Why Trump trumps

 

   So what gives? 

   It is easy to be perplexed, vexed, about why Donald Trump is still popular.  After he was convicted of one crime and found liable in another, after being charged in inspiring the January 6 insurrection, taking classified documents and trying to overturn the 2020 election, after all the havoc he caused during his four years in office, not to mention during previous years, it is easy to throw up one’s hands when seeing that he is out-polling his likely GOP rivals and, most chillingly, President Biden. 

   All too easy. 

   Those who don’t get why Trump still has a large (although not as large) and rabid following and may well, as frightening as it sounds, be president again, are missing, or are perhaps trying to miss, a very simple point.  Trump is so popular for a very simple reason: he says not only that things shouldn’t change the way they are changing but that things should go back to the way they were years ago when things were…simple. 

   Trump, despite being much more wealthy and privileged, speaks for the many people who are uncomfortable with the way American society has been changing. He may live in another, gilded world, but he speaks for all those who don’t like it that white people are not in the majority with all the rights and power, that people who have sex with those of the same sex and who change and mix genders are more and more seen and heard, that women have the same rights and positions as men and are not just there to put on dinner and to have sex and fool around with at one’s whim.

   For those who follow Trump, back before all these changes was when America was “great” – as in Make America Great Again. 

   Many of Trump’s Republicans rivals may be saying the same things, but Trump says them with the same anger and grievance, the same passion and outrage, the same how dare this is happening, if not desperation, that his followers feel.  Many of them have said that they like how Trump just says things, “says it like it is.” They like how Trump speaks his mind – their mind. 

   Years ago, a wise, gay, Quaker friend told me that there will more and more progressive changes in America (gay marriage will be legal, etc.) but there will be people who will fight like Hell to keep this from happening.  With Trump’s and his still-many followers, we are now seeing this fight.