Watching Donald Trump over the past year has been fascinating. Our first struggle was with our own preconceptions about politicians and political races. What we had to resolve in our own mind is that Trump is neither a politician nor running a political campaign. It was in coming to this premise that we felt he had some of the characteristics of Italy’s leader in the 1930s Benito Mussolini.
But we were wrong. As the campaign comes down to the wire, the only person we feel we can compare him to is Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Trump is not a leader; he is a destroyer. He is like al-Assad in that he seems willing to destroy his country before relinquishing it to others. If we do not play by his rules, he is taking his ball and bat and going home. Trump is not a builder. He is a child creating sand castles that afterwards he angrily kicks down.
Reading comments that he is generating on social media and the campaign he is spewing across the Internet, the only feeling we have is one of sadness. We feel so bad about it that we are really looking forward to the former Vice President candidate Sarah Palin joining the final day’s campaign. You can think her as the cherry on top of a campaign of absurdity.
But it is how long it will take Americans to recover from this trauma that has us worried. The arguments over his “Corrupt Hillary” campaign will have long legs in a negative Congress. Hillary Clinton will have to work with whatever Congress the voters select. It might not be easy.
Trump must know by now that his has been a losing campaign from the beginning. He is making all the charges and complaints that losers resort to.
There are few people betting that he will go quietly into the twilight. It is neither in the man’s make-up nor character to accept the inevitable. There are also some of his less democratic followers who might want to cause trouble.
The major trouble makers today before the November 8 vote though are Trump’s hated news media. They are delighting in stirring the pot. And the pot is a witches’ brew of alarmist headlines, questionable opinion polls, reporters’ speculation and tongue-tied talking heads who have said all they can. And, so have we. God Bless America: whatever happens.
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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry
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