Yet another revelation of a Trump nastiness. Another debate that in an ordinary election would doom a candidate as certainly as if he had shown up drunk.
How does Trump shoot himself in the foot? Let us count the ways. Is it the complete lack of substance behind the inane bragging that he’s great, that he will share that greatness with us all, and absolute refusal to answer questions about what that means?
Is it his total contempt for the debate format? (One longs for the moderator to be armed with a taser.)
Perhaps the most damning factor is his utter, child-like lack of impulse control. (That temperament in charge of our nuclear future?)
And yet the morning-after assumption is that he will survive and continue to be dangerous. How can his stormy campaign keep on keeping on? An analogy with the contradictions of hurricane-watching may offer a clue to at least part of his appeal (to those to whom he appeals).
TV weather reporters, while discharging their official duty to warn against deadly storms often exhibit clear signs of sympathy for them. And they obviously assume that many of their viewers share some of this storm romanticism of rooting for big storms against our own interests— not despite the destructiveness, because of the destructiveness.
Hurricane Matthew was hardly done ruining Haiti, the death toll mounting, when Weather Underground posted this bit of hero worship: “Matthew Holding Its Own; Threat Shifting to Bahamas, Southeast U.S….Mighty Hurricane Matthew has shrugged off its encounter with a landfall on the southwestern tip of Haiti… “
The big guy has survived his rampage through Haiti and lived to wreck other lives. There is no mistaking their ill-concealed rooting for the monster to stay strong. And destructive.
It may be contradictory, but there’s something about all that destructive energy that energizes us. It sort of makes our day. (Unless of course we are the ones being destroyed.)
Trump supporters have something of the same relationship with their big, blustering candidate. The more he disrupts things, the better they like it. The political landscape, including his own party. The concept of “presidentiality.” The debate format. Common decency—that a candidate should at least keep any racist or sexist impulses to himself, and at least appear to obey the law, pay taxes, etc. The commonsense that we should be extremely careful with nuclear weapons. Hurricane Trump rips right into such orthodoxies and expectations with his Category 5 winds, and supporters just eat it up, even if it can be well argued that it goes against their own self-interest.
For the many who feel personally powerless, the expressive destructive energy, even if entirely vicarious, is apparently irresistible, even when it makes no sense of the usual sort and is in fact dangerous.
As with hurricanes, this romance with disruptive energy may be limited to those at some distance from the actual effects–at least temporarily.
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