The Trump Phenomenon: Take My Hand!


trump-ship

Written by John Kirkwood

Imagine for the sake of argument the following: nearly 8 years ago we were out at sea when our boat was stormed by pirates led by a community organizer and we were thrown overboard.  We grouped together and began to tread water when two years later the S.S. GOP came to our rescue.  At the last minute they determined that there was no room aboard and they were running low on gas so if we’d just all donate our watches, Rolex, Movado, Timex, they would pawn our watches, fill their tanks and come back to rescue us. Four years later they did but not really.

After they convinced us to throw them the rest of our contraband (wallets, time, hope, patience) they threw us a leaky life preserver and promised that after just one more stop they would be right back.

On the horizon was a huge yacht and a man in a captain’s hat and an orange face was watching through binoculars, a very expensive brand of binoculars called Focus Groups.  He pulled the yacht close, jumped in a dinghy and came right to where we were, stuck out his arm and said, “Take my hand.”  As we were about to take the hand, the S.S. GOP suddenly appeared on the horizon and between sips of Chateau Montelena and nibbles of marinated manchego chunks, declared over the loudspeaker, “Don’t take that hand!”

Most of those drowning ignored them, because the party had cried “Bush” one too many times.  Some of us yelled back, “Why not?”  After a short period of silence, answers started coming in: “He’s been divorced twice,” “He’s cheated on his wife,” “He owns a lot of Casinos…and one, at least one of them has naked women swinging around a pole.”  In the dinghy the Captain said, “Don’t pay attention to those losers, they’re a mirage, they’re all talk and no action – Now, take my hand!”

That’s it, folks, that is the psychology behind the Trump phenomenon.  And there are only two factors that fuel Trump’s reception – He’s accomplished, and he hasn’t screwed us yet.  The other guys aren’t in a yacht that they’ve built, they’re riding in one that we paid for, continue to pay for, and never get to board unless they need the latrines cleaned.  They have screwed us over and over.  The food is lousy, the prices are high, and the waiter never refreshes our coffee.  Why would we ever go there again?

“If you think Washington is so sick that you want someone to kick over the table,” said Newt Gingrich, “then you like Donald Trump and you frankly don’t care about the details.”

Speaker Gingrich is right.  To stick with the analogy, if you’re left to drown in Lake Michigan when suddenly someone sticks a hand down from his boat to save you, are you going to ask him how many times he’s been married or if he’s a true conservative or are you going to take the hand, be thankful, and then plot your revenge on the bastards who left you to drown?

The jilted girl doesn’t want to listen to her ex-boyfriend’s excuses.  The lipstick on the collar was the last straw.  Besides, the captain of the ski team has been calling.

The establishment class will never get this, consider how Bush and Kasich would continually drone on about how well appointed their Coast Guard cutter was in Florida and Ohio, and how we should all try the stuffed shrimp when it next passes us by.

But the naiveté in the conservative wing of the party is stultifying – if I wasn’t out of crayons and finger-puppets, I’d explain.  The people supporting Trump don’t care that his views aren’t conservative pedigree, or rational, or intelligible, or consistent – they aren’t judging words anymore because the GOP has taken to walking on two feet, living in the house, and sleeping in beds with sheets.  And Beasts of England is no longer on the sheep’s iPod.  They just want a guy who’s not part of the clique who they can trust, even if it’s only half the time, to do what he says he will do.  And this guy has proof (see the building with his name on it? Yeah, Chicago said he’d never do it but it’s right there branded high on the river – living proof that Trump will either beat the machine or buy the machine but in the end he wins!).

It appears that Americans, charged by emotion, are more willing to storm the Bastille than gather on Lexington Green.  And yes, that’s tragic.

It’s quite popular among revisionist historians to blame the Clinton presidency on Ross Perot.  But Ross Perot, summoned and quickened by George H.W. Bush, would never have been an issue if Bush had carried on the Reagan legacy.  When his lips were actually read and it was clear that he spoke with forked tongue, the vacuum was created for Perot to fill.  The curse of Clinton was the result of disappointment with an establishment hack who once derided Reaganomics as Voodoo only to usher in four years of doo-doo.

Trump may be the Frankenstein monster that is terrorizing the GOP landscape but the torch and pitchfork mob isn’t chasing him, they’re following him.  And the establishment has no one to blame but themselves.

Promising the electorate that the vanguard of the GOP would rise as a firewall to the lawless Obama, the tea-party rose up and handed them a landslide election only to be ignored and derided as “Hobbits.”

After an Obama victory over Dr. Frankenstein we were told to rise up in righteous indignation once more and storm the Senate because with Harry Reid out of the way our fearless leaders could really stop the Tyrant-in-Chief.  With Reid and Pelosi no longer available as bogey-man, the masks were off for all to see that we had found the enemy and the enemy was us, or more accurately – them.

If a guillotine could run in a Republican primary, there would be lines around the block to see it and pass under its shadow and the race would be over already.  If Putin could run in this Republican Primary, he’d be leading the guillotine by six points going into Super Tuesday.

Unfortunately, there is collateral damage in this group think: Ted Cruz.  As a nation we don’t deserve a candidate with the integrity and backbone of Ted Cruz, he’s a throwback to our founding era, and we’ve earned the plagues that have been visited on us.  But it is a shame that the best candidate that we’ve had since Ronald Reagan is getting punished merely because he’s associated with the cartel.  As Jesus was slandered for having eaten with sinners, so too Cruz.  And the myopia is the same, neither our Lord nor our Senator were there to celebrate sin but to confront it and overcome it.

It just may be that Cruz, who is wearing a letterman’s jacket, will be swept out with the other jocks even though he wasn’t at the party where the date-rape occurred.  Lynch mobs are hard to reason with.  As a wise man once said, “You cannot reason someone out of a position that they haven’t reasoned themselves into.”

The angry mob won’t be appeased until they see blood.  The Great Santini may be a bad father but they’re looking for the hero fighter pilot who is going to take the can of mushroom soup tucked under his coat and hurl in the middle of the officer’s ball.  That’s the guy they want and that’s the moment they’ve been denied.

And Trump is the best suited outsider to do exactly that.  Dr. Carson?  Can’t see him overturning the money changers tables and as much as you may like Carly, wait who? People just don’t see her name pasted on buildings, golf-courses, airplanes, and hit television shows – her gun is too small.  And while she’s wonderful at confronting Clinton she hasn’t been willing to confront Political Correctness.  To the disenfranchised, attacking politically correct Newspeak is equal to Kennedy promising a moon landing.

We’ve seen this play out before in a movie called Back to School – Donald Trump reprising the Rodney Dangerfield role of the self-made, street smart business tycoon and the establishment playing the pretentious, two-steps-behind Dean of the Business School.  If Trump needs an English paper on Kurt Vonnegut, he hires Vonnegut.  If Vonnegut doesn’t get results writing about Vonnegut – “I like you, Kurt.  You’ve really done some wonderful things.  But, in the end, you were the team leader and the team didn’t get it done.  Kurt, You’re fired!”

Let’s face it, folks.  Trump is The Great Santini, he is going to bounce the basketball off of Jeb’s head.  Donald Trump is taking the GOP back to school with the immortal words of Thornton Melon as the backbone of his campaign, “Look out for Number One, but don’t step in Number Two!”


 

Originally published at Parsonspoint.com.