By Jim Downard
To the consternation and panic of the Olde Guard of the Grand Old Party, green eyeshades askew and smoke-filled rooms fumigated by electric air cleaners no doubt, the Donald juggernaut appears on track to make him the official nominee of what was once an important political party in the United States.
The guardians of the Old Way can count, and look on the already difficult task of pulling enough popular or electoral votes to put a Republican in office with increasing dismay. Remember, in the last six presidential elections, the GOP candidate has won the popular vote exactly once, in 2004, when Bush won reelection fair and square (and look how well that turned out).
Donald Trump, that pathological narcissistic blowhard with heart of gold plate and little else, whose perfect memory was incapable of recalling David Duke and the KKK but could “recall” a nonexistent episode of New Jersey Muslims supposedly cheering the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11, looks slated to alienate plenty of voters with functional brainstems—though given the higher voter turnout for the GOP in the latest primary voting, if Bernie Sanders fails to get the Democratic nomination and his enthusiastic supporters turn all grumpy cat when it comes to switching to Hillary Clinton, there is the horrifying possibility that Donald Trump could actually slither his way into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue come January 20th, 2017.
As a secularist with a functioning brain stem, few prospects in the history of American presidential campaigns strikes me with more terror and dread than that idea, surpassing even the specters of megalomaniac Democrat President George McClellan in alternate universe 1864, or Dixiecrat segregationist President Strom Thurmond in alternate universe 1948.
Never in the chronicle of the Republic has there been a man less suited temperamentally or by experience to qualify to take the helm of POTUS. Besides his intransigent inability to ever admit he’s wrong on anything (even things he is so patently wrong on), he has no track record of public service or elective office to strut. Worse, for someone so superior in his own estimation, Trump’s actual resume is cluttered by a long line of failed business ventures, including that rancid Trump “University.” As I write this, Mitt Romney (someone who knows a failed presidential campaign firsthand) has joined the fray, reminding us of Trump’s bombastic history of flibbertigibbet business flops.
But should the Donald manage to get the nomination, which seems very likely unless some convention skullduggery pulls the rug from under that strange orange mop of his, there is a practical utility to seeing who exactly (and how many) would end up voting for him.
An analogy from my work exploring the strange but fascinating world of creationism. There is a popular Young Earth evangelist, “Dr. Dino” Kent Hovind (his “science” PhD courtesy of unaccredited Patriot University operating out of a large shed in Colorado), whose many videos and occasional books pervade antievolution apologetics at the grassroots, and who resumed his creationist evangelism after serving a stint in a succession of Federal slammers for tax evasion (gosh, if only my secular morals were sufficiently leaky to skirt the tax laws that “render unto Caesar” Christians are supposed to heed, I too could fund an extensive lecture travel circuit as Hovind had).
I’ve met current Kent Hovind groupies among Shadle Park High School grads and creationists on Twitter, and Hovind’s videos have fueled the efforts of activists from the Oklahoma legislature to the Dover school board that tripped over the Kitzmiller ruling in 2005 (for those who love grisly details, please explore.)
The upshot is that Kent Hovind is such a pseudoscientific nimrod that even Answers in Genesis (Ken Ham’s creationist organization responsible for the Creation Museum and upcoming Ark Park) considers him an unreliable source, and yet a lot of grassroots creationists find him utterly convincing.
Lesson: anyone who can take Kent Hovind seriously, cannot be taken seriously.
But how many Hovindistas are there, really? I don’t know. Maybe millions, certainly many thousands. No one has conducted a poll.
Which brings us to Donald Trump.
Just like Kent Hovind, it may be argued anyone who can take Donald Trump seriously, cannot be taken seriously. But unlike Dr. Dino, we’re about to get a nationwide poll on exactly who takes Trump seriously. Provided that number doesn’t get so big that he gets handed the keys to the White House, we’ll have a useful measure of how many Americans can find a swaggering bully “Presidential.”
As Bette Davis’ Margo Channing reminded in the film classic “All About Eve,” “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night!”
I understand the temptation to dismiss Trump and his Trumpettes as irredeemably out of touch with reality. I feel it daily. Problem is, as you observed, these people are our friends, our neighbors, our family. And the price of a civil society (in part) is that we don’t get to write *anyone* off. Trump appeals to many people. Part of sharing this “pale, blue dot”–perhaps the most important part–is understanding that appeal. We have a responsibility to understand what need candidate Trump fills for his supporters, and to help them find a healthy way to meet that need. Setting aside issues of justice and compassion, not to do so is to further increase the instability of this already increasingly volatile country.