I Know Why Donald Trump Is So Popular. — — Do You?
To be as popular as Donald Trump, here’s what you do
by David Grace (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)
Step One: Pick a country, like the United States, where many people believe that the middle class has been savaged and that what’s left of it is in big trouble.
Why?
When you terrify the middle class, when many people believe that they’re probably only a few years away from sliding into quicksand-poverty from which they may never escape, not to mention believing that their kids are likely to go down that same drain, they are going to be scared and angry and desperate for someone to save them, or at least to promise that he’s going to save them.
And when people believe that the middle class is circling the drain, the people in the top 10% are naturally terrified that some “socialists” are going to grab all their money to support what they see as a massive and growing under-the-poverty-line population. When they believe it’s all turning to shit at the bottom and that those “losers” are going to come looking for their money they sure as hell will want a leader who’s not going to let that happen.
The people who are stuck at or below the poverty line are also desperate to latch on to somebody who has a simple plan that will finally make their lives better.
How do you get these all disparate groups to support you? What is your simple plan that will unify all three groups?
Step Two: Find a scapegoat (or two) to blame everything on.
You give them someone to blame. The scapegoat has to be somebody that lots of people already don’t like or don’t trust, or both.
Hitler told the Germans that the Jews had stabbed Germany in the back and that’s why Germany lost the war. Once the savior, Hitler, they’re told, “gets rid” of all the Jews (and the communists), all of Germany’s problems will be solved.
Germany’s upper class and industrialist class loved the idea of getting rid of the communists. The commies were the bastards who were going to steal all their money. Hitler’s going to do that? Wow, he’s our guy.
The lower classes loved the idea of getting rid of the Jews because the Jews had money (had stolen their money, Hitler told them) and it sounded like a great idea to get rid of those rich, uppity bastards and take their stuff.
Anyone who was not Jewish and who was still clinging to a place in the middle class loved the idea that just getting rid of the Jews would solve all the country’s problems and thus keep them from going down the toilet too, especially since that was a simple, easy plan that it didn’t affect them.
Substitute “Mexican illegals” (and “Wall Street Insiders”) for “Jews” and you’ve got Trump’s playbook.
Trump can’t play the “Jewish” card, but he doesn’t need to. He can blame the nation’s troubles on the “foreigners,” specifically the Hispanic foreigners (and the greedy hedge-fund managers).
“If we can just get rid of all the illegals,” he tells us, “all our problems will be solved.”
Boy, that sure sounds easy.
The American (non-Mexican) lower-class voters have no problem with tossing the Mexicans, in fact all immigrants, under the bus. Of course they’re not going to pick the lettuce, but that’s a problem for another day. Maybe they’re thinking that once the Mexican “problem” is fixed that they can get the Black people to do stuff like that.
The American upper class is terrified that the lower classes are going to vote in some “socialist” who will steal all their hard-earned money, but if Trump can rid them of all those low-class people before they can get the vote they figure they can nip that plan in the bud.
The members of the American middle-class who believe that for their kids the American dream is slipping (or has already slipped) away figure that if you get rid of eleven million “welfare-sucking” Mexicans that can only benefit the “good” people who are left behind, though their kids aren’t going to pick lettuce or wash dishes or pull weeds either. Again, that’s a problem for another day.
Step Three: Make sure that more foreigners don’t get to vote for candidates who will wreck all your good work.
One way to do that is to make sure that people who are born in the U.S. of parents who weren’t already citizens don’t become citizens, which means that their children, grand children and great grandchildren won’t be citizens either.
If Raul and Maria, who aren’t citizens, have a child, Ernesto, he won’t be a citizen. Then if Ernesto marries Sonya, whose parents weren’t citizens then their child, Frank, won’t be a citizen. Then if Frank marries the child of some other couple whose grand parents weren’t citizens, then he won’t be a citizen, and so on and so on and so on, forever. Now we can relegate all those foreigners and all their descendants to permanent, second-class, non-voting, status.
Pause for a question: How many of you reading this post had parents, grand parents or great grand parents who weren’t U.S. citizens at the time their parents (your parents, grand parents or great grand parents) were born? Maybe you should check that out because if this idea takes hold, maybe your kids are not going to be citizens either when this process is all said and done. Just saying . . . .
Step Four: remember that whoever you blame for the country’s problems doesn’t really have to have caused any of those problems. Reality is unnecessary.
The Jews didn’t stab Germany in the back. The Jews didn’t cause the economic crash that destroyed the German middle class. They didn’t steal the “real Germans” money. But none of those facts mattered. In fact, the truth interfered with selling Hitler’s simple plan.
The “Mexican illegals” are not a huge crime problem compared to other identifiable groups. Most of them are so terrified of getting into trouble and being deported that they are like black people were in the South in 1956 — they bend over backwards to avoid coming to the attention of the police.
Most of them work at minimum wage or below minimum wage jobs (they can’t complain to the Labor Commissioner). They don’t take jobs from white people because most of the jobs they do take are ones that white people won’t accept anyway.
But that doesn’t matter to Trump or his supporters. Those facts just interfere with their hope for a magically better future from his simple plan. Just a thought for any Jewish people who are reading this who may be thinking, “Boy, you know that Trump is right about those Mexican criminals and slackers who are stealing our money and ruining our country. Maybe I will vote for him.”
Ask yourself if you really want to go that way. Remember, that’s what Hitler told the Germans about you.
What frightened, angry people do.
Blaming a scapegoat is how frightened, angry people think, or at least what passes for “thinking” in their world. When people see their good jobs destroyed and their children’s futures slipping away, they’re like someone with terminal cancer who’s ready to latch onto any nut-job cure some con-man offers them. At that point it isn’t even thinking any more. It’s desperation, fear and anger.
The strategy of “Fear + Simple Solutions + An unpopular scapegoat = political success” worked great for Hitler, for a while. It probably won’t get Trump elected, not yet. Not this time around. A little too much of the middle class still remains.
But wait ten or fifteen years. For another decade or so let the idea flourish that unskilled workers don’t deserve a living wage AND that unskilled people don’t deserve being given the training necessary to perform skilled jobs that do pay a living wage — enlarge the permanent underclass of ordinary people of just average or below average intelligence who cannot earn a living wage and cannot escape poverty by legal means — and the next person using Hitler’s play book may well win.
— David Grace (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -
This column was written before the 2016 election. When I said: “It probably won’t get Trump elected, not yet. Not this time around. A little too much of the middle class still remains” I was clearly wrong.
I failed to comprehend how terrible a candidate Hilary Clinton would be and how clever a politician Donald Trump was and how angry and frightened so many American were. My bad.
