Playing to the crowd in the role of their savior
Since the original author has been dead for quite a few years now, I guess he won’t mind me changing his words slightly and saying: Shocking acts are in danger of being committed on the unscrupulous initiative of a few individuals, with the blessing of others, and with the passive acquiescence of more.
I am, of course, referring to the deeds that Donald Trump and his gang seem to be busy plotting.
At a time when the world is struggling to find a new equilibrium and address the impending consequences of human induced climate change, as well as the destabilizing effects on societies of everwidening inequality and growing intolerance, it is somewhat worrying that the sort of character with a huge sense of entitlement that is the alter ego of the superheroes in the movies has been encouraged by some to act out his “Flash Gordon” fantasy in real life.
And who are the villains he and his cronies have been given the license to fight? Everyone that his supporters and backers believe they need protecting from; everyone they consider Non-, or perhaps more particularly, Un-American.
Trump has managed to sell these “true patriots”, as he likes to call them, his own brand of snake oil, convincing them that he’s just one of the boys in the locker room with his boasts of sexual assault and his explicitly racist campaign rhetoric, which exploited the language of rape and plunder that has been used to discriminate and demonize in the US since the days when the first European settlers set foot on its soil and found others there already.
Having established this bond with those who feel he is speaking for them — those he praises as the ones who really love the country — he now claims he is acting to serve the will of the people and thus has legitimacy for his actions as president, whatever they may be.
And what does Trump get out of his Faustian bargain? He gets to strut. And he is a guy who likes to strut.
“The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies,” he brags in Trump: The Art of the Deal.
And therein lies a worry, for he continues, “people may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those that do”. Which is worrying because in their excitement that someone in power seems to be willing to act to restore what they see as their birthright it seems some are willing to let the genie out of the bottle.
For it is not so much Trump’s insatiable desire for fame that necessarily foretells trouble ahead, but rather his gathering of the affirmation needed to feed that desire may be used to serve ambitions that are not in the common good.
His tweets since he won the election, along with a phone call he wanted everyone to know about, among other things, suggest that he and his behind-thescenes encouragers have an unhealthy interest in China.
While his eggers-on, of whatever stripe, will no doubt be encouraging him to put his money where his mouth is and seek to come good on his boast that “I beat China all the time,” it is to be hoped that his cock-of-the-walk talk is just the braggadocio which that percipient interpreter of US politics Mark Twain observed when he suggested a similarity between politicians and diapers.
Yet the annals of history are full of people who in pursuit of their own place in the records for posterity managed to incite a mob by playing to their fantasies, and they caution it is something that is best not enabled since it usually ends badly.
Even the modern myths of Hollywood warn that those who pursue power and like to boast and gloat are the ones that are up to no good with their plans for world domination.
The author is a senior editor with China Daily. hannayrichards@ chinadaily.com.cn