Opinion: There’s always someone who’ll tell you you’re fussing about nothing. While you’re grimly contemplating the next Trump presidency, the sanguine voices pipe up. You’re being hysterical. He’s not so bad. He’ll make us money. He’s great. Pardon him! Who cares if people stick it to the elites?
They don’t listen to experts, these cheerful commentators, because they rely on “common sense”. Life must seem so simple when you’re too lazy to read the fine print.
There’s been a lot of uninspired commentary on why Democrat messaging failed. It was their focus, their celebrity endorsements. But perhaps the messaging was fine, and people were not listening. Kamala Harris spent weeks making sense, and voters shrugged it off. They were mesmerised – by a celebrity, in fact, by the extraordinary phenomenon of Trump.
He’s such a rare creature, the wildly successful demagogue. He’s an uncanny blend of shaman, witch doctor and rock star. He rambles and doesn’t make sense, but the nonsensical droning is the brand. He erupts into “anti-woke” wickedness. He dances and weaves. He’s painted a bizarre colour, but the area around his eyes is stark white. His golden hair – so flamboyant, elaborately styled and weird – has played a major role. His running mate, JD Vance, accused of wearing make-up around his intense blue eyes, is a fittingly eerie sidekick.
Trump’s rallies were a ritual, and verbal clarity wasn’t needed. The faithful didn’t want coherence. They weren’t comparing campaign messages. They wanted the show, the spectacle, the vibe. They shouted with delight at the risqué bits, stuff they’re “not allowed to say”. Greatest hits included violent rhetoric, but also the non sequiturs, the surreal asides.
In 21% of American adults, literacy skills are below the level of a 10- or 11-year-old. They don’t read the fine print because they can’t. Where literacy rates are low, people are easy to fool. Education is key to making choices, and proficiency with words is crucial for critical thinking.
The media is fractured. Smartphones are degrading literacy and undermining skills children need to develop intellectually, from physical play to verbalising and concentrating. In the interests of our future, we should ban children from social media, just as we stop them smoking and drinking.
How did so many educated Republicans fall into line? Vice president-elect JD Vance said Trump was potentially “America’s Hitler”. A reading of his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, neatly explains his evolution. Vance’s mother was an addict who had five husbands and numerous boyfriends. Vance described spending his boyhood flattering and manipulating older males. He feigned admiring what they liked. He hated these creeps and deadbeats, and he knew they’d be gone by next year.
Susie Wiles was Trump’s 2024 campaign genius; now she’s his chief of staff. According to interviews, her father was an alcoholic. She would have grown up learning about control, how to navigate chaos, how to deal with arbitrary rule. Now she’s Trump’s chief enabler. Who knows what she feels about him. Like Vance, she’s adept at making herself indispensable to an unpredictable, powerful man.
Will there be collaboration between presidents Trump, Putin, Xi and tech barons like Elon Musk? Here’s a historical warning from one of Hitler’s top ministers, Albert Speer. In his confession at the 1946 Nuremberg trials, Speer spoke about the Nazis’ use of technology as an instrument of control: “Today, the danger of being terrorised by technocracy threatens every country in the world … the more technical the world becomes, the more necessary is the promotion of individual freedom, and the individual’s awareness of himself as a counterbalance.”
Speer had been enthralled by Hitler’s freakish charisma. He acknowledged too late he’d sold his soul for proximity to power.
