Trump has mobilized the millions of dispossessed voters we call the populists. This is his golden opportunity.
They have no spokesman. They haven’t had one ever since Huey Long was assassinated in 1936.
They will not conform. Not now. Not any more. They have found out that there are millions of people who feel just like them: fed up.
JOE BOB BRIGGS VS. GARRISON KEILLOR
Joe Bob Briggs, who used to write the great column on drive-in movies and low-budget films, has written one of the finest pieces of social analysis I have ever read — a true masterpiece. It is here. It is on Trump’s supporters, who are sick and tired of being pressured to keep their mouths shut.
There are all kinds of ordinary people who are gonna vote for Trump, and they’re not chasing a mythical golden age, and they don’t wear hard hats, and they don’t wanna live under a dictatorship. They’re what’s referred to in the mainstream press as “working class”–a strange term implying that they’re to be feared because they’re out there working instead of doing what the other classes do. Running Silicon Valley start-up deals? Managing trust funds? I don’t know why the Democrats, especially, equate “working class” with the Angry White Man, but they do. My point is that the Donald Trump voters have consistently told us why they’re voting for Trump, but it doesn’t fit any of the stereotypes and so it’s never mentioned. What’s the first thing out of a Trump voter’s mouth when he’s asked about it?
“I like him because he says what’s on his mind.””He’ll say anything.””He doesn’t sugar-coat it.””He says things no one else will say.”
It’s a political movement based on the First Amendment.
Briggs is the Right-wing version of Garrison Keillor, who truly hates Trump. Basically, Keillor’s comic character is a milquetoast Joe Bob from Minnesota. Briggs is actually John Irving Bloom, who grew up in Little Rock, and who attended Vanderbilt on a scholarship. Both men have developed comic personas. I am aligned with Joe Bob.
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Trump’s troops are in this for the long haul if he guides them. They are not going to go back into the shadows if Trump will give them some leadership. They are no longer afraid of the media. Joe Bob has spotted their commitment:
Shouldn’t we, at the very least, be looking at why 40-plus-percent of the American population would feel stifled and silenced? Shouldn’t this be what we’re examining instead of the cerebral cortex of Donald Trump’s addled ego? Wouldn’t this be the reporterly thing to do?So why do they feel muzzled? It probably started with something minor. Their third-grade son gets sent home for calling a girl “fat” in the school yard. But it doesn’t end there. The parents are called in. The student is required to attend Soviet-style reeducation classes. When the parents complain that “you’re making a big deal out nothing,” they are reminded that their progeny may have damaged a tender young girl for life.
(What the parents could have done is use the episode as an opportunity to explain libel law. If the girl was in fact fat, then the remark was protected speech because true. If she was not fat, or her weight was considered merely chubby, the remark might be actionable in a civil court and best avoided. This would be separate from the traditional reprimand of all moms to “respect the girls, including the fat ones.”)
And so, from a very early age, their kid is taught that he has to shut up about certain things. When a guy named al-Khalifa Mustafa bin Muhammad bin Chaka Khan shoots up a synagogue in Atlanta or slits a priest’s throat in Budapest, most Americans assume that a) he’s a Muslim, b) he’s a radical terrorist, and c) he should be shot on sight and his associates should be jailed or executed. But don’t say this out loud. There are local committees–and, again, it’s likely to come from the school–imploring our communities to “assume the best about all religions” and “resist the temptation to profile.” After all, there might be radical Jews or radical Christians bursting into mosques with AK-47s.
Most Americans have no problem with profiling. Most Americans would willingly submit their data to a profile if it made the community safer. But again, they feel they’re not allowed to speak up about that.
They are not going to sit down and shut up if Trump tells them to stand up and shout: “The system is rigged!” Because it really is.
