By Ardain Isma
CSMS Magazine
Every election season needs its own joker to spice the charade, and this year, billionaire businessman Donald Trump is filling a vacuum left empty by Sara Palin four years ago. Remember Palin, riding her caravan up and down I-95 while keeping the media guessing? This election cycle, Donald Trump’s political buffoonery appears to be exactly what the political establishment and the Wall Street gurus once again were looking for to deviate public opinion from the real issues facing America.
Few weeks ago, when he announced that he was in, from the stage of one of his glamorized hotel ballrooms in the Big Apple, flanked by followers and “well-wishers,” Trump sounded as bombastic as ever. A blistering assault on Mexican immigrants marked his spectacular entry into the fray—triggering a media frenzy. However derogative, xenophobic and disingenuous his message could be, he seems to have found his niche among Tea Party activists, undeclared clan’s men who want to push the clock back to 1850 and many more fringe elements totally unable to understand complex problems of society.
This week, America is riding with Trump—on a bandwagon filled with deranged claustrophobics. Donald Trump’s strait-jacket-tell-it-all attitude could have been ignored if it weren’t for a “mainstream” media which dwell not on educating and on informing objectively, but rather on exploiting whatever can boost their ratings.
Injecting trivia to usher thrills and fear into the minds of those who claim to represent the dominant culture is the prime of their golden means, providing it furthers the cause of swelling their bottom line. In every editorial boardroom, the major news organizations can’t seem to move beyond the Trump’s political firestorm—for all the wrong reasons, even as the real estate guru blunders around, from awkward mishaps to outright vulgarism.
Down the boulevard of Republican politics, however, the Trump’s wagon doesn’t always go straight. As it zigzags along, blazing the trail while pulling ahead of the band, including frontrunner Jeb Bush, Donald trump’s has committed his biggest traffic violation yet, commandeering his wagon down a slippery slope that hit Arizona Senator John McCain hard, to the deepest end of his heart. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump snarled during a meeting with his followers. Booed after this latest blunder, the goofy politician decided to double-down: “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.” The hit has triggered a furry that—all of a sudden—morphs McCain into a docile victim of the unstoppable, uncontrollable Trump’s wagon.
Wave after wave of support, of sympathetically colorful words have poured into the Arizona Senator’s way, healing the bruise, but also have assuaged ( at least for the moment) the entire McCain’s political baggage that has long earned him the title of America’s Bad Boy. His relentless attacks on the Arizona tribes, his lobbying on behalf of rightwing movements across the globe, his personal support for the Right Sector and the Sloboda Party of Western Ukraine (fascist and neo-Nazi organizations) before they staged the coup against then Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, his open support for Israeli PM BB Netanyahu even as Israeli bombs rained down on the men, women and children of Gaza City, all is now being shelved as McCain goes to sleep tonight—a victim of the Trump’s wagon.
This morning, however, The Des Moines Register seems to indicate enough is enough. In a robust editorial which takes a direct aim at the Republican presidential candidate, the Iowa paper accuses Trump of coarsening “our political dialogue and [cheapening] the electoral process.” The editorial goes on to call Trump “a feckless blowhard who can generate headlines, name recognition and polling numbers not by provoking thought, but by provoking outrage.”
Some Republicans are mad like hell, feeling impotent in the face of the Trump penny-sized hails of political trivia-storm. The latest opinion polls crown him as the undisputed frontrunner. In the national polls, he holds a commanding lead (24%) over Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (13%), his nearest rival. The rest of that pack can’t move beyond the single digit, including New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie whose rating now sits at 2%. Christie is reportedly to have gone soul searching. He could no longer script his way down the convention floor where he hopes to clinch the nomination.
Meanwhile, the Republican saga has given the pundits plenty of ammunitions. The party drags on—until they find a way to install new brake pads on the Trump’s bandwagon.
Note: Dr. Ardain Isma is novelist and essayist. He is the chief-editor for CSMS Magazine. His latest novel is titled Midnight at Noon, a political novel describing contemporary Haitian politics and class antagonisms. He may be reached at publisher@csmsmagazine.org
