TRUMPOLOGY

The GOP just nominated a narcissistic, ridiculous, condescending and all around douche-y demagogue and that’s perfectly okay. Donald Trump is barely your average American business-man from an old-timey age and that’s fine. He’s pro-choice, pro universal healthcare reform and has backed liberal principals throughout his time in the public eye. So why are the left leaning democrats in America so afraid of Donald J. Trump? It’s not the man– he has a rap sheet that most politicians prior to the information age would have had — that should freak out liberals but how he came to represent a formidable portion of America that should cause concern and unite Sanders supporters and the democratic base.

HE’S NOT EVEN RACIST

Prior to this election cycle, which feels horribly long at this point, Trump being racist was not really an issue. He had a show and was in the public eye but all we really had to say about him was that he was a douchebag. But that was fine because he’s a businessman and knew how to make money and he was entertaining. Now we take everything he says so seriously that his racism is practically overt, and he has fed into that idea by pressing how far he can take his rhetoric and remain uncensored. No one else can get away with it; Trump, the celebrity, would have apologized by now. So why can a candidate for our highest profile representative say things as blatantly as Trump can? The answer to that is horrifying in its simplicity. He can say it because other people, a lot of people are thinking it. Donald Trump is a funnel for all the latent racism and systematic world views that permeate middle America and that’s why Bernie or bust people frustrate true liberals.

PARTY UNITY

Donald Trump’s biggest impact would be completely accidental and would serve conservatives a victory that can set back policy making, even as millennials grow into the biggest voting block in the United States. Trump’s personal policies are not scary, the fear stems from the fact that Trump does not want to be president. He wants to win but he does not want to hold office, holding office is boring and stressful with less room for drama than campaigning. You do not win ratings battles and see personal gain, Trump knows this and is willing to relinquish power to his new GOP base. The GOP base that does not understand why “Black Lives Matter” nor want to see education reform that teaches evolution instead of creationism. This new alt-right base that fight facts with conspiracy theories and that try to demean the value of human life by making victims pawns in a plan to “steal our guns.” These new “conservatives” used to hide behind fiscal responsibility but with Trump’s emergence can simply state that America is failing because it does not look like them anymore.

These voters used to be marginalized and pushed to the deep recesses of the internet — youtube videos, html sites and 4chan — but now they have been legitimized. Somewhere between the emergence of the tea party and mainstream conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones and Glenn Beck, Donald Trump saw an opportunity to become president. There was a ground swell that rejected science as propaganda — culminating is flat earth conspiracy theorist — and people sought a platform to say things louder and louder. The media is to blame partially for this, they reported on the absurd statements of these conspiracy theorists and they grew bolder, taking up new opinions that subverted reality and now we see the end result. Donald Trump’s greatest sin is staring at these people and not blinking in the face of their absurd statements. These are people willing to vote against their own self-interests in order to feel bigger in a global machine that growing faster than they can understand and Trump feeds that desperation. A billionaire that built a fortune overseas, legitimizes the minds of the least educated, most easily manipulated people in America. Trump leads the polls amongst those without college degrees and in states where the education system is so failed that, if not for the bump provided by Northeast states, would equal nations with a tenth the GDP of the United States. These people are the prominent voters of the Republican party and they’re not shy anymore. These people wanted Trump and make Ted Cruz seem like a legitimate option in the coming elections.

Donald Trump has cut through the conservative myth that all of these people want is a good Christian nation. He has exposed the failings of a party that catered to the whims of loons under the disguise of fiscal conservatism. He has taken the religious right and exposed them for the racist, ignorant poorly educated masses that they are and instead of hanging their heads in self- realization, they stand taller and speak louder. Their representatives — senators and congressmen- now gather, confused as to whether they always were this way and many of them don’t know where to through their support.

A TIME FOR CHANGE

The stakes are high in this election. A group that stands opposed to progress and states its own twisted reality in the face of intellectuals and experts is opposing a group that is finally gathering itself up as the new America. Trump may not be a bad guy but he is a demagogue, willing to cater to the old America. He unmasked them and emboldened them. He will allow them to win as long as his ego is filled. The Republican party will not survive this election but its replacement must be a party of true solutions, not of hate, and Trump will lead it with victory or failure into its next chapter.