I’m interested in this latest development in the Trump saga. Some part of me appears convinced this is the end for Trump, because I’m actually feeling a little bit sorry for him.
I mean, what’s happening is well-deserved and all, but … there’s something of the hapless, coddled child in him. I don’t think he’s bright enough to have known that one of the possible outcomes of all this — saying and doing the things he’s saying and doing, out in the blowtorch of public view — was his utter destruction. Meaning: Not just the loss of this political race, but the loss of his fortune and, potentially, even the loss of his freedom via a prison sentence. Not to mention the complete evaporation of respect for him, such that he becomes a living joke, so nobody will ever again do large-scale business with him. I have to doubt even Fox News would hire him after this; his brand is that damaged.
There’s another element I find slightly disturbing, though, and it’s the same thing Hillary’s faced for so many years — The Mob. In this case I don’t refer to any criminal organization, but to a mass of people acting in unison while consumed by blindingly powerful emotions — spitting visceral hate in both these cases — which overturn reason and produce instead an undiluted rage when the hated person prospers and a sort of furious glee when anything bad happens to him/her.
The Mob scares me. Not only do I never want to be part of it, it disturbs me when I see OTHERS caught up in it.
I’ve watched The Mob hate and lie about President Obama these past 7 years or so. I’ve watched it attack and attack and attack Hillary Clinton.
I got to see it up close and personal when I got sideways with a bunch of feminist bloggers a year or so back. I was completely flummoxed at watching people I knew personally — women and men I had formerly considered extremely rational — turn on each other with a viciousness I’d never witnessed. They would come after you in a screaming mass for using a single WORD they considered inappropriate. Thanks to them, I will never call myself a feminist — despite being completely in agreement on the subjects of women’s rights, equality, safety, health and choice.
Now I’m watching The Mob savage Donald Trump.
Don’t get me wrong — Trump is a nut who would pose an immense danger in the White House, and he has to be stopped.
But I don’t like that THIS is one of the prime tools by which it is being accomplished.
It makes me feel like I’m watching some very dangerous children at work, blindly wrecking things. Today they’re wrecking something I might want wrecked, but they will still be here tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, their need to wreck something perpetually unsatisfied, always looking for some new target.