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A Performative Bully [1]

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Date: 2022-08-16

August is peak sunflower month.

One newspaper opinion article after another indicates that the Democrats’ problem is that they are elites. It’s true that most Democratic members of congress and presidents, and liberal justices, are wealthy. Many had parents who were wealthy before them and consequently had the opportunity of an elite education. But then, the same is true of Republican politicians. The election system favors the wealthy and educated, left or right.

Few are as over-the-top elite as Donald Trump, though. Compare him to Warren Buffet, who is (or was, before considerable donation to the Gates Foundation) wealthier than Trump. Buffet lives modestly and cares about people, going so far as to say outright that he should be taxed more sternly because he is not called upon to pay the same percentage as his secretary. Trump, on the other hand, lives extravagantly. (Gold potty, anyone?) He treats working people as a lesser species, as stupid rubes that he can and does con. So why is he the hero of working people who say that they despise liberals for being elites?

Not because he’s a conservative’s conservative. He is not a prime example of what the Republicans were in, say, Reagan’s day. He’s a good example of Republican principles (such as they are) today, but that’s arguably because his success led them further astray, not because he followed their example.

My take is that it’s because he’s a performative bully. As a schoolboy he was known as an actual bully but he has since elevated the tendency to an art form. There’s a certain guilty psychological pleasure that many people find in watching a guy win by kicking a powerless guy down. That’s fairly common in rich and poor society and every level in between. Some see it as the demonstration of a laudable masculine sense of competition. Reality TV producers recognized the attraction and cashed in on it. A lot of powerful Republicans saw the opportunity there too.

Out of reality TV came Donald Trump. People already loved his “You’re fired!” He loved and craved the adoration. It’s not clear that he felt really strongly about Blacks, Muslims, immigrants, liberals, “elites,” or any of the other groups that he came to portray as the evil forces of Them who were out to ruin the lives of patriotic Us if the forces of Us didn’t arm up. (It’s not clear that he has any principles besides what he finds convenient in the moment.) Those groups were just convenient targets, in the same way that a school bully’s target is not someone he despises, just someone he is sure that he can beat up. Trump started small, calling on election rally crowds to violently eject hecklers. But seeing how people cheered, and gaining the power of the presidency, he built up to bigger and far more dangerous demonstrations, calling on his base like a bully calls on the boys who follow him hoping to soak up a little of his glory and avoid being one of the Them.

That’s my take on why Donald Trump, as elite as a man as can be in his life story and his attitude, is adored by people who hate elites. They’ll overlook his golden background because they identify with his bellicose showmanship and they enjoy being members of a fraternity of followers. When Trump portrays Democrats as snooty elites who don’t understand hard work and the American patriots who do it, the hypocrisy goes right over their heads. It probably goes over Trump’s too. McConnell and his ilk see thorugh it but back Trump anyway, because between moral principles and more Republican votes, they much prefer the latter.

The Democrats cannot do enough to shine a light on his spoiled rich boy attitude, on the Republicans who enable him, and on how they’re both conning the “base” shamelessly.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/16/2117010/-A-Performative-Bully

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