So it’s “Portlandia v. Trumpistan” this Sunday in Oregon. Organizers of the June 10th rally against Sharia Law, without question the most imminent threat to free-range espresso sipping Oregonians anyone can imagine, has been cancelled. But Sunday’s “Pro Trump free speech” rally is still on. Because … well because free speech is still a thing around here, at least in the uber-holistic paradise known as Portland.
As you may have heard, the Mayor and the cops aren’t too thrilled with this. But a court refused to revoke the permit on the grounds that the organizers got it fair and square. Nevertheless, the potential for some kind of telegenic mayhem is very high, since every affiliate satellite truck and crew for 500 miles is going to be scanning the scene for the slightest hint of confrontation between Trumpers and pissed off lefties eager to show the country that skinhead/tinfoil goobers are not representative of their misty green city.
Except of that they are, just as they’re representative of increasingly emboldened factions everywhere else in ‘Murica. Which is why I get more fascinated (and concerned) every day at the thought of what this “pro-Trump free speech” crowd will do when, as I believe, Trump himself inevitably disintegrates and is replaced.
At the moment, living in separate bubbles as we do, the impression in mine is that the 60 million who voted for The Donald last November have been cowed back to a fraction of that number — to only the most whacked-out goobers — and that forces of reason have gained the upper hand. But in the other bubble, the one that holds “the failing New York Times” and “the Clinton News Network” and pencil-necks like Rachel Maddow, Ezra Klein and David Frum in utter contempt, and suckles at the addictive teat of Breitbart, NewsMax and Sean Hannity, the hardening perception is that the election of the guy (Donald) for whom they waited their entire lives is being invalidated and revoked in front of their eyes by exactly the domineering snobs who have oppressed their friends and them for generations.
So … I don’t see them sitting still for The Donald’s shall we say “deinvestiture” by the same corrupt urban elite pencil necks. They will certainly be encouraged by their, uh, “thought leaders”, to rally and rage more vigorously than ever before as they see Trump being castrated by the “administrative state” they sent him to DC to blow up. And by “vigorously” I mean physically, as though they’re the last militia between “freedom” and “tyranny”.
The guess is this is what has Portland’s Mayor and cops spooked about this “free speech” event this Sunday. If you are prone to worrying about a face-to-face clash between the farthest right and the farthest left in the country today, both eager to make a defining statement, well, here’s leafy, piney Portland for test run #1.
It’s worth remembering that when Richard Nixon waved goodbye and disappeared into that chopper 31% of the country still supported him. But that was back in the day when even the gnarliest redoubt Republican had some exposure to the likes of Walter Cronkite. Today, the “pro-Trump free speech” base, literate really only in the Second Amendment, has very little if any routine contact with mainstream news (i.e. reality), other than being told by the likes of Breitbart and Trump that it’s all “fake.”
This crowd is running on a much higher octane mix of delusion than the Republicans of 1974.
Mix gas like that and a wildfire of stoked rage and we’ve got a bigger problem than the cops in Oregon.
From my perspective, there is no reason to think that Trump will be dislodged. How would this happen? GOP holds both House and Senate AND the Courts; and after 2018 will have a filibuster-proof margin in the Senate–not that the Dems would ever actually stage a real honest-to-goodness filibuster. Rather than the Trump zombie base shrinking, I see it moving into majority mode. Because: the longer Trump is in power, the longer it will seem that this aberration is normal, is normative, is “normalcy.”
There are Trump zombies, a hard core of larger percentage and far more vehement supporters than Nixon ever commanded; and there are forlorn dissidents already isolated in pockets like Portland or Minneapolis; and then there are the apolitical types who constitute a mushy middle of public opinion, and who will follow the herd; and the direction they will follow is likely to be the direction of whichever of the polarized sides seems to be winning.
And since Trump is holding office, since every day he is described as “President Trump,” since his authority is that of “The White House,” since he has succeeded thus far in seizing power and using it forcefully toward the goals his cronies seek, why he certainly does have the aura of “winner” and “LEADER, Duce , Fuehrer.”
He will easily withstand the threats of investigations, since his political allies will be in charge. He has demonstrated that his lies are stronger than facts and truth, and he’ll emerge by this summer or fall in a more powerful position than ever.
The GOP has no “moderates” remaining, the Democrats have no clue how to break Trump’s alt-right, Fox News-fashioned hypnosis over the white working class; and the increasing aggression of Islamic terrorists not only strengthens Trump’s appeal as a chauvinistic nation-savior, it also can provide the needed pretext for martial law or suspension of civil liberty.
It’s wishful thinking to imagine Trump folding the way Nixon did.
Nixon was a thuggish drunken liar, but he was also a rational and intelligent man and had enough vestige of conscience to know that he was lying. Trump seems to be a textbook sociopath. Far, far more dangerous.
And remember that Nixon didn’t go down easily, either. If it hadn’t been for the Democratic majorities in BOTH House and Senate; and a liberal Supreme Court, there would have been no way to dethrone him.
So Trump’s not going anywhere. I’d like to be wrong about that . . . but I don’t think I am.
The remnants of traditional news media, such as newspapers and public radio, actually contribute to this acceptance of aberration by their honoring the pretense of the usurpation. They collaborate with the process of cementing Trump into power by going along with it, rather than by denouncing and descriptively de-legitimizing his regime. In this crisis, to attempt to be “neutral” or “journalistically objective” is to play into the hands of the tyrant. Jefferson said that for all the faults of the press, he’d rather see newspapers without a government than a government without newspapers. Alas, we are headed for the latter outcome. How ironic that it’s the technological fruit of extraordinarily sophisticated and advanced scientific research, namely, the ubiquitous digital electronic communications systems and devices, which have become the means of empowerment for the modern Know-Nothings, while simultaneously serving as the engines of extinction for the former palladium of the peoples’ liberty—the periodical press.