Explaining the Inexplicable

DONALD TRUMP'S entire adult life, and probably his life before adulthood, has been a litany of nefarious behavior, greed, sexual misconduct, shady business dealings, including cheating laborers, the racism housing discrimination rap from the feds in 1974, bankruptcies at tax payer expense; the list is, for the most part well, known. The facts are easily accessible to anyone, and several decent biographies had been published, all documenting these facts.Nobody who knows and likes Trump has ever written a biography of him; it ies simply not possible to write a book about Donald J. Trump which is hagiographic, it is not possible, without grossly distorting the facts, to present Trump's ;like in a positive way, in anything other than what is, accurately, an indictment. his behavior during his presidency, the constant lying, the insults, the chaotic and contradictory policies, most recently exemplified by his inane and senseless comments about the epidemic, are but the latest installment of a continuing narrative. It is far more remarkable, and unbelievable, that Trump was elected in the United States than Hitler's election in Germany, and it is a sad commentary not only on the discernment of a good portion of the American electorate, it speaks poorly about the American state of mind, generally. Hitler's motto was "make Germany great again". the similarities do not end there. An angry, sizable plurality of disenchanted, backward looking voters manages to drum up enough support to elect a demagogue in a divided electorate. In Germany, the right wing was angry, perceiving that the communists, the socialists, and the Jews had allegedly seized too much political power, and Hitler seemed like the perfect leader to turn back the clock to a time when Germany wa for Germans only, a pure Aryan race. In the United States, gay rights had come too far, minorities, like Hispanics were flooding the country, taking jobs, The Black population had gained not only equality, went the right wing myth, but had actually gained a preferred status, and the poor mainstream middle class white America Christian, in the wake of rising secularism and religious tolerance, was destroying white conservative christian heterosexual America. The people who voted for Trump would have voted for Hitler, for the same reasons; resistance to progress and change. But the people who voted for and still support Trump, like those who voted for and still supported Hitler through all his insane behavior, are, though equally guilty,in a sense, the Trump supporters are more culpable. After all, they had the opportunity to study Hitler, and learn the lesson of history.