Digital culture puts many of us in echo chambers where we hear from people and groups who share our views. That has been true for me with Donald Trump. It’s been months since I’ve seen anything positive online about this candidate for the highest office in our land, and I haven’t found many upbeat descriptions of the people who support him.
Rather than Googling for good news about the presumptive presidential candidate and his supporters, I’ve meditated on what Trump has done for me, an independent voter, and the first thing that came to mind was his assistance in beating a news addiction. In our retirement, my wife, a Democrat, and I had taken to watching the PBS Newshour during dinner. When Gwen Ifill, Judy Woodruff and Hari Sreenivasan developed a CNN-like obsession with Trump, we turned off the TV and rediscovered the joys of dinner conversation.
Trump has also encouraged me to confront my worst worry. I’ve been assuming those who don’t share my concerns about inequality and climate change and criminal justice are guilty of complacency, but it turns out the people attending those campaign rallies for Trump are more than worried. They’re frightened. At a Raleigh rally for Trump in North Carolina, for instance, where he was telling the audience, as he often does, that “something dangerous is going on,” a 12-year-old girl asked him what he planned to do to protect our country. His response: “You know what, darling? You’re not going to be scared anymore. They’re going to be scared.”
Trump worries a lot about them, especially people of color, refugees, women, and reporters and judges who question his truthfulness. And he promises protection from them.
Having turned away from the news at dinnertime and reconsidered my tendency to worry, I find myself paying attention to Trump’s place in history. Quite a few pundits have compared him with Hitler, but I’m inclined to see in him the technocratic side of Napoleon Bonaparte. Both Napoleon and Trump have relied heavily on technology for success. Napoleon’s victories in the field had a lot to do with his insistent use of cannons, and Trump’s aggressive use of Twitter has helped him gain control of the Republican Party.
Hitler is remembered for his hatred of Jews, but Trump is an equal opportunity bigot. When you try to think of individuals and groups that have eluded his contempt, it’s hard to come up with any who aren’t white and male. Still, I suspect a lot of the führer comparisons result from the distinctive hairstyles of Hitler and Trump.
Besides pressing me to think about history, Trump has led me to reconsider my personal relationship with the Republican Party. Growing up Republican and marrying an Irish Democrat from Massachusetts who used the glamorous Kennedys to pull me into her party in 1960, I frittered away much of my adult life as a Democrat until we moved from Ohio to New Hampshire in 2003. Then I became an independent. It seemed like a sensible move at the time because New Hampshire lets you vote in either party’s primary and then register again as an independent.
Now I’m considering a nostalgic return to the GOP. It’s likely to need solid citizens like me after November’s election, and the Democrats will need the kind of thoughtful opposition that makes a two-party system work. Several years ago I read that Arlo Guthrie was a Republican because he believed the GOP needed all the help it could get. At the time it looked as though the Republican leadership wasn’t interested in help if that meant reform. But maybe the time for Arlo Guthrie’s strategy is almost upon us.
What with all the gerrymandering and restrictions on voting rights put in place by Republicans, we’re unlikely to see a Democratic majority elected to the House of Representatives in November. But the Senate race in New Hampshire is probably a harbinger of things to come in other states as well. Sen. Kelly Ayotte speaks ambiguously about her level of support for Trump and plans to stay away from Cleveland and the Republican National Convention, but she can’t hide from the Republican calamity that Trump’s candidacy will probably cause. Every instance of Trumpian bigotry and dishonesty and arrogance that surfaces in the presidential race over the next few months will fuel the Senate campaign of Gov. Maggie Hassan, as it should.
Finally, Trump has taught me something important about anger in my old age. People who have worked with him often say he’s a skillful huckster but also sincerely angry. And in The Mind of Donald Trump in The Atlantic, psychologist Dan P. McAdams writes: “anger may be the operative emotion behind Trump’s high extroversion as well as his low agreeableness.” Maybe his long-seething anger explains Trump’s enthusiasm for Vladimir Putin, who seeks to avenge the breakup of the Soviet Union while Trump makes American great again. Donald Trump has convinced me: I’d rather be an irascible old man than vote for one to be our commander in chief.
Bill Nichols is a resident of West Lebanon. His most recent book is Finding Fox Creek: An Oregon Pilgrimage.