Kong Wall

Jeff Goldstein does a better job than Scott Adams in unpacking the hermeneutics of Trumpism, and while Adams seems to hint that we ought to smile and enjoy the ride, Jeff Goldstein has a much better solution in mind.

In Richard Brautigan’s Sombrero Fallout, the titular Mexican hat appears inexplicably in the center of a small town, having recently descended from the Heavens like some empty, woven-straw signifier. To those inclined to map teleological import to such an event, the hat is much like a Jesus-faced pancake or a Central-American statue of the Virgin Mary weeping blood; or perhaps it’s the mark of an alien visitation, a gift from some far-flung taco-loving race of slightly zany oversized hat-sharers; or else it’s part of some sinister government psy-op to gauge how a town, confronted by such a conveniently fraught occurrence, will react to an epistemological crisis made frighteningly immediate by the appearance of an unclaimed, unmanned Bandito bonnet. It is, in short, to them a sign rather than a signifier — and as such, it must be reacted to, made to mean something. The plan of the town’s political bosses is to control the framing, to own the narrative it must first invent and then defend. The pols seek to determine meaning and browbeat recalcitrant apostates into joining in a united front proclaiming the portent of this sudden sombrero — the hope being that to define the event is to control it and somehow constrain its trajectory.

— Which may just be the perfect metaphor for the Trump “movement” and the current RNC campaign to validate it — from Reince to Newt to Noonan to whatever program it is that runs the Hannity talking points generator FNC props up all Max Headroom-like on the TV screen most nights — save the nagging regret that Trump’s YUGE Skull Island Kong Wall, had it been built just a little sooner, would have kept the filthy, rapey Mexican hat out of an American street to begin with. Because Trump, like that sombrero, is an outsized blank slate dropped in front of a gawking crowd, a gibbering physical signifier to which the hopes of needy and largely pig-ignorant voters have been pinned, the whole mess then punctuated with a signature red ball cap.

Read the whole thing.

Bialystock and Bloom were behind the whole thing!

There occurred a bizarre psychologically-inexplicable transference phenomenon by which voters distressed and made unhappy by the results of Barack Obama’s performance and leftist democrat policies, turned in fury on the opposition leadership, blaming it for supposedly being in cahoots with the enemy, and then ran off with an unprincipled, non-conservative celebrity clown with a lengthy record of supporting liberal democrats.

In the primary contests this year, there was little voter interest in returning to Republican pro-growth, pro-freedom, economic restoration policies. What the yobbo voter wanted, it turned out, was essentially Fascism: a blend of Socialism and Nationalism.

The new primary voter ecstatically opted for a crude, loud, and abrasive leader (most decidedly not a gentleman) unburdened by ethical inhibitions, conventional speech taboos, or even good manners, who rather than promising to dismantle government, affirmed the Welfare State safety net, and promised special governmental protection for the working-class voter’s particular special interests above the general interest. To the American worker he promised to give protection from labor competition domestically through a crackdown on immigration (Nativism) and –a bit late!– protection from labor competition abroad via tariff barriers, trade wars, and specific presidential intimidation of companies considering lower costs by exporting jobs.

Trump won his massive and enthusiastic following by appealing frankly and openly to crude selfishness, to class animosity, to anti-intellectualism, and to dim and brutish nationalistic hostilities: hostility toward immigrants, hostility toward foreign labor and business competition, and even hostility toward American military alliances with other countries and toward America’s international role and international responsibilities.

Donald Trump succeeded precisely by appealing to the worst prejudices, the worst ideas, and the worst attitudes of the American electorate. And he successfully won their hearts and enthusiastic support by fighting dirty: by shamelessly lying, by contradicting himself and reversing statements and positions, by bullying and name-calling, by interrupting, and by generally misbehaving.

Trump turned the Republican Primary Contest into a combination of TV reality show and professional wrestling extravaganza. Trump’s characteristic man-bites-dog behavior kept the attention of the dim-bulb media fixated on him, and delivered an estimated $2 billion in free publicity. And the unhappy Republican voter ate it all up.

Donald Trump built a successful candidacy essentially by the grossest kind of inversion of values. He appealed to voters by breaching good manners and decorum and by an extraordinarily open display of contempt for civility, integrity, and principles, with wheedling, limitless braggadocio, and flattery piled high on top. It seems possible that he could go on to win the presidency by outdoing even the democrats in appealing to the basest and most contemptible aspects of human nature. You can’t blame any Republican leadership failure for any of this. You can only blame what Isaiah Berlin used to speak of as “the crooked timber of Humanity.”

Principled Republicans should not unite behind Donald Trump. What we need to do now is to stop Donald Trump and to nip everything he stands for in the bud.

Victor Davis Hanson explained, the other day, that the essence of the Trump technique was to appeal to an electorate disgusted by the existing political state of things by becoming the first Post-Modern Candidate, by turning conventional politics upside down, by simply breaking all the rules. Trump succeeded, in essence, the same way Marcel Duchamp succeeded when he brought a porcelain urinal to an exhibition Society of Independent Artists in 1917, titling it “Fountain.”

[E]lite journalists, political advisers, media anchors, and pollsters, for all their analyses, have no idea where, why, and how Trump garners support. He follows no campaign rules. He has no consistent political ideology. He ignores decorum. Scandals do not tar him. The media treat him like a cobra rising from a basket — terrified that if at any moment they stop their music, the smiling serpent might strike and bite them in the nose.

Tomorrow Trump could declare there to be 57 states, or address vets as Corpse-men or tell his legions to bring a gun to a knife fight — and none of his supporters would find him clueless, half-educated, or incendiary. If Trump brought one of his wheeler-dealer Manhattan real-estate cronies to a rally and the man’s court-ordered ankle bracelet went off, no one would bat an eye.

In other words, Trump is a postmodern creation, for whom traditional and time-tested rules do not apply. He is neither brilliant nor unhinged, neither ecumenical nor just a polarizer, not a wrecker and not a savior of the Republican party, but something else altogether. He does not defy conventional wisdom. There simply is no convention and no wisdom applicable to Donald J. Trump. For years postmodernists have lectured us that there is no truth, no absolutes, no timeless protocols worthy of reverence; Trump is their Nemesis, who reifies their theories that truth is simply a narrative whose veracity is established by the degree of power and persuasion behind it.

A reality-TV star, Trump appeals to those who despise reality-TV celebs like the Kardashians. A billionaire, he is the hero of those who hate billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, or Warren Buffett. A vain narcissist, he earns the loyalty of those who are repelled by the vain narcissism of Barack Obama. A man who dyes and does his hair, tans his skin, and stretches his face, he appeals to those who have neither the money nor the desire to do the same. A self-described Republican, he attacks Republicans more than Democrats. An elite insider, he blasts elite insiders. He is both to the right and to the left of Cruz, Kasich, and Rubio. Trump rails against dirty campaign fundraising — and he assures us that no one knows such corruption better than he himself, since as a donor he used to spread cash around precisely to influence. Why else should anyone give?

If the rules of politics do not apply to Trump, how then can Trump break them? For Donald Trump, there is only one third rail: conventionality. If he, as advised, were to stop calling his rivals liars and crooks; if he, as urged, were to read sober and judicious speeches off teleprompters; if he, as counseled, were to talk in politically correct platitudes, Trump would turn doctrinaire and conformist — and be undone by reviving the very orthodox rules he once strangled, but that otherwise strangle outsider-insiders like himself. If Trump were to listen to a politico and lose 30 pounds, shorten his tie, cut off his comb-over, and wear earth-tone clothes, he would be finished.

His supporters want a reckoning with a system that has not so much failed as infuriated them. What drives their loyalty to Trump — if not the person, at least the idea of Trump — is a sort of nihilism. As a close friend put it to me this week, “I don’t care whether Trump wins or not, I just want him to f— things up as long as he can.”

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Hat tip to Claire Berlinski.