Since the advent of the age mass communications, which Mad Dog would date to roughly to the dissemination of the radio in the early 1930's, no public figure has dominated the public consciousness in America as does our current Donald Trump.
Roosevelt had his fireside chats and Kennedy his suave press conferences, and movie stars had their faces all over Life magazine and the Rolling Stones and the Beatles were wildly popular, but for none of them did ever news broadcast begin with their names, and none of them popped up on the morning paper or on the radio the way Donald Trump now does on Twitter and Fox and CNN and virtually everywhere.
When Orwell imagined Big Brother on the TV set in the corner of every bedroom, he was predicting the Donald, but not even Orwell could imagine the ever presence of the Trump hole.
He is on every screen, all lips, and he dominates consciousness as no other modern leader. Not even Hitler, who was heavily marketed for his time, had the penetration into the every day consciousness as Trump.
There may be some very closed societies, like North Korea or one of those "Stan" countries where the personality/personage of the dear leader, the Fuhrer had the Omni presence of Trump, but for a country our size, this is new.
Every American knew who Lincoln was, but they did not think about him all the time and he chose his appearances, crafted his remarks, refined his thinking and from that we got the Gettysburg Address, the Second Inaugural Address and some of the best writing of the 19th century--and that says something given who was writing in the 19th century (Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, among others.)
The only way we may rid ourselves of this meddlesome tyrant toddler is by voting him and his rascalions out of office. But that would require a coalescence of a disparate group, a coalition of people who vote one way primarily because they are Black, or gun control, or gay or Hispanic or labor or militant feminist or just plain fed up. Against that is the army of white, less educated males and their female mates.
The thing about an army is it works as a unit. This is how an army of 100,000 can take control of a population ten times as large. The big group is disorganized, fractured, but the army moves as one.
Many have noted Blacks did not turn out in sufficient numbers to tip the balance to Hillary; those who voted, voted for her, but too many simply didn't bother to vote.
And, fact is, all those kids who marched on the weekend to protest lunatic shootings at school, they don't vote much. They may threaten to vote, but they get distracted, get on Facebook, or go to the beach or do whatever adolescents do other than vote.
Until and unless folks are motivated enough to go stand on line, we'll have Trump.
Obama was different enough, and folks knew he was fighting uphill.
For now, we are toast.
Roosevelt had his fireside chats and Kennedy his suave press conferences, and movie stars had their faces all over Life magazine and the Rolling Stones and the Beatles were wildly popular, but for none of them did ever news broadcast begin with their names, and none of them popped up on the morning paper or on the radio the way Donald Trump now does on Twitter and Fox and CNN and virtually everywhere.
When Orwell imagined Big Brother on the TV set in the corner of every bedroom, he was predicting the Donald, but not even Orwell could imagine the ever presence of the Trump hole.
He is on every screen, all lips, and he dominates consciousness as no other modern leader. Not even Hitler, who was heavily marketed for his time, had the penetration into the every day consciousness as Trump.
There may be some very closed societies, like North Korea or one of those "Stan" countries where the personality/personage of the dear leader, the Fuhrer had the Omni presence of Trump, but for a country our size, this is new.
Every American knew who Lincoln was, but they did not think about him all the time and he chose his appearances, crafted his remarks, refined his thinking and from that we got the Gettysburg Address, the Second Inaugural Address and some of the best writing of the 19th century--and that says something given who was writing in the 19th century (Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, among others.)
The only way we may rid ourselves of this meddlesome tyrant toddler is by voting him and his rascalions out of office. But that would require a coalescence of a disparate group, a coalition of people who vote one way primarily because they are Black, or gun control, or gay or Hispanic or labor or militant feminist or just plain fed up. Against that is the army of white, less educated males and their female mates.
The thing about an army is it works as a unit. This is how an army of 100,000 can take control of a population ten times as large. The big group is disorganized, fractured, but the army moves as one.
Many have noted Blacks did not turn out in sufficient numbers to tip the balance to Hillary; those who voted, voted for her, but too many simply didn't bother to vote.
But look at the charts: Fact is, yes, had all Blacks got out and voted for Hillary we'd not have Donald today, but the same can be said for every other group; whites still are the majority and it's how they vote that determines elections:
Obama was different enough, and folks knew he was fighting uphill.
For now, we are toast.
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