...Donald Trump Is Shocking, Vulgar and Right
Trump is the ideal candidate to fight Washington corruption not simply because he opposes it, but because he has personally participated in it. He’s not just a reformer; like most effective populists, he’s a whistleblower, a traitor to his class. Before he became the most ferocious enemy American business had ever known, Teddy Roosevelt was a rich guy. His privilege wasn't incidental; it was key to his appeal. Anyone can peer through the window in envy. It takes a real man to throw furniture through it from the inside.
In what does Trump's treason to his class consist, unless cheating at golf, and slightly exaggerated vulgarity?
ReplyDeleteComparing Theodore Roosevelt to Trump seems ridiculous to me on a number of counts. Roosevelt was an intelligent man with an emotional age of about 10. Trump may or may not be an intelligent man, but his emotional age is squarely in the terrible twos. Roosevelt wrote his own books, if sometimes a bit sloppily. Roosevelt was greatly interested in the world around him, and not always to the extent that the world reflected glory on him. I could go on, but why bother?
Contrarianism is a fine thing it it means always taking a second look at received opinion; that is what I would call principled contrarianism. There is also a compulsive contrarianism that sees the world expecting the sun to rise in the east, and settles down to watch it rise in the west. This column seems compulsive to me.
I think the comparison has a little more to it than that. I think Teddy has been overrated and Trump, I suspect, is underestimated. Most of what this article says, at least about Republican voters, sounds like what I've been hearing, not just from Republicans, but also from working-class Democrats, especially union members. Only yesterday, a union guy offered an extremely low opinion of those leading the unions. He thinks, and said a lot of his buddies feel the same way, that the people running the unions are as out of touch as the people running the government. I am increasingly inclined to think that we dismiss Trump and his supporters at our own peril.
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