Trump is Not A Fascist Boogeyman, and We Should Rejoice in How He’s Destroying Neoconservatism

Back in January, right-wing zealot Lindsey Graham compared the Republican primary election, in which Donald Trump and Rafael Cruz had emerged as the frontrunners, to a choice between “being shot or poisoned.” It was a clever analogy. The two men were—are—both despised by the bulk of the Republican establishment. Cruz because he’s disruptive and uncooperative, and just altogether objectionable (journalist Matt Taibi memorably described the senator from Texas’ much-maligned face as looking “like someone sewed pieces of a waterlogged Reagan mask together at gunpoint”). And Trump because he’s a political blasphemer who openly derides things central to modern GOP ideology, from international trade agreements to Bush’s War on (of) Terror.

Of course, when it came down to it, the decision proved an easy one for most party loyalists. Cruz may be preternaturally repellent, but at least he hates Vladimir Putin and Palestinians sufficiently; at least he never espoused universal healthcare or a woman’s right to do with her body what she pleases; at least he doesn’t spurn corporate donors and lobbyists. Which candidate represented poison and which represented a bullet is unclear, but the GOP ultimately decided that it could live with Cruz. The Donald, then, was to be rubbed out.

The time, effort and resources dedicated, by both right and left, to “stopping” the short-fingered vulgarian has to constitute a record of some kind. The media “lost their shit,” as the saying goes. The Fuhrer was invoked, as was Il Duce, on an almost daily basis. Trump was every murderous despot who ever lived—only so much worse. It was all very hyperbolic. It was also very ironic. Suddenly, bona fide racists mutated into righteous egalitarians. Bloodthirsty jingos like Charles Krauthammer and William Kristol shamelessly joined the chorus of voices lamenting Trump’s divisive and hateful rhetoric. Anything to save the Grand Old Party from a populist takeover.

That Trump managed to secure the nomination in spite of the media’s desperate onslaught is remarkable. Of course, it says more about today’s political climate than it does about the candidate himself. While it’s probably true that a wide sector of Trump’s supporters are misogynistic Muslim-bashers, an even wider sector are merely disaffected, economically-marginalized citizens who happen to be registered Republicans. These people couldn’t care less about the core tenets of their party, which is why accusations that Trump is not a “true conservative” did nothing, and will do nothing, to dissuade his voters. It’s also why the lack of endorsements from textbook Republican dullards like Paul Ryan and the Jeb Bush may actually broaden Trump’s appeal.

Does anybody care what Jeb Bush has to say about anything? The man is genuinely pathetic. No doubt the early Republican debates brought back some repressed childhood memories for poor Jeb. He thought he was rid of bullies when he graduated from Phillips Academy Andover. Not so! It was hard not to root for the “low-energy” governor as Trump, effectively reducing the debate stage to a junior-high lunch table, gave him the rhetorical equivalent of a swirly. The pity lasted until you remembered Jeb’s foreign policy ideas, at which point you became the bystander in gym class who derives twisted pleasure from seeing the scrawny nerd take a dodgeball to the face.

What level-headed person hasn’t loved almost every minute of Trump’s invasion? It’s been great fun. The man single-handedly ruptured the unholy GOP (quite possibly for good), burnt down the House of Bush, and made it popular among rank-and-file Republicans to hate “free trade” agreements. He’s even expressed quasi-isolationist sentiments regarding foreign policy. All of which is cause for celebration. So why aren’t we celebrating? Because the “liberal” media won’t let us—the good-for-nothing bastards are forever pissing on our parade, insisting that to recognize the good in Trump’s campaign is to usher in a holocaust of Muslims, Mexicans, African Americans, homosexuals and women.

Our leading liberal lights have done a pretty good job convincing the more impressionable left-wing elements that Trump personifies extreme race hatred. Earlier this year, students at Emory College had a conniption when some scoundrels used chalk to write “Trump 2016” throughout campus. “I thought we were having a KKK rally on campus” one student declared, adding that she feared for her life. Another student said he and his friends were expecting mass shootings. They demanded that the administration investigate the matter and punish those responsible. When the administration responded with a tepid defense of the anonymous chalkers’ right to free speech, the offended shifted their ire onto the college itself, for failing to provide an adequate safe space. (Student activists across the country seem on a mission to make satire obsolete, or better yet impossible.)

But there’s another, less precious, more assertive, side of the Trump opposition. It can be observed at the presumptive nominee’s campaign events, where hordes of angry people crowd the streets to protest his presence. These people are taking their cues from the media as well, and this is where things get interesting. Trump’s rallies, as everyone knows, have become violent on occasion. Sometimes the violence is instigated by his supporters, other times by his detractors. CNN reported that, following a rally in Costa Mesa, California, “scuffles broke out between Trump supporters who were leaving the rally and people in the streets who accused them of being racists. One Trump supporter was visibly bloodied after being punched in the face.”

And who can blame the protestors for their violent behavior? Is not violence moral when employed to resist evil? Remember: they’ve been persuaded that Donald Trump and his legions of fans are bent on resurrecting Nazism and turning the U.S. into a fascist state. Given the opportunity, who would not go back to 1933, assassinate Adolf Hitler, and feel entirely justified in doing so? Only the strictest of pacifists. It’s not unreasonable to assume, then, that a number of liberal activists would view the assassination of Donald Trump, or perhaps the killing of a few of his supporters, as ethical—perhaps even heroic.

A lot of people were, and presumably still are, worried that the violence at Trump’s rallies might escalate to the point of someone getting killed. It’s always been assumed that the victim would be a protestor. The reverse seems just as plausible, however, and the fear-mongers in the media bear more than a little responsibility for that.

Donald Trump is a particularly vulgar, and ignorant, demagogue—nothing more (sorry, Slate). The Hitler comparison, like every Hitler comparison, is fatuous. Trump’s manifesto is hardly “Mein Kampf”—it’s a glib capitalist memoir that he had someone else write for him. If Trump is scary (and he is), it’s because we have no idea what he would do as president. He has no idea what he would do as president. For progressives of a gambling or street-fighting nature, that uncertainty is preferable to the neoconservative and neoliberal status quo championed by the left’s favorite right-wing fanatic, H.R. Clinton, who’s never met a war she didn’t at least want to fuck.

Most sane individuals can agree that Lindsay Graham’s analogy is applicable to the general election, and was always going to be, with Bernie Sanders being content to lose nobly for as long as it took. So, Trump or Clinton? Shot or poisoned? Either way we’re in serious trouble. At least the debates will be amusing (although I wish he’d come up with something a little more inspired than “Crooked Hillary”). They’ll be showing them in bars, I hope.