Why is Donald Trump So Popular With the Right Wing?

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

     It's a question eminently worthy to be included with other great queries of the ages such as Who Was Jack the Ripper, Why Do Dogs Sniff Each Other's Butts and Why Won't Soccer and the Metric System Take Hold in the US? To anyone who doesn't watch NASCAR and Fox "News", it's all supposition. It's like trying to get in the mind of a cat to determine why it shits behind your couch when it has a clean litter box to use.

     And the Donald's improbable and seemingly inexplicable appeal to the right wing denizens living at the base of Jon Stewart's Bullshit Mountain has proven to be an enduring mystery since Trump announced his candidacy from his own hotel back in June. After all, what's Trump saying this year that he hadn't back when he was just an umber-faced buffoonish alsoran in 2012? That campaign was immediately exposed for the right wing performance art that it was and before anyone knew it, Trump decided to terminate his campaign and sulk back to Celebrity Apprentice.

     So what's so different with the current goat rodeo? Since 2012, the only ways that Trump's changed is he's gained a few more pounds and his increasingly transparent double weave is the worse for wear. He's changed remarkably little since a suppressed 1989 documentary was made about him when he was still in his 30's.

     Well, this time around, he's attacking minorities and women with renewed vigor, even right wing Fox icon Megyn Kelly, and is more than a little more brash than he was in '12. And considering the hostile climate Republicans have made since that year for women, minorities and other tried-and-true targets of the right wing, this has emboldened the Neanderthal wing of the GOP so their completely batshit insane positions have the illusion of being mainstream or on the verge of being so (Thank you again, Joe Overton).

     Humans never change no matter how long our shit- and blood-spattered lineage stretches. One of those ways is in whom we tend to surrender ourselves whether it be favorite writers, spouses and soulmates and politicians. It's a foregone conclusion that many humans seek out those who have commonalities with us. Whether it be someone who looks like us, thinks like us or has common values with us, as a generally egoistic species, we tend to be attracted to those in whom we see the most of ourselves. 

     And, if one is tactless and hateful and virulently defensive to those who don't share your views, you'll tend to be attracted to someone like Trump (although it could be said distance, like absence, makes the heart grow fonder). Indeed, Donald Trump's entire candidacy can be boiled down to the word "Mexicans" and a derogatory imperative.

     While being canny and devious to make himself a multi billionaire through one tax avoidance scheme after another, Donald Trump is not an intelligent man. He comes across as a thug that just made his first million, as someone who'd hijacked third base at gunpoint and thought he was born on it. The radical Teabagger faction that is not only indistinguishable from white supremacist factions but are the one and the same see their rancid values shared or pretended to be shared by a huckster who's barely smart enough and more than cynical enough to see the profit in doing so.

Not Racist But #1 With Racists

     Right wing mouth-breathers who scream about government overreach and the elites have always had an uneasy alliance with the 1% who still successfully pull the football from them like so many Lucy Van Pelts every election cycle. They get the vague sense they're being butt-fucked from behind but as long as the GOP and Wall Street keep telling them the liberals are out to get their guns, every time they look in the mirror to see who's sodomizing them, all they'll see is Michael Moore and George Soros.

     So how cool is it when, instead of buying a candidate, someone in the 1% decides to run for President and it happens to be someone who shares their values? 

     Guns are cool! We shouldn't have gun free zones! We should just bomb the shit out of this nation or another! I'd get rid of inner city gangs in a New York minute! I'd build a wall around Mexico who imports their rapists to our country! Menstrual blood squirting out everywhere! Sure I read the Bible. It's my favorite book! I'd fuck her if she wasn't my daughter. Deport all 11,000,000 of them!

     20 years ago or less, such a candidacy would've been seen only in a political satire courtesy of Hollywood and dismissed, as was Trump's last stumping stunt, as pure right wing performance art. But as I said earlier, the GOP establishment that's popping Advil like beer nuts over Trump's antics has only itself to blame because they got into bed with the Teabaggers who then elected their own ideological soulmates into Congress by the dozens, setting the stage for a rancidly recidivist nation that seems bound and determined to catapult us back to beyond the beginning of the Civil Rights and Suffrage movements and clear into the 19th century.

     As stated, it's inexplicable how anyone could so fanatically support such a thoroughly revolting carbon-based life form such as Donald Trump. But it's notable that among those who support Trump the most vocally are some of the stupidest, most misinformed voters and most virulent racists in the US. If you don't believe me, just consider for a minute that disgraced racist Hulk Hogan publicly stated he wanted to be Trump's running mate.

     So it's refreshing for the right wing to get behind a One Percenter who seems to share their values and avoids looking like an elitist without ever being burdened by the suspicion that he's merely cynically using their prejudices and fears to political advantage. It's enough that he's not too self-conscious to step into a WWE ring and make a flaming asshole of himself or to trash talk anyone of consequence who even mildly questions his vague and substanceless positions.

     And the more companies and other corporate entities that dump Trump, the more he gets to play the victim card, to a "persecuted" white right wing base that sees white people, gun owners and Christians like Kim Davis as under attack? That only adds to the appeal.