Mocking Trump? Not Working, part II
P. Schultz
Below is a
link to an article in today’s NY Times entitled “Why We Must Make a Mockery of
Trump,” by Howard Jacobson. I read it with some disbelief and that disbelief
turned to scorn as I thought about Jacobson’s argument. I apologize for the
scorn but it cannot be helped. Here’s why.
Well, if
you want to make a mockery of Trump, go right ahead. Only it won’t undermine
Trump. Rather, it will only make his stronger.
Consider
what happened when Hillary Clinton labeled a sizeable portion of Trump’s
supporters “deplorables.” At best, her charge fell flat and at worst it did
more to damage Hillary than it did to damage Trump, except of course for those
who already thought of Trump’s supporters as deplorable, thoughtless
reactionaries.
Why didn’t
Hillary’s broadside work? Why won’t mocking Trump work? Because both the
broadside and the mocking of Trump fail to take account of the fact that both
Trump and his supporters, both of whom can be labeled “insurgents,” are
responding to a political setting that lends support to their politics because
the established political order lacks legitimacy. The established political
order has lost its claim to legitimacy by virtue of its all-too-obvious flaws
and defects.
Simply “dissing” his supporters or
mocking Trump gets you nowhere because they are responding to this setting and
their response, however unacceptable to many people, is not unwarranted. Some
response is needed to replace the now de-legitimized established political
order. And if one is content to mock, without offering an alternative to
Trump’s politics, then, weirdly enough, this just strengthens the insurgency. They
have a politics and all you have is mockery. Guess who wins?
To defeat
insurgents, it is necessary to either co-opt them – as Hillary tried to do with
the “Sandernistas” at the Democratic national convention, with only partial
success – or to provide a political alternative to their insurgency.
Co-optation with the “Trumpsters” won’t work because for them that is
surrender. And like any politically committed people, the “Trumpsters” would
prefer defeat to surrender because then they can “live to fight another day,”
ala’ the Goldwaterites after their crushing defeat in the presidential election
of 1964. Remember Ronald Reagan?
And,
apparently, so far the Democrats have no alternative to Trump’s politics or
they are unwilling to embrace the alternatives that are available, such as that
represented by Sanders and his “Sandernistas.” I suspect it is the latter more
than the former. But in any case, this is really too bad because it means that
Trump and his followers will continue to occupy the positions of power and all
the “dissing” of his followers and the mocking of Trump himself will not unseat
them.
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