Trump: Three Shadows Over Cleveland
From the archives: The Republican Convention of 2016.
I’m on a tight deadline so here’s one from the archives, filed on the eve of Trump’s 2016 convention. Democratic consultants told me I was insane for suggesting he could be on a path to winning in November.
Plus ça change …
When Donald Trump’s Republican Party convenes in Cleveland, three shadows will haunt the arena. They won’t talk about these shadows on television, but if you look closely you’ll see them.
The first shadow is that of the extremist Republican right. Since the infamous Powell memo of 1970 it has invested billions in think tanks, academia, and politics to promote its agenda of individual greed over the common good.
Their free-market voodoo and corporate pandering is promoted by wild-eyed believers and cutthroat cynics who know that their ideas are unpopular and their theories disproven. That’s why they rely on deception and disenfranchisement …
Its goods are peddled by the likes of Paul Ryan, a human smiley-face sticker with an extremist’s heart.
The second shadow is that of a new fundamentalism, both political and religious, whose followers worship an angry white god of their own creation. They’ve claimed their religion on behalf of their political ideology but they despise what it and all spiritual traditions really represent: charity, equality, and community.
“The Vision of Christ that thou dost see,” wrote the poet William Blake, “is my Vision’s greatest enemy” ...
The third shadow is that of Trump himself, a bloated bleached-blond Narcissus transfixed by his own silhouette. “He worships at the altar of a stagnant pool,” says the Dylan song, “and when he sees his reflection, he’s fulfilled.”
Under President Trump the Oval Office would become a hollow sarcophagus, the vessel for an aging and soul-dead boy king ...
They won’t talk about these three shadowy monsters on cable TV, but they’ll be there just the same: sipping cocktails in expensive suites, smiling through politicians’ faces, lurking in the corners that camera lights can’t illuminate. And they’ll be out in the streets, ready for a fight.
Watch, and be afraid...
The Republican Party’s a jerry can filled with gasoline, and Trump’s holding the match. Burn down the old order, bring in the new.
It can’t happen here? Listen to your inner voice. It’s saying, This is how it begins.
They say Trump is a buffoon, a fool. They’re wrong. He’s smart, determined, and utterly without scruples. He’s a changeling and con man extraordinaire.
Yes, his sentences are simple - so simple they could be tapped out with symbols, like Koko the Gorilla on her keyboard. That way, his words go straight to the lizard brain: Great. Beautiful. Winning. Fantastic.
Laugh if you want, but you won’t laugh for long [because] if Democrats run as the status-quo party, the unthinkable can become the inevitable ...
Not that Trump supporters can’t be nice people. I met some this weekend at a hotel in St. Louis, where they had come for a ballgame. They said “good morning” and “excuse me” and carried an elderly woman’s suitcase. They were enjoying their weekend, they said, but they were afraid—for themselves and their country. It’s time for a change, they said.
Trump’s no fool. He is a clown, but that’s something different. There’s a reason people hate and fear clowns: their makeup hides their intentions. The hard man, the caudillo, the iron-fisted one, often softens his hard edges by playing the fool.
Fear the man with the painted face ...
There will be brightness and color in Cleveland. The talking heads will talk. Klieg lights will reflect off the orange skin of the nominee as he makes his acceptance speech, bathing ideologues and observers alike in a Tequila Sunrise-colored glow. Believe me, it’ll be fantastic.
But underneath the hall or in the clouds overhead, unseen by the crowds and unphotographed by the cameras, three dark figures will spread their wings.
And they’ll wait for their hour to come around.