Trump’s Appeal: Defiance

The Republican National Convention started last night. A series of speakers made the case against Hillary Clinton and, to lesser extent, for Donald Trump. Unsurprisingly, it was controversy-rich.

Coming into the convention, Trump and Clinton close in the polls.

Many of my friends cannot understand Trump’s appeal. Why would anyone want a Trump presidency?

I have a one word answer: Defiance.

Trump’s supporters are mostly white men. These men are frustrated — their communities are changing; their job sucks (if they still have one); their pay is insufficient; their country is attacked and disrespected by enemies; big corporations crash the economy and no one is held accountable; and politicians have lied to them for a long, long time.

In all of those cases but the last, these men cannot do much with their frustration. They cannot do anything about Wall Street or immigrants or, for the most part, their pay. Some of them join the military to fight our enemies, but most of them do not.

But what can they do? Defiantly support the anti-candidate Trump.

This dynamic — fancy people tell us not to do something which makes us want to do it more — plays out all around us: in factories and VFW halls, around dining room tables, on Twitter, and in the voting booth.

In short, these men are giving everyone — Wall St., liberals, Blue Bloods Republicans, and the various communities that form “the other” — a big middle finger in the form of Donald J. Trump.