How Trump is a Flashing Billboard of Conservative Fallacy
The Primary Conservative Myth is that They are the Good Guys. Their Love Affair with Donald Trump Blows This Belief to Bits!
The real Americans. The Christian true believers. Pro life. Family values. Law and Order. The patriots. The brave. The upstanding. The stable. The prudent. The pragmatic. The normal. The honest. The trustworthy. The salt of the Earth. The good old boys. The devoted women. The disciplined children. The deserving. The superior.
All untrue. Not that individual conservatives can’t dance, dally, bob and weave with these imagined virtues. Surely there has been no shortage of brave conservatives doing something heroic; after all, they are conditioned to conform, believe, obey and spring to the defense of some clichéd principle. As separate people, they aren’t always dazed and confused amidst the vagaries of everyday life. They are capable of making logical decisions. They generally aren’t habitual liars. They give to charity. They may lend you a helping hand. Some will invite you in for milk and cookies.
And then they’ll vote to take your rights away.
The self-delusion that conservatives have indulged for centuries that they are the solid stock, and therefore rightful rulers, of any particular culture has always been a sham. Yet it has endured for two reasons: the sheer number of conservatives in a given populace, and the careful manipulation of this mob by elite (in some form or fashion, usually intellectual or financial, or both) cultural and political leaders adept at leading them by the nose while simultaneously veiling the corrosive, and often downright evil, intent and outcomes that this Ideology of Selfishness routinely delivers… to both individuals (including conservatives, themselves) and culture-at-large. When it becomes obvious to all but morons that conservatives have led society into some sort of debacle — whether national embarrassment, economic catastrophe or civil war — these same conservative elites manage to lay low until the anger wave passes, count on people forgetting entirely, then re-emerging (in one guise or another) to start the cycle all over again.
Rehashing all of the transgressions of conservatives against decency, empathy, compassion, wisdom, not to mention actual “American” and “Christian” ideals would take a book, a very large book. Here we will simply marvel at how miraculously, and conveniently, this litany of chicanery has been so successfully swept under the rug, not to be mentioned, much less taught as cautionary tales to, you know, EVERY AMERICAN CITIZEN so as these disasters do not recur.
Yes, liberals and moderates deserve a significant degree of blame for this as they have allowed conservatives to easily get away with this (literal) whitewashing of history. Yet tame as hamsters they stand bemused, perplexed, alarmed, but mostly impotent, as the next round of conservative snake oil peddlers arrives on the scene, selling exactly the same dizzying elixir as all the CON-men who came before.
The novel aspect today is not the message but the messenger. Whereas conservative “heroes” (such as they are) of the past — Edmund Burke, John Calhoun, Jefferson Davis, Charles Coughlin, Robert Taft, Joseph McCarthy, William F. Buckley Jr. Robert Welch, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell Jr., Pat Robertson, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Ronald Rumsfeld, even the daft George W. Bush , not to mention such media luminaries as Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, et al — carefully couched their malevolence in sober, intellectually burnished, “logic,” inspiring all “thinking” conservatives, who would then influence their own flocks small or large. All of these figures put themselves forth as operators within the realm of those virtues listed above… and there was little obvious evidence to suggest otherwise. Even as their words and deeds actually insulted the Constitution, they were believable, “mainstream” characters speaking to those good old boys and devoted women… all of whom had been primed for decades that liberals (i.e. “socialists”) were messing with their “way of life.”
Then comes the wrecking ball.
Donald Trump is not mainstream. He is a blatant caricature. Hardly a “good old boy you’d like to get a drink with,” his own self-identity seems to be proud, flamboyant playboy shyster. Good luck getting out of that bar with the contents of your wallet, or pride, intact. He is not believable. He is unbelievable. Nothing about him attempts to dissuade this observation. Once dashing in his tall, jutting arrogance, self-absorption and broadcast ignorance, his looks have long since melted and he is now a rotund troll in baggy suits, crowned by a blond thatch of bird nest, faked tanned and/or makeupped into a radioactive orange glow, living (and golfing, golfing, golfing) in gilded palaces replete with golden toilets, obsessing over himself, expecting slavish worship, spewing lies, insulting everyone, ally or enemy, while incessantly swallowing down pounds of tasteless hamburgers and barrels of Diet Coke. He is crassness personified, then squared.
But that does not do him justice. Trump is the Seven Deadly Sins in a Brioni suit. Think about it. Pride? Check. Greed? Check. Wrath? Check. Envy? Check. Lust? Check. Gluttony? Check. Sloth? Check. The writer(s) of that list in Proverbs would pin him in a second should he magically materialize slouching down a Judean alleyway singing his own praises.
Literally no one in the largest city in America took him seriously, except the smarmiest of lawyers and get-rich-quick dupes. He was a traveling demolition derby, toxifying just about every project he touched. And he tried everything. If it were glamorous. No stupid, dirty, blue-collar, industrial nonsense for this would-be prince. But soaring towers! Hotels! Casinos! Resorts! Restaurants! A University! Wine! Steaks! Coffee! Jewelry! An airline! An energy drink! Clothing! Chocolate! Watches! A magazine! Telemarketing! Home furnishings! Mortgages! Model (ooh, la, la) management! Beauty Pageant! A carousel! Professional sports team! A reality TV show! A charity. Yeah, it’s a documented fact that most of these failed spectacularly, and some, like that university and charity, were abject scams.
It is interesting to note that few of these projects were intended for the typical Trump voter. Donald has struggled all his life with the need to prove himself with the upper crust, the wealthy, the powerful. Everything he does is in concert or competition with them. He has no interest whatsoever in mixing and mingling with the hoi polloi… unless they have come to worship him.
With every project along the way, Trump left a bevy of jilted investors, contractors, workers, and anyone else who lent an eyelash of trust to a man who revels in getting away with things few other mortals would think to even attempt.
Which brings us to the presidency of the United States of America.
In 2016, did Trump really think he could be president? Likely not; there is no precedent of a celebrity becoming president without first paying their civil service dues in some previous manner (i.e. Reagan as governor of California). Yet count on conservatives, those guardians of traditional values, to throw that prudent standard to the wind and give a C-list TV star the keys to the nuclear codes! A professed Democrat now turned Republican, Trump’s candidacy (after several other muses about running that never materialized) was little more than a lark, focused mostly on getting a better deal for himself on “The Apprentice,” his reality show on NBC. All he needed to do was bring more attention to himself… in some brash, newsworthy performance to score a big raise. That he delivered when he came down the gilded escalator at Trump Tower. With nothing to lose and a lot to gain, he summoned forth his own ugly selfishness as he channeled his very opposite — mom and pop conservative out there in America struggling to get by and threatened seemingly at every turn by the rapid pace of change by hoity toity people like, well, Donald Trump. He offered no logic, no explanation, no detailed plan, just a whole lot of complaining, blaming and, most important, aggrandizing of himself as the one and only who could fix everything. True, he admitted to no virtues, other than being the best at and knowing more than anyone about… everything.
Trump admitted being as astounded as anyone when his racist, xenophobic, anti-science, anti-intellectual, scapegoating screed, lushly embellished with boasts and bragging like no politician in American history almost instantly was embraced by millions of conservative Americans. “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, okay, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay,” he marveled.
If there is anything that Trump is actually good at, it’s being a bully. And he had found his buzzing swarm that would stand in awe and watch as he attacked the weakest in society. They loved it. They loved him. Here, in living color, was the bully they had hoped for, desperately needed after that long line of what turned out to be conservative nerds, who was going to save America. A new, real, messiah, the strongman kind, had arrived.
He was “telling it like it is.” He was offering up common sense solutions, which amounted to a catalog of demonizations. Playing conservative wedge issue angst like a symphony conductor, Trump deftly acknowledged the victimhood of these brave, stalwart Americans, calling out establishment Republicans for allowing them to linger in such injustice, and, of course casting himself as their rescuer. “They are coming for you.” “The forgotten will be forgotten no longer.” “I alone can fix the system.” “I will restore your power.“ “You are going to be so rich, you are going to get tired of winning.” His ire was not directed just to liberals, but also to the Republican establishment. He knew he had to differentiate and distance himself from the party regulars, so he threw some curveballs… dissed the Neocons and their Iraq War (but promised to bring back their torture policies), said he would quickly end the Afghanistan War, shook the Manhattan financial world (which he so despised) by promising to raise taxes on the rich, rattled segments of the market by claiming he would introduce massive tariffs, said he would be a “friend” to LGBTQ people, and, of course, pounded on his biggest hit: a “big, beautiful wall” across the entire southern border. It was a wild panoply of half-baked concepts, each with a boogie-man in the middle. With these, he took on and demolished each of his right-wing opponents, who by comparison seemed like sad puppies to this Doberman of a newcomer to the political fray. Who knew being a “friend” to the LGBTQ community would be so popular? (Hint: it wasn’t and he wasn’t). He eviscerated the front runners, who either whimpered off the stage (Jeb Bush) or publicly apologized, groveled, kissed the ring and bowed before their new emperor (Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham). With each take-down of a former Republican titan, Trump grew exponentially in stature. The more he lied, bragged and boasted, the more popular he became; the more incendiary his flame-throwing, the more attention was given. It was a malignant feedback loop, a frenzy of fear-mongering and over promising, drawing conservatives like flies to a cattle pen.
He would go on, of course, to take over the Republican Party, almost completely. His minions are still running the party apparatus. He was elected president, albeit without winning the popular vote. Then served for four tumultuous years, polluting the White House with his pathetic neediness and messy relations with some of the worst actors here and abroad, mostly not fulfilling his campaign promises and bungling a pandemic crisis, while lying all along. Ah, the lying. An estimated THIRTY THOUSAND lies as the President of the United States. But he made a lot of money on this side hustle, and his kids and son-and-law got richer, themselves.
But Trump’s true contribution to American politics was to rip the veil from conservative pretensions to virtue. This was not a “mainstream” leader they carefully vetted and sent to the White House; it was an abundantly apparent toxic narcissist, a man not morally fit to run a coffee klatch (though he may still have several hundred bags of Trump Coffee stashed away somewhere). These were not “dog whistles” of racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, anti-intellectualism, anti-science, homophobia, transphobia they enthusiastically responded to, Trump unleashed in-your-face, own-the-Libs, out-and-proud defiance on full display. No, not all conservatives outwardly participated in this ugly outpouring of pent-up selfishness, but Trump set a party record with sixty-three million Americans voting for him the first time around, then broke that record with seventy-four million during his re-election campaign. Each of these voters was condoning the crassness, the lying, the bragging, the bullying, the manipulating, the implied violence, the all too clear grab for money and power, all in the service of conservative selfishness.
Trump had these upstanding, “real” Americans clamoring for a serial philanderer who bragged about “grabbing them by the pussy,” paid off porn stars, couldn’t finish the religious phrase “Our Father, which art in…” He had them cheering as a hero a juvenile delinquent dunce (Kyle Rittenhouse, now cashing in on his newfound fame, including a video game in which he is the protagonist shooter, oh yes, and an offered internship with U.S. Rep Matt Gaetz) who killed two Americans. Along with grabbing pussy, Trump had his devotees defending his sickening publicity stunt when he had legal protestors gassed and dispersed so he could wave a Bible upside down at a church he was not invited to involve. He had them nodding at the despicable crown prince of Saudi Arabia, winking at his “love affair” with the dictator in North Korea and admiring Putin. He had these geniuses totally convinced, without a scintilla of evidence that both the 2016 and 2020 elections were rigged against him (even as officials of their own party loudly responded, “It ain’t so!”) and eager to go along with a coup d’etat to overturn an election that would immediately have transformed America into a banana republic. He has them looking the other way (hopefully) as his and their party welcomes Neo-nazis, white supremacists, Creationists, flat-Earthers and other of the craziest conspiracy theorists into the fold. He has them applauding toxic masculinity, and persecuting some of the most vulnerable individuals in this nation. He has lowered the bar of conservative intolerance toward “others,” while raising the odds of more violence, even another civil war, which some conservatives are busily attempting to start. That would delight Trump, if it were all about him. He has conservatives rapt in adoration as he demands absolute fealty from everyone around him, insisting that public officials serve him, not the Constitution as required by law.
Indeed, Trump is lawless… he believes no law applies to him. A strange bedfellow for the “Law and Order” crowd, but there they are demanding he escape prosecution for his many, many illegalities. Like Nixon, he’s their crook… far better, actually, because Tricky Dicky was too friendly with the liberals. Which just goes to show they don’t really believe in “law and order” unless it befits them.
Nor the Constitution. Nor Christianity. Nor liberty. Nor justice. Nor equality. Nor empathy. Nor compassion. Nor family values. Nor honesty. Nor truth. Nor prudence. Nor stability. Nor any virtue whatsoever. Unless it advantages or privileges or empowers them. Whether they are out terrorizing people on the streets, or merely watching football in their underwear, so long as they are voting for or otherwise supporting this cascade of utter depravity and corruption, they are complicit. Bravery is not the word for these people. Treacherous, diabolical, treasonous hit a lot closer.
Conservatives are the unreal Americans. The unreal Christians. The unreal defenders of virtue. The images of January 6, 2021, with conservatives running violently rampant and filled with hate, lusting for blood, through the halls of the United States Capitol, the holy citadel of democracy in the world, should be the defining portrait of American conservatism. You want to understand conservatives, watch that!
Conservatism doesn’t believe in anything except its own advantage, privilege and power. That’s the only thing it “conserves.” In the sordid image of the brazen traitor and criminal Donald Trump, at long last conservatives have found their perfect avatar.
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No Hate.
No Violence.
All Life is Sacred.
The Universe is Magnificent & Beautiful.
Love is the Way.
Copyright 2023, Rusty Reid
