Does linoleum have anything to do with Donald Trump?  Yes, it does.  A lot.  

I recently came upon an article about the effects the introduction of linoleum had on British society.  People were fascinated by linoleum’s absolutely precise checkerboard pattern, a product of the new industrial era’s ability to churn out one precisely made good after another, lacking the telltale flaws or imperfections of handmade objects.  

At first, only the wealthy could afford linoleum, so it quickly became a sign of taste and high station.  The rich loved showing their guests their expensive new floors, yet another sign of their ability to afford expensive objects. 

But the unanticipated result of industrial manufacture was that what was once rare and exotic soon became widespread and affordable.  Linoleum’s price quickly dropped as factories churned out more and more of it.  Linoleum went from being rare to common, and finally tawdry, a flooring associated with tenements, greasy spoons, and one-hour motels. 

This is where The Donald comes in. 

Unlike linoleum, Trump cannot be mass-produced, duplicated, or even imitated.  That means he can never become common.  Unlike a typical Democrat politician, The Donald is a oner.  And Democrats despise that.  They don’t like exceptional or unique people.  You see it in their never-ending efforts to reduce their opponents to “flyover country” rustics and deplorables, an undifferentiated clump of class-lacking haters and rubes.

You see it in their hijacking of America’s colleges and universities, where a superimposed intellectual monoculture aims at producing arrogant, entitled, aliterate* snobs who traverse adult life in herds, swathed in clouds of self-importance.  There is no room for individualism in Democrat party politics. 

So if you are a Democrat, how do you deal with the most original and distinctively individual politician of the past 60 years?  You hate him.  You condemn him, because he doesn’t fit into any of your categories of what a proper politician should be.  Even worse, he doesn’t react the way you want him to when you pile insults and invective upon him.

Look at Plastic Man Gavin Newsom’s attempts to duplicate The Donald’s quirky, jazz scat–like word bombs on X and other media.  They can’t be replicated for the simple reason that The Donald is an original.  The Dems have nobody like him.  Their stable of stars can offer up only jeer-worthy jokes like Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson, phony ghetto mamas like Jasmine Crockett, brittle scolds like Elizabeth Warren, and desiccated swamp tortoises like James Carville.  (OK, maybe Carville is a tetch entertaining.  Weak tea, though, compared to The Donald.) 

These dim stablemates are cookie-cutter: all venal, vain, and predictable.  They're products of the Democrat sausage machine, which endlessly extrudes stomach-churning strands of undifferentiated meat matter for use in their generic “Save Democracy!  Resist Fascism!  We Will Rise!” campaigns.  

Speaking of colleges, don’t forget the Democrats’ modern shock troops, the urban and suburban AWFLs.  They are this era’s harpies — self-absorbed, unironic harridans, addicted to TikTok tirades.  When you watch one, you just know that The Donald, were he ever to take to TikTok, would eviscerate those noisome hags with barrages of Donaldisms and never-ending exclamation marks!!!!!!  Bam!  Pow!  Whack! 

I come not to dis linoleum, which has served an honorable purpose.  It had its good days, and we are all the better for it.  But its time in the bright light, like that of the Democrat party, is over.  All hail to The Donald, avatar of the post-linoleum age! 

*Aliterate: Having the ability to read but not inclined to use it.

Image via Raw Pixel.