheer on the “heel” versus the virtuous “babyface.”
Why? Happiness.
H.L. Mencken in A Little Book in C Major, defined puritanism as ‘The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.’ Americans, at least the many of us who feel oppressed rather than inspired by the Puritans’ purity, yearn to embrace the naughty.
Hey. Notwithstanding Plymouth Rock and all that, naughty is the American Way, hinted at right there in the Declaration of Independence.
Donald Trump has perfected the character, or at least the persona, of the fun-loving rascal. Thus he endears himself to the MAGAs, a small but intense political force and many more.
MAGAs are not fascists as the left likes to defame them. Most, anyway.
Hitler wasn’t a rascal. Hitler was evil.
America played a heroic role in destroying the Nazis, the fascists, and the Imperial Japanese. Most Americans detested dictators.
And still do.
The Washington Post’s editorial board’s Shadi Hamid recently observed, to the consternation of thousands of clueless Post subscribers, that “what has made Trump truly unique is the paradoxical nature of his political orientation. To even call it an orientation might overstate matters, since it suggests coherence where there is none.”
Hamid goes on: “This is not a weakness. It’s a strength.”
Americans love on rascals while detesting evil dictators. Will Trump stay on the right side of the line between anti-hero and villain, advancing his aspirations to resume the presidency?
If so, as that quintessential American character Aunt Polly said, of Tom Sawyer, “I could forgive the boy, now, if he’d committed a million sins!”
Stay tuned!
Ralph Benko, co-author of "The Capitalist Manifesto" and chairman and co-founder of "The Capitalist League," is the founder of The Prosperity Caucus and is an original Kemp-era member of the Supply-Side revolution that propelled the Dow from 814 to its current heights and world GDP from $11T to $94T. Read Ralph Benko's reports — More Here.
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