Trump "is a demagogue with money who can mine fear, white identity politics and right-wing populism where spoils and rewards are given to good 'real Americans' and the Other is, by definition, punished and excluded."

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COMMENTS: 
*   trump epitomizes what Michael Douglas (as President, in the movie "The American President") says:  The GOP does not want to solve your problems.  They only want to give you someone to blame.
*  A vulture will never become an eagle.  A hyena will never become a lion.  George W. Bush was never Presidential.  Donald J. Trump will never become decent and moral. Rafael T. Cruz cannot become open minded. "Leopards cannot change their spots"....and Republicans will never embrace real Americans.
*  Why do all Democrats and many Republicans avoid the real issue behind the Republican Party: Racism.  Because they claim a black "doctor" as "the answer to Obama", a religious fanatic who is so out of touch with reality that he is embarrassing to watch?  NONE--NOT ONE--of the GOP/RNC/NRA --has even mentioned the words bigotry or racism--because that is their base. Having two Cubans and an African American as candidates just shows how cynical that mob is.
   *  I disagree that racism is the top driving force behind Republicanism in this country, although for sure it's in the top five or six.  I always go back to James Galbraith's wise definition of "the modern Conservative" who, Galbraith says, "is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior justification for selfishness."  In a word, the major driving force behind the Republican Party is greed.  
*  I can't tell if Donald Trump is a "presidential hobbyist," i.e., a bored rich guy who is pursuing the presidency instead of buying a pro sports franchise or building space ships and has been running a long con on the rubes since his birther nonsense; or if he's actually so stupid that he really believes the inane bullshit he's serving up to his adoring, but low-information, supporters.
*   After watching the God of the GOP threatening to kill journalists and inciting his followers to kill them, all while on live TV, I would expect the media to show some integrity and quit giving him and his campaign free air time. I doubt that will happen because the "press" is just as addicted to Trump as are his low I.Q. lemmings. His rallies are starting to very closely resemble Nazi rallies, and his minions are lapping it up.
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Donald Trump leads an insane white cult — and Pat Buchanan just explained how it works

GOP front-runner leads cult of personality centered around white alienation, racial resentment and authoritarianism

By Chauncey DeVega, December 23, 2015

Donald Trump is the front-runner in the 2016 Republican presidential primary race. He leads his closest rival, Ted Cruz, by a substantial margin. Trump’s proto-fascism, xenophobia and bigotry are not anomalies or outliers. These values are held by a large percentage of Republicans.

Donald Trump validates these feelings. As such, it is now fundamentally clear that Donald Trump is a hero and leader for many conservatives in the Age of Obama.

Most members of the pundit class have been befuddled by the ascendance of Donald Trump. But, there is one person who has solved this riddle.

In a little-discussed editorial written several weeks ago, Pat Buchanan offered the following analysis:

Enter The Donald.

His popularity is traceable to the fact that he rejects the moral authority of the media, breaks their commandments, and mocks their condemnations. His contempt for the norms of Political Correctness is daily on display.

And that large slice of America that detests a media whose public approval now rivals that of Congress, relishes this defiance. The last thing these folks want Trump to do is to apologize to the press.

And the media have played right into Trump’s hand.

They constantly denounce him as grossly insensitive for what he has said about women, Mexicans, Muslims, McCain and a reporter with a disability. Such crimes against decency, says the press, disqualify Trump as a candidate for president.

Yet, when they demand he apologize, Trump doubles down. And when they demand that Republicans repudiate him, the GOP base replies:

“Who are you to tell us whom we may nominate? You are not friends. You are not going to vote for us. And the names you call Trump — bigot, racist, xenophobe, sexist — are the names you call us, nothing but cuss words that a corrupt establishment uses on those it most detests.”

Pat Buchanan possesses gifted insight into powerful appeal of Donald Trump for the Republican base. Both men are nativist, xenophobic, right-wing populists who understand the allure of white alienation and racial resentment in the post civil rights era. Pat Buchanan is more of a “culture warrior” than Donald Trump. But like George Wallace in the 1960s, the Know-Nothings in the 19th century and the Black Legion in the 1930s, Buchanan and Trump are recent iterations in a long history of right-wing demagoguery and false populism in American politics.

Nevertheless, the essence of Buchanan’s claim remains correct: the “political establishment” and “media” are viewed as discredited by Republicans.

One does not need to read rigorous research by social scientists or mountains of polling data to prove this thesis. All one has to do is listen to Donald Trump’s supporters (who are really none too different from the Republican base writ large) and how they make sense of the political and social world.

For example, in recent focus groups conducted by CBS and CNN, Trump’s backers told interviewers such things as “I don’t believe any one of (the politicians). Not one. I believe Donald”; “My president comes on TV and he lies to me … I believe Donald. I tell you, he says what I’m thinking!”; and “I think we’re all scared. I’m actually a little jumpy, I find Trump is the only one who would come out and say something like this, no one else would do it … You know what he says, he says something completely crazy and in inflammatory then he dials back (and) starts explaining it.”

These people are divorced from reality. To listen to Donald Trump’s supporters is to peek into the mouth of political madness.

[major snippage]

Donald Trump is not Jim Jones. He is also not Immortan Joe from the recent film “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Trump is something more mundane. He is a demagogue with money who can mine fear, white identity politics and right-wing populism where spoils and rewards are given to good “real Americans” and the Other is, by definition, punished and excluded.

Donald Trump is a hero for the angry and resentful white “silent majority” and “Everyman” who feel that they are somehow marginalized in “their” country and that “the blacks,” immigrants, Muslims and terrorists are out to get them. Cults provide easy answers, direction and a feeling of belonging for their members. The cult leader offers a way for his or her devotees to feel better about themselves than they did before joining the community. This is not a form of healthy personal growth or behavior. In most cases, it is deleterious to the self. When such techniques are used in politics, on many millions of people, it is a form of mass psychosis.


Donald Trump is a carnival barker, proto-fascist reality TV show host turned Republican 2016 presidential primary leader. And he may also be a Svengali or Rasputin-like figure for the low information Republican base.
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