Amanda Marcotte at Salon explains why the media fascination with Trump is actually driven by fascination among the readers and then makes a point that I think is very important. I tend to focus on the Republican establishment’s power mad, perfidious opportunism but there’s more to it and she describes it well:
The reason that Trump captures so much attention, year in and year out, is because of his followers. How did this two-bit moron who can barely read manage to attract a loyal following — one that has apparently grown from the 63 million people voted for him in 2016 to the 74 million who turned out in 2020? These people adore him, so much so that a quarter-million Americans dead and millions more unemployed only made them more determined to give it all up for the orange guy in an ill-fitting suit who wants to end democracy as we know it. It’s a legitimately fascinating mystery.
The devotion of the Red Hats is, if anything, more bizarre because Trump is so tiresome. Going to one of his infamous rallies, for instance, is volunteering to be tortured, like being strapped to a chair while the biggest boor in the world rants incoherently at you for over an hour. Listening to him ping-pong endlessly between whining and bragging is a form of boredom that makes solitary confinement seem pleasant by comparison.
And it’s not like his rally-goers felt differently. You could see it on the faces in the crowds, as his supporters would drift away, not really listening except to perk up to applaud at the mention of buzzwords (“Crooked Hillary,” “build the wall”, “Hunter Biden”), but never really paying much attention to what Trump was actually saying.
They weren’t there for him, after all. They were there as a show of force, to let the hated liberals know that they had the numbers and the determination — so much so that they’d sacrifice a night of their preciously short lives listening to a braggart ramble on about windmills and and lie about his own vitality for an hour. Trump will never understand this, but it was never about him. He was there for them, a vehicle for their resentments and, critically, their will to power. He was the weapon they wielded in their war to exert dominance over American politics, even as their actual numbers dwindle.
This movement is what is interesting, because it’s ultimately, about the rise of American fascism. It’s a real threat, as demonstrated by Biden’s uncomfortably close margins in the same swing states Hillary Clinton lost in 2016. Indeed, it’s arguable that these forces still won in 2020, as they (probably) kept control of the Senate, gained seats in the House and have overtaken the federal courts, kneecapping the ability of the majority of American voters, who support the Democrats, to exert their political will.
That the most powerful country in the world is being held hostage by an authoritarian, racist minority drunk on conspiracy theories is the biggest story in politics. It’s part of a larger story about the entire world in the grip of rising authoritarianism. Their power will define Joe Biden’s presidency. Their ability to cripple him will matter more than any of his Cabinet picks or even his executive orders.
Trump is just the shorthand for this very real and ongoing problem. The reason it feels like we can’t quit Trump is that we can’t quit the people who elected him. As Bob Cesca argued this week at Salon, we shouldn’t pander to those people or seek to placate them, but we also can’t just ignore them. Not while they still control so many levers of power.
Nowadays, most educated people reject the “great man” theory of history. We understand, intellectually at least, that even legendary villains like Hitler or heroes like FDR were a product of their time and not acting out of some cosmic destiny.
But it’s still hard not to reduce politics to personality. Our brains are hardwired to focus on individuals, who have agency and psychology that we can understand, rather than the more diffuse motivations of the crowd. A
But Trump could keel over tomorrow, never to tweet again, and he wouldn’t go away. He might even grow in power, made into a martyr now that he can no longer embarrass his followers with his routine bouts of public idiocy, such as when he suggested people inject Lysol. Trump the symbol was always far more important than Trump the man. And no matter what happens to Trump the man, the movement he represents remains a live threat to American democracy, and to the world.
This is what keeps me up at night, honestly. I still can’t wrap my mind around the numbers. Are they brainwashed by right wing media? Sure. But there are others who live in that swamp who don’t buy into this. There is something ugly in our body politic that goes beyond that. It’s a sickness at the heart of our culture and it’s metastasized.