Why Trump Will Go Down In History
Forget the impeachment: that will be merely a footnote
When the British narrowly voted in 2016 for suicide by Brexit, Europe was shocked. But Brexit was nothing compared to Trump.
When Trump was elected in 2016, despite being the most ignorant, infantile, inadequate, repellent, and utterly stupid candidate in the history of the USA, politicians around the world instantly grasped the real lesson he’d accidentally taught.
The road to power in a modern democracy runs through lies and simple-minded blustering.
The hard fact that few people want to accept is that at least half of all voters are completely ignorant and not very intelligent. This means that they can’t grasp our modern complex world and so they’re desperate for someone to come along and tell them simplistic lies their limited intellects can encompass.
It doesn’t matter if these lies are totally implausible. It doesn’t matter if these lies are so infantile that even a small child would see through them. All that matters is that the lies are simple, and delivered as much as possible in monosyllables.
Trump became an accidental president because he wanted to boost ratings for his flagging trash TV show by pretending to be a candidate. The media gave him 85% of all coverage for free because he was a one-man freak show and people love to gawp at a freak. Then overwhelming exposure created momentum and that, combined with name recognition, carried him into the White House.
And politicians all over the world sat up and took notice.
No one thought Brexit was a model for anything except grotesque stupidity. It seemed to be a unique one-off event. But after November 2016 everyone realized that Trump had shown how amazingly simple-minded and easily gulled a huge proportion of voters truly are. Trump showed that provided one was willing to use the Hitler Playbook and stir up a toxic mix of fear and hatred, success was almost inevitable.
In retrospect Brexit became comprehensible because it too had relied entirely on simple-minded lies and the demonizing of foreigners. Trump taught the world that stupidity and venality are the keys to power.
