The American President: Donald Trump & The Societal Exposé, Part 2

Whether we choose to admit it or not, America loves a trash talker--whether that love is actually loving the person's platform or loving to hate everything for which they represent.  When someone gets our blood boiling, it gives us a reason to get out of bed in the morning to stand against their flawed system of values with our best devised strategies or just to punch him or her in the mouth one good time.  Even if we aren't able to do that for lack of toughness, tangibility or bail money, the drama starter nevertheless makes for more of an intriguing piece of scuttlebutt than someone who avoids controversy like the plague.  In Part 1 of this four-part series, "America the Divided," I delved into America's historic separatism and how Republican frontrunner Donald Trump is merely a cog in the systematic machine of racial, religious, gender and other forms of cultural and political separation.  Serving as a perfect segue to this week's installment of "The American President: Donald Trump & The Societal Exposé", I continue in my assertions that while Trump's blustering rhetoric appears to be nothing more than disunifying rabble-rousing, his tactics are not germane to one particular group of people who superficially look, sound, act or think like him...

PART 2: AMERICA THE INCENDIARY  

Donald Trump has mastered the arts of getting under an opponent's skin and inciting his supporters to commit the most inexplicable acts, so let's go over a few of these incidents.  November 21 in Birmingham, Alabama: a Black Lives Matter protester was shoved, tackled, punched and kicked by a half-dozen White attendees. Trump's response: "Get him the hell outta here, will you please?"  February 29 at Radford University in Virginia: BLM protesters made their voices heard again.  Trump's dismissive response: "Folks, you're gonna hear it once...all lives matter.  All lives matter."  Same day at Valdosta State University in Georgia: 30 Black students attempted to attend the rally, many dressed in all black but without a single picket sign in tow.  Trump's response: he reportedly ordered Secret Service to have them removed.  March 1 at the University of Louisville: Shiya Nwanguma was among many protesters who were pushed and shoved by several "White Nationalists" for being "disrupters".  Trump's response: "Get them out of here!"  Traditionalist Worker Party figurehead Matthew Heimbach's response: "Its funny how BLM comes to a Trump event to fight, starts the fight and then loses the fight but plays big victim to the media #LoserLies."  March 10 in Fayetteville, North Carolina: 78-year-old John Franklin McGraw punched Rakeem Jones as he was being escorted out of the Crown Coliseum for allegedly disrupting the event.  Police response: wrestle Jones to the ground and handcuff him as if he were the assailant.  McGraw's unapologetic response: "Yes, he deserved it.  The next time we see him, we might have to kill him."  Trump's initial response: "So early... get him out."  Trump's more "meticulous" response: "From what I saw, the young man stuck his finger up in the air and the other man sort of just had it."  Trump's further response regarding McGraw's legal fees: "I've actually instructed my people to look into it, yes."  Trump's response to all of his defectors: "They're not protesters; I'm telling you, they're disrupters.  They're professionals."  In the wake of saying that he wants to "punch them [protesters] right in the face" and protesters back in the day would be "taken out on a stretcher", he is the most socially irresponsible candidate who has ever campaigned for President of the United States.  While he might not be the guy doing the punching, shoving or kicking, tactful de-escalation is clearly not in his repertoire while agitation is.

However, when Trump was supposed to have a rally in Chicago on March 11, the people of the Windy City weren't having it.  Between police brutality, corrupt government cover-ups and senseless violence particularly between young Black men, the people of Chicago have had enough.  Similar to Rakeem Jones and friends attending the Fayetteville rally as a "social experiment" and the Valdosta 30 just wanting to know "what the Presidential candidate had to offer", First 50 Initiative Chairman Jedidiah Brown outlined his intent in an interview with NewsOne Now's Roland Martin:

I went out specifically not to protest; I went aware of possible protest.  I personally went to see if in 2016, there really was a campaign that's going on in America that is promoting ignorance, hatred and bigotry.  I wanted to see if the media was giving the true perspective of what goes on at Trump's rallies...I also went because I'm a Chicago citizen and I think that we submitted ourselves an application in that particular rally as the activist capital of the world because if there was hatred gonna come in our airwaves or on our soil, we were gonna shut it down.

Unhappy with the cancellation, Trump made this quasi-PC response: "Our nation is totally divided.  In many ways it's divided, and one of the ways it's divided is white-black.  I'm a unifier.  President Obama has not been a unifier, he's been a divider.  I'm a unifier, I'll bring people together."  Never knew a "unifier" who refers to rally attendees who don't share his viewpoints as "thugs"--a disparaging code word that routinely rubs us in Black America the wrong way.  To all of that, Brown followed up:

I think that Trump has proven that he's not the leader for America. Not only has he said things that incited violence, but also after it.  Look at what he said.  Instead of actually being the unifier that he says that he is--getting up there and redirecting his energy, telling us how we need to start having a conversation, not confrontation--he decided to call people "thugs".  He decided to tell police to arrest protesters.  He didn't even have the character enough to say, "Hey, let's have a sit-down conversation and figure out what is actually going on," but "our First Amendment rights are being infringed".  His rallies, they've been pushing, beat people around...and as a matter of fact, it ain't nothing that I heard, it's something I experienced.  Before I jumped on that stage, I was called some names that I've never been called in my life.  I just couldn't believe what happened.

Combined with the aforementioned evidence, Brown's astute observations and poignant experience negate Trump's delusions of being a "unifier".  The irony is that Trump said that the Chicago protesters have "totally energized America".  On one hand, the protest was one of many that "energized" the formation of "The Lion's Guard" as a pro-Trump militia to "forcefully protect" voters against "far-left agitators".  On the other hand, he doomed himself with that prophecy as Salt Lake City residents protested outside of a rally site with chants of "Dump Trump" and "Mr. Hate Out of Our State" and even historically-racist Arizona followed suit by shutting down a major highway in Fountain Hills leading to the rally with protesters chanting "Dump Trump" and "Shut Down Trump".  Little does he realize that he is the one who has "energized" America against itself with bigots and protectors of the old guard on one side and true freedom fighters on the other.  Then again, as is the case with most crap starters, maybe it's all part of his fiendish plan.

If his inflammatory rally speeches aren't sufficient proof, then just consider how he has turned the Republican debates into nothing more than playing the dozens in the schoolyard or on the block.  In the February 25 CNN-Telemundo Republican Debate, now-former Republican Presidential candidate Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) criticized Trump's position on starting a potential trade war against Mexico and China and said that he'd be going to war against his own suits and ties.  Trump's response: "You don't know anything about business because you're a lousy business man." Later in the debate, CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked Trump about his plan to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency--entities to which he repeatedly attributed "waste, fraud and abuse"--to dig into the $544 billion deficit.  However, in the midst of this, he decided to take a gratuitous shot at Republican President candidate Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX.) with "I'm beating him awfully badly in the polls" to which Cruz quickly interjected "But you're not beating Hillary."  Of course, Trump immediately defended himself: "If I can't beat her, then you're really gonna get killed!"  (I won't lie, I had a "pardon me, I had to laugh at that" moment.)  When Cruz and Rubio tag-teamed him about his negotiating skills regarding foreign policy, Trump resorted to base-level insults once again: "This guy's [Rubio] a choke artist and this guy's [Cruz] a liar."  When Cruz questioned Trump's support of liberal campaigns, he not only said, "I funded this guy, I gave him a check," but he came out of left field with, "You're the basket case."  Way to stay on course, Donald...

Never fear, however, as he saved some of his most outlandish, jaw-dropping material for the March 3 FOX News Republican Debate in Detroit.  In a state dealing with a grossly-underfunded public school system in Detroit and a lead water crisis in Flint, the moderators chose to lead with Mitt Romney's remarks about Trump's "bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third-grade theatrics" and challenge to "answer with substance, not insults."  Trump's predictable response: "He failed miserably and it was an embarrassment to everybody, including the Republican Party...it looked like he went away on a vacation the last month...I guess obviously, he wants to be relevant, he wants to be back in the game."  When Senator Rubio was asked about his jabs about Trump's tan, spelling, con artistry and wetting himself, Trump sunk American politics to an unprecedented low: "I have to say this...he hit my hands.  Nobody has ever hit my hands.  I've never heard this one.  Look at those hands.  Are they small hands?  And he referred to my hands, 'If they're small, something else must be small.'  I guarantee you there's no problem."  At that point, I felt like was back at Jefferson Junior High School circa 1992 and watching somebody get baited into a "you like CDs...yeah...well, see deez nutz" joke, and the crowd responded like a bunch of seventh graders who had never heard it before.  As he does at his rallies, Trump gets a kick out of seeing his counterparts wince, whine, fuss, laugh uncomfortably and get seven types of defensive.

Considering all of this, is Donald Trump acting solely as a free agent who goes against the fabric of America, or is he the Frankenstein of society at-large in the "f--k your feelings" era?  Whether it's via social media, phone/text conversations or in-person, so many of us would rather engage in passive-aggressive arguments, expletive-heavy hullabaloos  or pointless fisticuffs than having a meaningful discussion rooted and grounded in listening to understand in lieu of waiting in ambush.  In a time when being "petty" is acceptable, people do everything and anything to get the most vitriolic response often for pure entertainment.  Furthermore, we live in the time of the Internet bully who turns into Tough Tony behind a keyboard or a controller, but wouldn't bust a grape in a fruit fight.  As evidenced in that screenshot from Madden NFL 16, that's just one of many times that someone has called me a "faggot", accused me of cheating or cursed me out just because they're a part of this generation of sourpuss competitors who don't know how to lose gracefully--or at least spell their insults correctly.  Although I don't ever take the bait, I know folks with loose screws who would've been more Ghostface Killah than Action Bronson had they been similarly insulted.  In many instances, you can't even "shoot the fair one" because there's a group of even more irrational people would rather shoot, stab or bomb away the problem(s), i.e., the "squeeze first, ask questions last" mentality, because they feel that dealing with the issue(s) takes too much time, effort and energy.

If that's not convincing enough, then think of how various forms of entertainment shape us.  Would extremely-heated sports rivalries like Michael Jordan's Bulls and Isiah Thomas' "Bad Boy" Pistons of the late 80s/early 90s be as heralded as they are in comparison to the "softer" versions of today's major North American sports, especially in the NBA?  Isn't the "bad b***h" mentality one of the biggest reasons why so many people faithfully tune(d) in to the Bad Girls Club, Love & Hip-Hop or Basketball Wives franchises?  If the type of bombast and braggadocio displayed in Long Island rapper Nyckz's classic "oh you mad 'cause I'm stylin' on you" line during a 2007 battle against EnJ and the reactionary punch were absent from the narrative, would any of us avid hip-hop fans clamor to see a freestyle battle or need to debate the validity of diss records?  Would Scarface be the cult classic that it is if Tony Montana wasn't a reckless hothead who we all rooted for, even after he unwisely double-crossed Alejandro Sosa and killed his best friend Manolo Ribera for dating his sister Gina against his wishes?  Although there is an understandable backstory, would fights such as the recent altercation between Aleeyah Porter and a White teenage girl who called her a "nigger" be as viral as they are?  Even more personal, how many have stayed in relationships too long with someone who's politically incorrect, socially awkward, dismissive, sassy, bossy, insensitive, argumentative and/or brash--all while making excuses to friends and family for staying with them?  No matter what your guilty pleasure is, we all have either engaged in or celebrated being loud, wrong, rude, impetuous, violent, arrogant and an overall a--hole of the crappiest order.  Even if we weren't part of the escalation of assaults on Black protesters at Trump rallies, there aren't too many of us in this country who can honestly say that we haven't escalated some situation unnecessarily or were brave enough to deescalate a situation when it was necessary.  Hence, the possibility of Trump winning this election comes down to the fact that whether it's Trump or someone else, shade sells and we often go bankrupt over it.


While straightening his toupee and practicing his lip purses in the mirror, Donald Trump just might wake up in the morning rapping this part of Jay-Z's "Say Hello": "They sayin' I'm a bad guy, why's that/'Cause when my back's against the wall, n***a I react/Secretly though, I know you admire that/You wish you had the balls to fire back, brrrap!!!"  (BTW...you shouldn't be surprised if he says "n***a" when he recites it.). No matter how many people call him to the carpet for being a fire starter, he just keeps firing back like the typical antagonist of any highly-entertaining film because the villain is usually the hardest to kill.  He will use every dirty trick in the book before ever conceding and acknowledging defeat, usually involving getting everyone else's panties or boxers in a bunch while he stays as cool as a cucumber.  However, while I'm not excusing his actions or exonerating him from being a serial blowhard, there are way too many people in our society who live by that same code of "my haters are my motivators".  When we often feel disrespected and misunderstood or know that we don't have a snowball's chance in hell to out-strategize someone, a lot of us can be equally as low-down, gritty and grimy as Trump when we want to win an argument or "read" somebody; thus, someone's looks, skin color, weight, job status, income, family, friends, relationship or their "prowess" are not out of bounds.  While some of us might be above Trump's adolescent tactics that get other politicians and entire communities in an uproar, a vast majority of us are more like him than we'd like to admit--which once again makes that more of an American thing than a Trump does his dirt all by his lonely thing.  Just look at the average local or state political race and see how their campaigns are built upon discrediting their competitor before outlining their actual plans or what legitimizes them as a viable candidate.  Kinda sounds like the average person quick to call somebody else "basic".  So say hello to the bad guy...he might be closer than you think.

Please come back and read next week's installment of "The American President: Donald Trump & The Societal Exposé" titled "Part 3: America the Uninformed"...