18 August 2019

Alternative Reality

On Friday, The Atlantic published a really excellent article (link here) about the surreal nature of Donald Trump's rallies and how facts, common sense, and basic decency are all checked at the door.

In a sense, the author writes, the rallies are a flashback to 2016, before the actual disaster of the Trump presidency, when the campaign was an endless parade of impossible promises and ridiculous plans, "a time when the Trump presidency was nothing more than a glittering aspiration."

Trump's supporters interviewed at rallies often seem to be in their own private reality. One woman is quoted as saying that Trump's yet-to-be-built border "wall is stopping so much from happening. Human trafficking, immigration, everything. The people in Congress are losing their money because they’re, like, human trafficking." Apparently she has not heard that record numbers of migrants have crossed the border.

The end of the article includes a detail that too often is overlooked in reportage about Trump's rallies: the crowd thins out markedly through the event. The unanswered question is, do people just show up to see him like some kind of celebrity, or does his batshit gibberish actually drive them away?

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