Shopping for Trump’s American Dream
Even on the politically scarred landscape of the South End where scorched earth campaigns are now considered, not just normal, but mandatory, I would be remiss if I didn’t, at least in passing, make mention of this week’s GOP convention. In full disclosure I am not a Republican, have never been a Republican and even if the Republican Party survives this humiliating year they’ve saddled themselves with, I will not become a Republican. Maybe if I lived in fear of neighbors with different sexual preferences or watched through binoculars the hordes of Hispanic lawncare providers poring into our suburbs or worried that the kid down the block had pledged allegiance to ISIS, maybe I would reconsider. But by then I would be drooling in my wheelchair in front of Fox News down at the Mabana Home for the Hopelessly Insane, pounding my liver-spotted fist in cadence with the hate-spewed chanting LOCK HER UP.
My old man is a dyed in the wool Republican who thinks Fox is a news channel, not an opinion factory for the rabid right wing. And even he sits in disbelief that his party is nominating, no, HAS nominated this billionaire braggart who admits the evangelicals supporting him probably shouldn’t have, who supports LGBT rights when the party platform is vehemently stuck in the Eisenhower closet, who still wants to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, who wants to run from the globalization Republicans and the Chamber of Commerce have supported for decades, who plans to renegotiate trade agreements unilaterally, who … oh, why go on? Donald J. Trump is no more a Republican than Obama is a Muslim. Although … there will always be doubters.
Democracy is a more fragile political system than most of us think. I walk down the aisles of the grocery store now and I realize half of the folks pushing carts are really very angry. We all live on an island here in paradise, we’re mostly white and privileged, mostly retired and well off, we all count ourselves Americans and Americans, last time I looked, are the 1% of the world and we’re pretty much the 1% of America or at least 2 or 3%. What, I want to ask my fellow grocery cart pushers, are you so pissed off about? Hillary Clinton? Mexican rapists? Black Lives Matter? Teachers Unions? Terrorists? Benghazi?
Well, yes, I guess, judging from Trump’s acceptance speech. America, we’re told, is going down the rabbit hole. Economically, militarily, politically, all is lost. And only one man, one man alone, can save us. A white man. A rich man. A man who cannot be bought but who bought others. A man who sees this country as a lost dream in need of a strongman. If he’s right, if most of us share that dark vision, we may get the leader we deserve. And I’m going to need to find another grocery store to shop in.
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