Donald Trump: The Nation’s Mirror Populist

                        Donald Trump: The Nation’s Mirror Populist

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal,1/21/18

            Let’s see: Russian collusion, the evil Steve Bannon, mental instability, vulgar language, and now a porn star connection.

            What will Trump-haters sling at the President next?  How much longer can the national media keep their rapid heartbeat in check without exploding?  If anybody’s stability should be called into question, it’s the television commentators who cried, literally, on election night in November of 2016 and warned us that economic depression and nuclear war were coming.

            All we’ve ever heard about the stages of grief is being altered by Trump-haters.  The first stage of grief is denial.  Your loved one didn’t die.  You’re just dreaming.  But no, your loved one did die and you’ll eventually face the hard truth.

            But in the case of Trump’s election, denial continues fourteen months later.  It’s obviously mixing with the second stage, anger.  How could this happen?  What has America come to?  Incredibly, anti-Trumpers have also edged into the hatred stage, one the grief experts never told us about.  Denial, despair, denunciation.  This mixture of emotions is not good.  Suicide watch for Trump-haters might be in order.

            The real problem of Trump-haters isn’t Donald Trump himself.  It’s the 63 million Americans who elected him.  But the haters can’t see this.  Since they cannot fathom that 63 million Americans would vote for Trump, they practice transferral, dumping all of their hatred on Trump alone.  That many voters in their right minds would never vote for Trump.  They will realize by 2020 what they’ve done.  They don’t really support him.

            Ah, but they do.  They support him because he held up a mirror to America, unveiling hypocrisy.  For instance, it’s nice to see Hollywood types and TV “journalists” finally showing concern about vulgarity.  Where have they been?  Political liberals and Hollywood titans have always been bedfellows, producing and promoting movies and lifestyles that are v.u.l.g.a.r.  But that’s different, they claim.  Private or personal vulgarity is one thing; public vulgarity is another.

            Nope.  What we do in private is what we are.  Turns out Donald Trump is holding up a mirror to all of us.  We needed it.  LBJ, Nixon, and Obama all talked ugly.  The liberal cry of the ‘60’s was “Tell it like it is.”  We now have a non-smoker, tee-totaler President who does just that.  Behind his verbal blasts are a transparency and an absence of pretense Americans have never seen in a politician, with the possible exception of Harry Truman.

            Haters are doing to Trump what earlier ones did to Churchill, Truman, and Reagan.  Like Trump and FDR, Churchill was of the upper social class and was considered a traitor to his class.  So down to earth was he, so given to populism, that his enemies labeled him “insane.”   Those labels stuck and an ungrateful nation kicked out of office the man who had victoriously led them through a world war.  America’s media can’t seem to make labels stick on Trump; consequently, a new accusation and “crisis” every week.

            Truman, a haberdasher, and Reagan, a B-rated actor, were both “of the people.”  Both were re-elected.  Lovers of democracy understand populism and resist the bum rap given it by the media.  Trump is a populist.  He likes ordinary people and they like him.  He recently re-stated that rich people never liked him or his father, but cab drivers and construction workers did.  That’s populism illustrated.

            “Dumb,” non-reader Trump was smart enough to outsmart 17 seasoned candidates in the Republican primary.  He did so because he held the mirror up to things his opponents would not:   porous borders, smothering regulations, and the failed gospel of globalization.  Trump’s candor brought him to office.  It will most likely return him to office.  The new, recent self-righteousness of the left will not deter him.

                        Charges that the President is a “dope” serve only to pull his deplorables closer to him.  His restless quality and verbal grenades probably won’t cease, but does anyone think Trump voters didn’t know what they were getting?  Will the continuing good economic news not increase his base?

            Trump is pragmatic and “non-ideological” as is our changing world.  The isms of the past century (Nazism, Fascism, Communism, and probably Globalism) have had their day.  What matters now is economics, that is, jobs and food.  Ideology matters less, competitiveness more.  Guess who realizes this.

Trump doesn’t present grim prospects for Republicans in 2020.  His faithful deplorables will look forward to seeing egg on the face of the media – again - three years from now.

            The media’s reign of error may be over.

            “Vox populi!”

Roger Hines

1/17/18