The Trump Train

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Donald Trump’s campaign for President saw the tangerine hued business man leaning on the throttle of the Trump Train, propelling it towards the nearest cliff. The ongoing feud with Khizr and Ghazalla Khan, the Muslim parents of an Army captain who gave his life to save others in 2004, is the gift that just keeps on giving. Since the Khans’ appearance at the Democratic National Convention last week, Trump feels compelled to respond every time either of these parents say anything. But the Khan’s refuse to be bullied so they push back against Trumps retorts which compels Trump to respond to that. As long as Trump insists on getting in the last word, this story will never die.

Meanwhile, the blatant contradictions from Donald Trump about his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin have done little to alleviate any concerns about a Trump presidency. News networks and late night comedians have been comparing footage from a recent Trump interview in contrast to previous statements. On one side of the screen, you can see Trump denying he knows Putin; on the other side, there’s Trump bragging about his relationship with Putin. One of these Donald Trumps is lying. Or maybe they’re both lying? Whoops! We’re in a state of quantum flux. Universal constants no longer apply.

How else to explain, after all the bad press of Trump saying stupider and stupider things, he still has supporters. There are those polls out there that tell us Hillary Clinton is ahead but there are too many people who still say they plan to vote for Trump. There are people who still come out for the rallies. They’re riding on that Trump Train and if Donald drives it over a cliff, they’re all just gonna flap their arms as hard as they can and make that bad boy fly.

The whys and the wherefores that drive Trump supporters have been examined by way smarter individuals than I and the best answer they can give is this:

White people be pissed.

Especially white men who think the world doesn’t make sense anymore and has passed them by. The Great Recession of 2008 and 2009 may be in the rear view mirror but its affects still linger. Even at its strongest, the economic recovery over the last few years has not lifted everyone back to where they were before and the numbers do hold up that the hardest hit by the recession and benefited least from the recovery were white men. There’s a whole swath of American society who thinks they have been forgotten and the government is helping everybody but them.

The rightness or wrongness of that assertion may be debatable but the anger and frustration are quite real. So along comes this guy who doesn’t sound like a politician who declares he can get things done. The fact that the message is no more detailed than “We’re gonna do stuff and it’s gonna be awesome” is really not an issue. The pro-Trump electorate is like a girlfriend with low self-esteem who twists herself in knots to justify staying with a boyfriend who says he’ll take care of her even as he fails to respect her or, for that matter, actually take care of her.  The pro-Trump people just don’t care enough to question the details. “Someone’s talking to me. Please don’t go away.” 

That is very much an unhealthy relationship and it will end in tears with the white men of middle America curled up in sweatpants on the sofa eating raw cookie dough and yelling back at Fox News.

Also not healthy? Perhaps Donald Trump’s state of mind. The subject of Trump’s mental health began making the rounds from both liberal and conservative pundits. Is the Republican nominee for President having a mental breakdown? If this was anybody else, the answer would be “Well, DUH!” Really, that is some messed up shit the Donald’s up to and anyone else would be guided by kind people in white coats to a padded sanitarium.  But is Donald Trump now any different from the blowhard buffoon who glided down an escalator to “Rockin’ In the Free World” and announced he was running for President and the first thing he wanted to do was build a wall to keep out Mexicans? Or as the days inch closer and closer to November 8^th and Election Day, is the pressure getting to Trump? I sure as hell know it’s getting to us. Last year, Trump For President was so damn funny.  Now it could be real and that scares the collective shit out of most Americans and good chunk of the rest of the world.

We can hope Trump keeps self-destructing as he pushes his Trump Train to the precipice and into the abyss of defeat. But is that enough when there are so many Americans willing to go with him? What if they are enough to carry him over the abyss to victory and the White House?

Instead of falling into an abyss, the abyss will come to us.

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Speaking of disastrous things that do not bode well for the future, the Summer Olympics for 2016 begins today in Rio. Yes, Rio. Come for the raw sewage; stay for the Zika. I may have something to say about that particular train wreck next week but tomorrow I have an Olympics related post appearing on the blog. It's actually something I wrote back in 2012 on Facebook and I thought with the start of this year's Summer Olympics, I would present it for you, beloved blog reader. So tomorrow come back for a post titled, "They Were... The Izzys". 

Sunday is Doctor Who day on the blog. Outgoing writer/producer Steven Moffat drops an interesting hint about the future of the Doctor and we dissect it for your reading pleasure.

Until next time, remember to be good to one another.