The problem with his comment on the Alabama protester wasn’t that it wasn’t “nice.” It was that it revealed a belief that the proper response to dissent is physical violence. And the problem with Mr. Trump’s entire campaign isn’t that he’s raw and unfiltered and over-the-top — “a little bit rough,” as he put it — but that he harbors racist and sexist ideas and panders to others with those ideas. For a reminder of what he actually stands for, look no further than an interview on Wednesday, in which he said that to combat terrorists, “you have to take out their families.”
Donald Trump’s Appeal
He observes that for many voters, perceived threats to their security are now coming
from both inside the group (e.g. changing demographics, Wall Street greed, immigration, income inequality repercussions) — as well as from outside the group (international disorder, ISIS, China, Russia).
.. For less well-educated white men, Van Susteren said,
the last eight years have been humiliating. They have been emasculated by economic factors, unable to earn what they need — the jobs they want they perceive going to immigrants.” At the same time, these voters believe that “we are getting our butts kicked in the Middle East. For the white male, Trump offers a chance to have his sense of manhood restored. He conveys enormous confidence. Voting for Trump feels empowering in the sense that you can say what you believe without getting in trouble for it.
.. Trump is “saying things what everybody thinks,” and in the process, he is
opening a public debate on subjects nobody wants to talk about, things that people feel misled or lied to about. Trump gives voice to the feeling of dismissal and mines the anger. And what is that anger, it’s the anger of ordinary Americans who feel they have been lied to, that the policies they have been promised don’t work, and, by and large, they feel they have not been taken into account. Trump says to them, “you are right. Watch me, I am making them take me into account. I’ll do the same for you.”
.. Going a step further, if Trump’s 30 percent of Republican primary voters is a marker of his core support, that translates to just 7.5 percent of all the voters who will cast ballots in the general election next November.
The Cowardice of the Republican Candidates
Give Donald Trump this: He has taught Americans something about the candidates he’s running against. He has exposed many of them as political cowards.
.. Yet he didn’t call Trump’s proposals immoral or bigoted, since that might offend Trump’s nativist base. Instead, Bush declared: “Mr. Trump’s plans are not grounded in conservative principles. His proposal is unrealistic. It would cost hundreds of billions of dollars.” In other words, demonizing and rounding up undocumented Mexican immigrants is fine, so long as it’s done cheap.
.. John Dickerson asked Bush about a statement by one of Bush’s advisers that Trump’s plan for registering Muslims is “fascist.” Bush ignored the question. Instead he called Trump “uninformed,” “wrong on Syria,” and “not a serious leader.” The strategy was clear: Avoid defending the rights of Muslim Americans, since there’s little market for that among GOP primary voters. Instead, call Trump a lightweight and insufficiently hawkish, and therefore somehow get to his right.
.. So when the would-be leader of your country scapegoats and threatens its most vulnerable groups, the correct response is to “take a deep breath” because such threats will never be carried out?
.. There’s an irony here. When it comes to Vladimir Putin, ISIS, and Iran, the GOP candidates love denouncing “appeasement.” Yet when it comes to Trump, appeasement is their core strategy. They’re desperate to stop him. But they won’t call him a demagogue or a bigot or worse than Hillary Clinton, because that entails political risk.
This French Philosopher Is The Only One Who Can Explain The Donald Trump Phenomenon
Others in the Republican field are concerned with the rules and constructing a strategy that, under those rules, will lead to the nomination. But Trump isn’t concerned with those things. Instead, Trump is focused on each moment and eliciting the maximum amount of passion in that moment. His supporters love it.
The key to generating passion, Barthes notes, is to position yourself to deliver justice against evil forces by whatever means necessary. “Wrestlers know very well how to play up to the capacity for indignation of the public by presenting the very limit of the concept of Justice,” Barthes writes.