Donald Trump's "Liberal" Support

There is little Donald Trump can say to shock any more. Last night's implication that his underwear packs something beastly is a case in point. I must admit, it raised a chuckle here. As the Republican party takes a dark turn that won't end well for millions of Americans, not least those supporting Trump, sometimes laughter is the only response you can muster as all the rules about US politics is dumped in a skip, and for something more coarse, more dangerous to rise in its place.

I would hope that Hillary Clinton, as the likely Democrat nominee would be able to crush Trump in the presidential election, though I still am of the opinion that Bernie Sanders would be an even safer bet. Yet neither are dead certs as Trump is drawing deep from a well poisoned by decades of prejudice, resentment, alienation, entitlement and, yes, that old warhorse anxiety. As many commentators have already observed, Mitt Romney's "unprecedented" intervention was only going to shore up Trump's support, as per His Blairness and his courtiers vis a vis Jeremy Corbyn.

In this respect, The Graun has provided a service inviting us to peer into the minds of "secret" Donald Trump supporters. Some of it is typical hard right bullshit, but lest we forget that bullshit is taken deadly seriously by millions of Americans. But most intriguing (or depressing) are the self-styled liberals, progressives, and in one case an apparent anti-capitalist who are lining up to support his ticket.

One describes himself as a "patriotic socialist" who likes Trump's idea of stopping all Muslim immigration. Another would support Sanders in a heartbeat, but believes Trump is the lesser evil to Hillary's oligarchy-as-usual policies. Another thinks a Trump presidency would shake the American people out of their torpor, seeing as Hitler did the same. A "left-liberal college professor" is supporting Trump because he wants to piss off his lefty students. Another is an unemployed licensed attorney who thinks Trump will shake things up, even if he's "as bad as Hitler". And perhaps the most ridiculous and short-sighted comes from a young gay Muslim who thinks he'd be okay under a Trump presidency because The Donald just wants to get the "bad" Saudi-backed Wahhabi Muslims.

Each of these people are either deeply stupid, short-sighted to the point of blindness, or both. But millions supporting Trump for similar, albeit less articulate reasons, isn't something you can put down to individual stupidity. It is a social phenomenon, and need to be grasped, analysed, and responded to as such. What's common in all these "left" rationalisations is a sense of fatalism and powerless. Each of them have effectively given up on collective action to change things, not that each and every one of them have been active in the activist sense. They don't think to look to themselves and others in a similar position to work together around a set of political and social objectives. As American politics has redoubled its oligarchical character, so their individual situations are rendered external and irrelevant to Beltway concerns, or at least so it appears to them. Hence feeling isolated and unwilling/unable to engage in politics to solve their own problems, they latch onto a billionaire saviour who threatens the whole system with a hard reset - and all without having to do much more than fill out a piece of paper.

The problem is their fatalism is also premised on it's-not-going-to-happen-to-me-ism. Trump wants to demolish establishment politics, but that wrecking ball will crash through the heartlands of those now flocking to support him, just as it has done under previous conservative presidencies.