This Lonesome Road

The following post will spoil the ending of  movie that came out over 65 years ago.

In the 1957 film A Face In the Crowd, a woman named Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal) discovers a man who goes by the sobriquet of Lonesome Rhodes (Andy Griffith), a crude and unkempt vagabond with a wonderful singing voice and a clever way of telling stories.  

Despite his unsophisticated demeanor, Rhodes has a certain charm, a charisma if you will, that Jeffries thinks could make Rhodes a star.  

Starting with Marcia's small town radio station then moving on to a bigger market, success leads to success as Lonesome Rhodes becomes a national sensation with his own network TV show. 

The growth of his popularity as an entertainer brings him into the orbit of politics and Rhodes is being groomed for a leadership role in government.

Marcia Jeffries thinks this is a bad idea. 

For whatever talent and charm he might possess, Lonesome Rhodes is an appallingly ignorant person with a volatile temperament and a narcissistic ego.  

One night as the closing credits roll for the Lonesome Rhodes show, in the control room Jeffries flips a switch at turns on the microphone near where Rhodes is sitting and holding court.

"Those rubes out there, they're mine! There stupid, like sheep, but they are mine! They will do what I tell them do! They will think what I want them to think!" 

By the time Rhodes takes the elevator to the ground floor to his waiting car, his popularity has plummeted and his political support has evaporated.  

Since he came down his gold escalator in 2015, I have been waiting for Donald Trump to experience his Lonesome Rhodes moment.  

The epiphany that will finally break the spell Trump's faithful cultists exist under.   

We've come close a few times. Damn it, January 6th should have been his Lonesome Rhodes moment, that showed the whole world for the loathsome, self-serving motherfucker he is.

Instead Donald Trump and his sniveling sycophants have tried to re-write history, to turn that day of infamy to a day of celebration, to re-cast the hundreds who have been convicted of crimes for their actions that days as heroes and martyrs. 

The facts that Donald Trump is a morally deficient, intellectually limited, sexual assaulting, empathy deprived, incoherent convicted felon are NOT a secret. 

And yet...

Recent polls show that over all Kamala Harris has a lead over Donald Trump but that lead is narrow and in certain battleground states that will decide the election (such as here in North Carolina), Trump has regained ground and as of now has the lead again. It's a slim lead and within the margin for error.

But...

How can anyone who actually listens to his angry, hate filled rhetoric and his rambling incoherent speeches come away thinking, hey, I want this guy to be President again.

Consider the case of the idiot in Valdosta, GA.

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Donald Trump arrived (getting in the way of clean up and recovery efforts) to angrily proclaim such lies that Gov. Kemp couldn't get President Biden on the phone to get help from the Federal government and basically just lied his ass off. 

A young man who came to hear Trump speak left the event with the resolve "that cinched it: I'm voting for Trump." His logic? "Trump really cares about people." 

Or the consider this woman who I saw on video proclaiming that "America needs a MAN to lead us" and that Donald Trump is that man, admitting that yes, "He is narcissistic but he cares about America!"  

Of course the definition of narcissism is to care about the self above all other things.  

As I write this, an NBC poll has Donald Trump tied with Kamala Harris.  

But he is...   ALL that stuff we can see and hear!  

The lying, the hate, the anger, the incoherence!

On SNL, they did a sketch where Kamala Harris and Donald Trump face off on Family Feud.  Steve Harvey asks Harris "Why are you not ahead more in the polls?" and Harris replies, "That's what I scream into my pillow every morning."

You and me both. 

I am truly frightened.

I am trying to remain hopeful that Harris can and will win this thing.

But I think the harsh reality is that Donald Trump might just win this thing.  

This lonesome road is leading to a MAGA future.