Response to At Peak Trump

(See: Just Above Sunset: At Peak Trump)

Interesting! I think we're getting closer to figuring out who all these Donald Trump supporters are.

For one thing, there's that nagging question of just how conservative Trump is -- a question that will be highlighted by his upcoming meeting with Paul Ryan, who, as leader of the so-called "Republican Establishment", represents the kind of Republicans who think true conservatives have to believe in a free-market economy (e.g., trade deals), small government and low taxes, especially for rich people -- all things Donald Trump and his merry gang of Trumpheads either pay very little attention to or outright reject.

In fact, traditional conservative Republicans accuse Trump of being a closet liberal, an accusation that obviously puzzles many of us actual liberals: If this guy's so liberal, why am I not tempted to vote for him?

Yes, Trumpheads are conservatives, but no, they are not that kind of conservative. So what kind are they?

Trump continually brags that he has brought millions of voters into the Republican fold (although there is also evidence that the net migration has been the other way, that departures are greater than arrivals). So who's joining up? One good guess might be that many of them pretty much stayed politically detached up to now, simply because they couldn't find a home for their particular ideological leanings in either party.

To grossly oversimplify the subject, all political leanings pretty much boil down to one of two approaches to life, advocates of each holding the other in near complete disdain:

(a) There's "Be nice", and
(b) there's "Be nasty".

"Nice" people are optimists. Like Will Rogers, they never met a (person) they didn't like. They believe we're all in this together and need to look out for one another, and that there's no social problem that can't be addressed by both sides trying to understand and empathize with each other and sitting down to discuss it. Whether or not they are religious, they believe in the basic prediction of Matthew 5:5: "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth", and that peace is preferable to war. They believe in the principle that it matters not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.

"Nasty" people are pessimists. They think "meek" is another word for "weak", and definitely that those namby-pamby meek people are too naive to inherit much of anything, much less the whole fucking world -- because if they try, the "strong" will just walk in and kick their collective ass. They claim to believe that winning is not the most important thing, it's the only thing. (See what they did there? Clever, right?)

And need I tell you which is which? Let's face it, liberals are, traditionally speaking, "nice" people, while conservatives, who confuse it with "realism", lean toward the "nasty".

Yes, there are other beliefs that go along with the two ideologies, depending on what part of the world you live in, but these are usually marginally superfluous add-ons, especially in the case of "movement conservatives" -- which, nowadays, is another term for "Establishment Republicans".

For example, lower taxes for rich people and international trade agreements, while part of the Republican orthodoxy for years, are not conservative tenets that hold natural appeal to mostly middle- and working-class whites who object to all the gains being made by minorities in recent decades, which they see as adversely effecting white people. After all, lower tariffs just mean American jobs go overseas, and why should rich people on Wall Street get special tax breaks, after all they've been doing to our economy? For years, national Republicans have joined with Democrats in telling us what's acceptable to do and say, and the "nasty" wing of the conservative electorate is fed up with all that.

Black and Hispanic people, the argument goes, get special consideration in going to college and in getting jobs, whether they're qualified or not -- which implies millions of  "qualified" white people are obviously being discriminated against. (Remember back in 2012, Donald Trump offering $5 million to Barack Obama to show us his college transcripts? He never did mention why, but one has to assume Trump wanted to show Obama was an "affirmative action" beneficiary, and got into Harvard Law without being qualified -- which would presumably also help Donald explain to the world how he only got into Wharton as an undergrad.)

Are the Trumpists racists? Yeah, maybe, but whatever. That's definitely part of it, but almost beside the point.

More to the point is, all this politically-correct taking my tax dollars and using it to give special breaks to minorities is happening because we're letting the meek walk all over us. We used to be a meritocracy, where you earned your breaks! Now, okay, we also used to mistreat black people, but we passed laws against that, so it doesn't happen anymore!

Back in the day, America stood for something around the world, and nobody would give us lip, but ever since the elites took over, they're all laughing in our face, crossing the border and taking our jobs, and all those Muslims taunt us by chopping off Christian heads! It didn't used to be this way. Why are we allowing this?

And yes, liberal Democrats are to blame, but it's not just them, it's also the Republican politicians who cooperate with them! They're just as bad! As George Wallace once said, there's not a dime's worth of difference between the two parties.

(And to top it off, queers can now marry each other? Hey, what's up with that?)

The point here being that, while Republicans like the pointy-headed intellectuals at National Review magazine may question Trump's conservative bonafides, they will not convince liberals, for example, that Donald Trump is a liberal, since we know he, being even nastier than they are, is actually more legitimately conservative than they are.

But they also will not make even the tiniest dent in the movement that Trump is leading, because none of those people gives a shit, even about being so-called conservative, and don't even really care if Trump says one thing today and totally contradicts himself tomorrow.

Nor do any of the Trumpette women care that he disrespects women -- they're tough; they can take it; and they dislike America's political correctness much more than dislike any nasty insult Trump dishes out to anyone, who probably deserved it anyhow. Hell, Trump voters probably don't even give a shit if he ever builds that stupid wall, nor whether he really has Mexico pay for it. After all, it's the thought that counts.

None of that matters. All they know is that the kinds of things he says pretty much matches the way they think about the world, and figure if he gets in, there's just a chance they'll see the kind of stuff done that they want done.

And, they probably figure, what do they have to lose? No other candidate is talking about this stuff, so you might as well vote for the crazy guy.