I found this wonderful image at the train station in my hometown in Connecticut.
Scratched into an ad on the platform, someone left us a “Dorian Gray” treatment of Donald Trump.
Behold the man behind the mask.
But that’s the thing about Trump. No one seems to care about his deficiencies or his flaws.
This departs from the normal practice of American politics. Normally, it goes like this.
An outsider appears in American politics. He or she expresses some deeply felt issue. There’s a brief period of enthusiasm.
Then the reporters go to work. Debates happen. Interviews are given.
And eventually we get a Dorian Gray revelation of the real man or woman.
And hey presto, that’s the end of their candidacy. (And, like a booster rocket, the candidate falls away even as the issue continues. The candidate has served his or her purpose.)
But it’s not happening this time.
Why isn’t happening this time?
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I think Trump embodies what a lot of Americans want to be—bold, rich and independent. His fans don’t want or need a saint in the White House. They want someone who will talk down to all the people they consider to be “low lifes.” They want the end of political correctness, and the end of a media-controlled diet of daily B.S.
Thankfully, for the country’s sake, his supporters are a minority (by many millions, if not tens of millions). Which leads me to wonder, what’s really behind his run for President? Despite his megalomaniac tendencies in public, in private he must know he’s not going to win, so what’s the end game here? Did Bill Clinton put him up to this? We all know BC can sell ice to Eskimos.
David, thanks, yes, there’s a big group for whom knowing and respecting cultural difference reads as “political correctness” and they are drawn to someone who just doesn’t care, who will bat this “niceties” aside. As to the end game, I wonder if from Trump’s point of view taking the White House might not be the inevitable outcome of his charmed existence. Brrr.