For many of us it’s all aboot learning Canadian as a
second language. The specter of being Trumped haunts our country. The more he
is denounced, even by his own party, the higher go his numbers. His
constituency laps up his mocking misogyny, racist slurs and flagrant deceit.
Hitler enjoyed the same mindless support. In fact
Trump is said (by his ex-wife) to keep Mein Kampf at his bedside. He
alternately rants, charms, bullies, boasts and insults. Hitler had that Chaplinesque
mustache. Donald’s hair is the color and abundance of the Iowa wheat crop
particularly on his frontal shelf. To my eyes it connotes well-rehearsed
fakery.
But this is serious stuff. He has ventriloquized the
grunts and groans of America, the curses of the down-trodden, the road-rage of
truckers, even the quiet desperation of the guy flipping fries at McDonalds
whose girlfriend walked out, car gave up and dog just died. Charlie lunch-box
and Debbie Sue whose job went to Indonesia.
They like him because he’s a winner and they’re not.
Maybe some loose change will fall out of his wallet. Or they can hear
themselves in his bluster. He says it like it is. Black lives don’t matter. Nor
do weak people. Nor does deliberation and truth-telling.
Trump will tell us whom to hate. Everyone who doesn’t
look like you, starting with Obama, that’s who. Women who use the bathroom.
Disgusting! That undocumented-olive-skin guy who parked your car.
He has sniffed the Zeitgeist. What if he is the
nominee? Have we lost our grip? Is anti-establishment sentiment so strong?
Democrats have Bernie but he is speaking substantively, truth to power. Trump
is a merchant of deceit speaking from a pedestal of power promising a sky of
pies.
Yes, yes the system is broken. Who broke it? Mitch
McConnell when he vowed to oppose everything in Obama’s agenda. The big banks
when they gambled recklessly and lost pension-fund millions. The good old boys gerrymandering a lifetime annuity
for a congress of fools. And a money-based system disenfranchising a large
chunk of the electorate.
What is needed is a constitutional convention to
repair an ossified document. Otherwise many of us look toward our northern
neighbor to see what they are all aboot.
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