NOVEMBER 4, 2024 – As an American I’m a product of our “make a quick buck” culture and have pursued a number of “get rich quick” schemes. My first was an attempt when I was five to sell my older sisters’ Jack and Jill magazines to the neighbors. I had no takers, but not for a lack of trying: I rang at least six doorbells and talked face-to-face with three grownups, but each turned me down. My second run was “discovering” historical artifacts that I’d previously made from modeling clay and buried under a thin layer of sand down at the public beach near our house. I was sure that once word got out, some big museum would offer to pay me a handsome sum for my “archaeological find” but again, no takers. I was 10 at the time. Years later during some idle time while traveling on the job at the bank, I cooked up the idea of selling scented oxygen in bottles hidden in attractive cherrywood desktop boxes for stressed out business executives (and lawyers). I imagined various choices, from “OceanAir,” featuring a salty scent, to “AlpineAir” filled with floral redolence, and everything between sea level, as it were, and Monte Rosa in the Pennine Alps (15,203 ft.). I got as far as pricing the cost of oxygen cannisters before my idea of becoming an air-billionair(e) dissipated into the thin air of impracticality.
What I learned from my efforts to “get rich quick” was that it wasn’t so easy.
But then along came this guy Trump who had nothing more than a recognizable name, inherited money, and a heavy load of balderdash. He also had a brand of circus chutzpah like no one since P.T. Barnum. As I’ve observed him over the past 25 years, I’ve marveled at how such a not-so-smart guy could fool so many people for so long.
The other day I was listening to a clip from one of his recent rallies. He was ranting about the same old: criminal migrants crossing our southern border and endangering our citizens. Normally, I tune out his inarticulate rambles as I pretend he’s not running for the highest office in the land. On this occasion, however, I decided to listen carefully and parse each sentence for something other than superlatives, hyperbole and bald conclusions. Something like . . . evidence. He offered none, of course, but then I remembered: he doesn’t work with evidence or substance. He works strictly with the same old superlatives, hyperbole and bald conclusions.
The crazy thing is that it works! I started laughing out loud, even though I was alone in my car. Trump doesn’t really have any concern about immigration—legal or illegal—any more than he cares about anything in life except crowd sizes and pyrite and more recently, avoiding the slammer. His “genius,” if you want to call it that, is his ability to use fear to stir up a mass of people, ultimately for his own financial remuneration.
The centerpiece of his remarkably negative but savvy political campaign isn’t immigration. It’s all about fear. People are jumpy about a lot of things, and they’ll jump your way if you can scare them about something, real or imagined. “Immigration” is an easy pick. Weave “crime,” “murder,” and “stealing your house and job” into the mention of immigration and you can scare 10s of millions. Then—Bam! There’s your campaign issue and at least 70 million votes. Statistically, however, “crime,” “murder” and “theft of your house and job” bear as much relationship to immigration as they do to the consumption of bitter peanut butter. This is what prompted my laughter: Substitute “bitter peanut butter” for “immigration” and ask yourself, What’s the difference? As far as Trump’s interest, knowledge, and motivation are concerned, NONE. His sole objective is to create fear. If he announced that we should be scared of bitter peanut butter, very likely lots of people would call it our nation’s number one issue, and he’d take their fear and his reward to the bank.
After eight years of thunderous balderdash, Trump has succeeded in branding fear on the psyche of roughly 50% of the electorate. Now ask people what they think the “top issues” are and more likely than not, you’ll hear, “Immigration.” Really? Versus climate change? Versus public health issues (from guns violence to clean drinking water to mental health to research in anticipation of the next pandemic)? Versus women’s health—the issue no Republican wants to talk about? Et cetera. I submit that immigration is mostly an issue because Trump identified it as a simple, graphic way to stir up fear. Now you’ll even hear Democrats saying, “I agree—immigration is an issue, but . . . [blah, blah, blah, such as . . . Congress would’ve passed meaningful legislation to address the problem, but Trump torpedoed it strictly so he could ride his fear campaign to the finish].”
As I’ve expressed lately on this blog, however, other dynamics of the race are overtaking fear. The key factor is women’s health, the Hindenburg of real issues, filled with highly flammable hydrogen. In these last days of the campaign, Trump has taken reckless misogynist shots at this dangerous dirigible. My hunch is that as he tries to land his campaign tomorrow, this hydrogen-bearing airship will blow up in his face. Not only will his run for the presidency go down in flames. His political career will be over, and quite possibly, his financial fortunes, given the enormous unsatisfied money judgments against him, and even his liberty, given the serious criminal charges still pending against him. He’ll have to face major music, while Kamala Harris prepares for her inaugural speech based on her goal of national harmony.
The Republican Party, meanwhile, will have to scrape itself off the airfield and remake itself from scratch. One can hope a few adults return to the effort (See the Lincoln Project and others): a one-party system (Democrat) would be antithetical to a healthy, robust democracy. If the Republican Party descends into leaderless chaos, we could be looking at a political era of . . . bitter (and sticky) peanut butter.
Did I make my prediction sufficiently clear? I say, a decisive Harris/Walz victory, whereupon the nation can pull back from the abyss of autocracy and start talking turkey about real issues.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
