Yesterday I was struck by a sense that it's not just about class and race or whatever the general consensus is. It's about being part of something, a spectacle. There's something performative about it all. Look at the absurd dress, the flags, the t shirts. It was very 'look mum, I'm on the news' and would, to be honest have been hilarious in a way if people hadn't died and at the same time, weirdly moving - all that anger...
I know a trump fan. He's an American guy who used to work with me in hotels years ago who i keep in touch with online - he's from a very well to do florida family not a rust belt worker or a hillbilly hick at all. He embraces the absurdity of trump, the fascinating rabbit holes of conspiracy. He smokes a lot of dope and is utterly convinced that there's a lot of things going on that I can't see and that Trump is speaking for him, speaking out on behalf of people like him when he refers to all the bizarre shit he does. He's typical, I think of quite a large part of Trumps base - he appeals to people who were perhaps previously apolitical. Corbyn did similar. Like him or not, Corbyn was quite successful in getting previously apolitical voters engaged. He statistically was, especially in 2017.
Trump hasn't really done an awful lot. Yes, he's made some small improvement to the lowest paid (he has made more impact than Obama did in that sense for said group), made some allusions about race, failed to distance himself from extremists and not really got very far with building a wall but the hitler parallel sort of falls down there. Hitler actually did an incredible amount. He made a terrible situation a lot better in the short term for many. The huge infrastructure projects, massive architecture projects changed the country massively.
Trump just seems to be a relentless purveyor of mischief and to possess an insatiable desire for attention. He's almost taking the piss out of the notion of the presidency. He's weirdly slightly reminiscent of some proper gobby crap punk, like a thick John Lydon in a suit - behaving the wrong way, doing the wrong thing and revelling in the fallout. He just hasn't got the attention span that Adolf had so to speak, nor the burning resentment of jewishness. He's not driven by the same things as a true fascist, but he'll flirt with fascists if he gets adulation. He's stoked fires of existing tensions but just because it's popular, not, I think, cos he's driven by a deep seated desire to cleanse the nation.
In that way, I do wonder if part of his appeal to the part of his base that *isn't* white supremacist nutjobs (74 million people aren't all KKK members) is simply that he pisses off the establishment, the know it alls, the experts and the boring. That it's basically more fun having trump in charge than some really boring man or woman who is going to lecture you to death ala Biden or Clinton. Who will be 'stable' and 'sensible' and nothing will change. Trump hasn't really changed anything in particular in terms of the material circumstances but he's evoked a sense that something is happening, he's incited a culture war that gives people a cause. It's an empty cause but it's a cause non the less. It's something that gives a purpose or a sense of belonging. It's tribal. Trump is sort of like a nightmarish Ronald Reagan, the same charisma but none of the charm and smooth talking classy surface. He's uncouth and like punk, he's not ashamed to show it, in fact and people love him for that.
In all of this, you have to remember, Trump is just a useful idiot. He's there to derail the drift away from oil and other big money interests unhappy with the changing nature of the economy in the US. He's been put there to renege on climate agreements and to build a movement that believes that it's in their interests to back him to the hilt, that believe he speak for them when really, he speaks for the vested interests that put him there. There's a putin-esque smokescreen thing going on as well - he spews out newsworthy stuff so often that no one knows what is going on and then 'fake news' amplifies that effect. The irony is, it's just one establishment vs another establishment (the new elite vs the old elite perhaps) and neither of them really give a fuck about the sort of people they say they do but at least trump spoke directly to people that were alienated. Yes, he spoke utter shit, but like in the UK, the American left has been obsessed with the middle classes for years and left a gaping hole for the right to fill.
If you ignore the problems of a country for decades and decades, if you fail to address the decline of industry and the resultant poverty and you simultaneously ratchet up the access for people to constantly see images of wealth, aspiration etc and allow a nation to live, armed to the teeth, always on the verge of the next shooting or violent attack, then eventually something is going to fall apart in terms of your image as the cradle of democracy and home of reason. America is the living embodiment of the absurdity of the modern era and it's fascinating but grotesque viewing at the moment.