The girl who opened wide and ate the world
Then took a bite of the moon
She said it did not taste
Like anything on the planet
The stars tickled her tongue
While she played marbles
With Mars and Saturn
She gave Jupiter a big kick
As if it were a football
Laughed as it bounced
Down the Milky Way
The galaxy was her playroom
She roamed far and wide
But always came home for a nap
While the majority of people around the world (demonstrably in the U.S., certainly here in Canada) now take a deep breath of relief that Trump has been defeated, quite a few columnists and pundits are wondering why it was so close. Trump’s campaign undoubtedly succeeded in energizing and growing his base (at least in terms of turnout). However, the same behaviours that fed the Trumpers also motivated, I believe, the other side to turn out and vote in record numbers. His flame-throwing performance in the first debate highlighted his petulance, his rudeness,, his ability to lie with abandon, and his inherent racist behavior. His super-spreading rallies were symptomatic of his disregard for science and common sense. Even his Covid infection, which led to his drug-aided, apparently superhuman recovery, were beacons of his arrogance and his administration’s incompetence. All of Trump’s perversity fueled the urgency of the vote and drove 75 million Americans to cast their ballot for Joe Biden. Certainly, it was not Biden’s steadily unsexy, make-no-mistake campaign that powered this charge.
Yet the question remains: What to make of the 70 million who voted for Trump? The common assumption was that Trump could not grow his base, and perhaps this was true. He did, though, convince a plethora of Americans to vote, who had not done so previously, and they voted for him. There is likely more than one answer to the question. The demonization of the Democratic party as socialist, or even communist, played a large part. While this is laughable in Canada (the U.S. Democratic party platform is far to the right to that of our Conservative party and even the so-called ‘far left’ in the U.S. is basically the Canadian norm), it played a significant role in the election. The mythology that freedom of the individual must come before collective rights is cemented deep within the American psyche, So it is not going to disappear anytime soon. The gun-toting segment of the Trump base is obviously reflective of that,
There is already speculation that Trump might run again in 2024, or that he will sit in a kinglike throne in Mar-O-Lago and control the Republican party from the perch. Either is possible, given the power of his numbers and the decrepit state of the GOP. So this era might not quite be over yet!
