He performed creditably well, despite running with an engine that wasn't firing on all pistons. From the outset, this was his election to lose. He is the incumbent with a solid base of supporters uniformly afflicted with tunnel vision that he could literally pied piper them off any cliff any day--and twice on Sundays. Every time he snaps the order to "Jump!" they all chorus back "HOW HIGH?!" His rallies served no purpose of consolidating their support for him. Those rallies were only meant to help him sustain an egomaniac 'high' because, without it and with his campaign's donation tank on warning-light empty, he was literally chugging the last miles of the homestretch on fumes.
For his target audience, he had the right idea of projecting himself "working his ass off." The average rural and suburban (and not a few cosmopolitan) American loves that Sly Stallone "Rocky" warrior complex, driven by the hypermantra to floor the gas, put the pedal to the metal, leave nothing to chance, take no prisoners, live or die like there's no tomorrow. What else would explain his penchant for COVID19-oblivious mass gatherings where one person inhales what the person next to him exhales?
His speeches are such an interesting study, I should make it my students' midterm thesis assignment in political science. They are Germanic Hitler in structure, using the so-called "call-and-response" format. He says "Your Governor should open up your state, her quarantine restrictions are killing you!" and his audience cry in unison,"Lock her up! Lock her up!" repeatedly in rising crescendo. He says, "Dr. Anthony Fauci, he's been around 500 years, but he's wrong a lot" and the bleachers resonate with "Fah-yer Fauci! Fah-yer Fauci!"
This is not an original Hitler concept, by the way, he copied it from an observation he made while attending mass at a church in Berlin where the priest and the congregation engaged in a similar "call-and-response" public reading of scripture referred to as "responsorial psalms." Hitler noticed that a core stimulating message could be used to elicit a programmed response that erased any distinction between the engaged and the inattentive. The whole audience to the last man, always answered in one voice unthinkingly and without resistance. Hitler corrupted the concept that Trump (or, I suspect, some obscure scholarly adviser) learned from on how to serve up his shallow message and draw an almost Pavlovian response. "Here, I'll ring the dinner bell and you all salivate at the same time, okay? All together now..."
With that simple delivery method, Donald Trump could make his audience swallow the lumpiest messages. I'm the greatest. I alone can solve the problem. I will drain the swamp. Protesters are looters. I know more than the generals. It's a long litany of self-actualized grandstanding platitudes--each one a distinct "call" to which the "responsorial psalm" reply was, "Four more years! Four more years!"
There's only one problem with this kind of scorched-earth fighting message: he was preaching to the choir--no offense to the thoroughly-confused WASP (white Angle-Saxon Protestant) churches that also kept in step with Trump's Apocalypse Now marshall drumbeat. But to win reelection, what he needed to reach was the complementary demographic who represent the opposites to his 42% approval rating.
There's a reason why Donald Trump couldn't bring himself to denounce white supremacists, neo-Nazi's, QAnon conspiracy theory spinners and gun-toting NRA members. They are loyal to him. Loyalty eats its own children. If he acted with genuine statesmanship and put down these wayward advocates of violence, he risked losing their support in exchange for the uncertain gamble of maybe endearing himself to decent society. It's a plus-potential minus-certainty formula he couldn't live with. Literally speaking, he was trapped with no means of escape. He couldn't extract himself from their midst because he was their vortex.
Suddenly, out of China from whence all good things come, fate gifted Donald Trump with a golden ticket to re-election: the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. His initial response suggested that he didn't "get it." He did not realize that a pandemic is a protracted disaster that will grip America's undivided attention, and continually beg of dashing images of heroes--and not even unsung ones but screaming their tonsils out.
What makes little boys dream of becoming policemen, firemen or soldiers is not the fancy uniforms. It's the drama of firemen hanging from the back of a wailing red truck passing through in a flash to dive into a giant fire somewhere. It's the moving image of soldiers bristling with guns and grenades shooting at enemies they can't even see. Doctors in neat white lab gowns holding stethoscopes are unimpressive. It's the ones in the green pajamas wielding scalpels hunkered over an operating table that fires the imagination. The COVID-19 pandemic was a chance served on a silver platter (or petri dish) for Donald Trump to be engaged in heroic action that he didn't even have to fake.
Donald Trump only had to act the role of COVID-19 fighter and he could have held the entire nation in bated breath, hanging on to every word that spews from his mealy mouth. He didn't even need to understand everything he says. He just needed to moan painfully for the nation. The government is a well-oiled apparatus that actually runs on autopilot the whole time. The system will clean up after him and take care of the nitty gritty details of a system-wide pandemic response.
After a while, when he said he considered himself a "wartime president" I was sure he finally got it. I doubt that he came up with that phrase. It was coined by some Whitehouse advisers who forgot the most important thing: they needed to define "wartime president" to him, and not let him inject his own meaning into it.
Donald Trump understands only one meaning of war: it's every conflict he can imagine that pits him against the rest of the world. War to him is any competition where anybody tries to outshine him. He could not fight a military war because he couldn't stand the idea of having to follow strategy mapped out by generals. That makes the generals smarter than him. A strict no-no. That's why he completely shunned the COVID-19 war because Dr. Anthony Fauci was making him look like a spectator.
What a difference a little adjustment could have made. All he needed to do was to reverse his tack. Instead of projecting strength, dominance, total grasp, full control and almost narcotic optimism, he would have gained better traction channeling besiegement and reprising endless "calls" for public support. He needed to look like he is leading the fight for the people, and he needed to look losing not winning the fight. He needed to look painfully overmatched by the microscopic enemy, but he needed to show his head bloodied yet unbowed.
"Superman" heads of state who project needlessness do not rekindle patriotism. It is the unrelenting champions of the people who are taking a beating while holding the line as hard as they can, for as long as they can, while issuing rallying calls for civic activation--those are the WInston Churchhills, Harry Trumans, Richard the lionhearted and the Joan of Arcs of mythical lore that people respond to.
He got a second chance when he tested positive for COVID-19. But apart from the perfunctory "Been there, done that, I feel your pain" message that he only used once or twice, Donald Trump demonstrated that he still didn't get it. His machismo got the better of him, telling both the virus and America, "In your face! I beat this virus by myself. I didn't need anybody's help!" His self-promoting instinct told him to pander to widespread fear and anxiety and offer himself as the savior come in the flesh, but he just could not bend a knee to lower himself where he could have rallied the people to boost him up. He was messianic, but no, he wasn't Mister Nice Guy--a most succinct oxymoron, if there ever was one. He wanted to play messiah but only knew how to act pariah.
Well, not only did he lose to coronavirus, he lost the presidency. But now at least he can say he has stumbled upon the vaccine against winning. Ⓒ 2020 Joel R. Dizon
NOTE FROM JOEL: Hi, folks! Recently, I started a YouTube channel which is called "Parables and Reason" It is kind of similar to this blog content-wise. You can check out my channel by clicking the link below:
Joel R. Dizon - PARABLES AND REASON
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