Trumped

           Ten years of scribbling, mostly from the contrarian premise that if everyone knows something to be true it is probably false.  At this long last I have to admit that there may be one case in which the contrarian logic has been trumped.  Trump.

            Reviled by  both left and right, a godsend to late night comics, Donald Trump and his unlikely Presidential campaign have unified all of Organized America, or America, Inc. like nothing has in many years, but the unity is an opposition coalition of most unlikely bedfellows.  On a recent day the New York Times website home page had 15 stories, 11 of which were negative writing about Trump.  Mitt Romney called him “…a phony, a fraud”.   CNN and Fox both cannot stand him and NPR is apoplectic.  The talking heads can’t have a debate because they all agree that Trump is a menace.  Facebook carries the Hitler analogies probably too far, as the elites on all sides of all issues in every corner of the nation  line up against Donald Trump, which normally would make me think he must be OK.

            As of today Sunday March 13, 2016 Mr. Trump is apparently closing in on the Republican nomination.  Maybe on Tuesday Governor Kasich will take the Ohio primary and maybe Senator Rubio will take Florida.  Maybe, but we can’t see around the corner and as of today in the absence of a Black Swan Mr. Trump may be the Republican nominee.  From this we learn that he Republican Party has essentially devolved into something worse than “a party with bad principles”.  “The Liberal Manifesto”. http://contrariat.blogspot.com/search?q=liberal+manifesto , and as noted there some ten years ago political parties do come and go, so maybe it is time.

            Which leaves me failing to understand his success in the voting.  Voters for Trump and Senator Sanders share a common thread – they are both mad as hell and not going to take it any more.  Sanders blames the millionaires and billionaires.  Unlike the Sanders kids the Trump voters probably admire millionaires and probably aspire to be them.  They may feel that the impediment to them is from below, from immigrants or minorities – just a different “they” from the Sanders folks.  There is nothing aspirational and certainly nothing inspirational in the Trump or the Sanders messages, but at least for the Democrats as of today the center seems to be holding.  For Trump – he apparently won the vote in Dearborn Michigan, the heart of the Arab community, so I will admit to knowing nothing.

            I have tried to play my role to find some reason why the Contrarian principle should not apply to Trump.   I really don’t care if there is a wall with Mexico.  After all, we do have immigration laws and if replacing the current fence with a wall is necessary, well, OK.  But on the other hand, “They’re rapists” was wrong, wrong and unjustifiable.   I am not a fan of Syrian immigration, but banning Muslim immigrants just isn’t us.   Labeling some “them” as the enemy won’t withstand taking it down to a human level. “Luke and the Mortgage Crisis”. http://contrariat.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html

 I could justify campaign vulgarity on the grounds that Senator Rubio started it, but we have to have some standards for the Leader of the Free World.   I would like to say that fears are overblown, that he has no history of fascism and that he is a businessman who makes deals, but the campaign gives us no evidence of any of that. 

Ultimately I need to surrender and recognize that some days the indefensible cannot be defended. On Donald Trump’s campaign my best efforts to be a contrarian have been Trumped.