By David K. Shipler
Whether
Donald Trump runs again in 2024 or fades from politics, his enigmatic hold on
tens of millions of Americans will be a lesson to the next demagogue. Much will
be learned from Trump’s successes in manipulating huge swaths of the public,
and also from his failures to translate his autocratic desires into practical
power.
Just
the fact that 72 percent of Republicans tell
pollsters that they believe Trump’s discredited claim that he won the 2020
election is a mark of his perverse success in selling the Big Lie. His outsized
personality, his ridiculous assertions, his coarse and insulting talent for
channeling resentments felt by masses of alienated citizens placed him so far
above reproach in so many minds that his obvious corruption and damage to the
country’s reputation and national security made no impact on the committed.
After four years of falsehoods, incompetence, and immorality, he won eleven
million more votes than in 2016 (up
from 63 to 74 million).
He has
deftly played the dual role of tough guy and victim, of swaggering bully and
persecuted prey. This is a skillful embodiment of the wishes and fears of the
millions, mostly white working class, who feel marginalized and dishonored
while yearning for the wealth and strength that Trump appears to possess. He
has given them the dignity that many feel they have been denied by the liberal,
urban, multiethnic society that their country is becoming.
Despite his serial fabrications,
his lack of moral boundaries made him seem authentic and unscripted. He was a
paradox: an outsider but a pampered part of the corporate elite, a
non-politician whose every move was politically calculated for his own benefit,
a drainer of the “swamp” who wallowed in corrupt self-dealing. He was right
when he said that he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and not lose voters.
But because Trump did not understand government and antagonized authoritative agencies, he was often stymied as he tried to rule dictatorially, above the law. He crudely attacked the intelligence agencies, the military, the FBI, and other power centers, precisely those that an autocrat would need to muster under his control. His impatience and incompetence stymied many of his efforts to shortcut the due process built into the regulatory system.
