A stray snippet at my local Starbucks made me realize the visceral way in which the mainstream media shapes public perceptions about Donald Trump. The picture they paint of Trump—a picture unrelated to the real man and his time in office—is just the thing to drive a sad, bullied loner into thinking he can save the world.
Having received my Americano, I searched for a quiet corner and, despairing of that, seated myself next to a large potted plant, through the leaves of which I could overhear the conversation of an attractive couple. In an icy tone, the woman asked her companion, “So, do you like Donald Trump?” Her companion sipped his coffee, smiled, and carefully replied, “I really don’t know. I’ve never met the man. But I am going to vote for him.”
Image by AI.
That brief exchange lifted a fog that had been clouding my mind regarding the current presidential campaign. The interlocutor’s question sprang from a tacit assumption of a connection between liking and voting. The man’s answer rejected that assumption, and a flash of insight brought to my mind two critical facts about the presidential campaign: (1) the entire Democrat campaign hangs on training the electorate like circus seals to hate and fear Donald Trump, and (2) while Donald Trump gracefully dodged one bullet, there may well be more.
In coming to my own decision to vote for Trump, I have tried to appraise him critically. Over the past several months I have carefully read everything with an anti-Trump slant, including everything I ran across online, plus the New York Times and Wall Street Journal opinion pages that I explore in my daily excursion to the local library.
I have yet to find a negative editorial or opinion piece that’s more substantive than “Orange Man Bad!” I have yet to encounter anything that analyzes and criticizes Trump on policy grounds. To the contrary, the Democrat propaganda is well-larded with accusations that Trump is nasty, proud, self-promotional, haughty, etc. In words both explicit and implicit, they say he’s a sinner and also a would-be dictator, the virtual embodiment of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, an imminent existential threat to “our democracy.”
A familiar type of adolescent boy is particularly susceptible to this Democrat campaign propaganda. Middle class, slight of build, of mousy appearance and nerdy personality, unattractive to girls yet brimming with testosterone. In his own way, he’s a fervent patriot who loves his country.
But his daily life is a social disaster: He’s bullied by the boys he fears and rejected by the girls he desires. He sees that the quickest way to right this wrong is to become a hero who will be revered by the boys and adored by girls. And of course, the surest way to become a hero is to save the country from Hitler—even if that were to mean his own death (something young people can never quite imagine) at the hands of Hitler’s security detail. And so, fearing neither pain nor death, the hero strides into the maelstrom.
I don’t doubt that there are no doubt dozens (thousands?) of adolescent boys who fit this description.
Let us pray.