Where the Trump Revolution failed

Posted

To the Editor:

The election is over. Driving out in the county I saw candidates’ yard signs blowing down the road and into the ditch along with brown autumn leaves. In town the faces of the winners and losers lie flattened in the frosty grass, or leaning against the wind.

I read somewhere the cardboard placards dissolve in the winter rain, but the double-walled coroplast ones will last into 2022, so the detritus of this election cycle will be with us for a while, including that New York hustler and TV huckster who is the walking, talking proof of P.T. Barnum’s old adage that there’s a sucker born every minute.

Yes, he will be in the news still, because the firewall surrounding a sitting president cannot save him from the flurry of lawsuits which await him outside of the White House. He must know this, too, which makes him as dangerous as any cornered animal. Thus endeth the Trump Revolution.

The historian Kenneth Galbraith wrote that for revolution to succeed, three conditions are essential: first, there must be determined leadership by men and women who know exactly what they want, leadership from ruthless people who not only have everything to gain, but, perhaps more importantly, have everything to lose if they fail. The President has that in spades.

Second, revolutionaries must have unquestioning people who will follow orders. Underlings in a revolution should not be allowed to think for themselves or defend their own beliefs. Again, our soon-to-be ex-President’s flunkies support every lie he Tweets.

Third, the opposition must be weak. Every revolution is the kicking in of a rotten door. This is where Trump failed; our constitution survived his attempts to subvert it. The America of 2020 is not France in 1789, or Russia in 1917 or China in 1949.

I have a Republican friend who is absolutely furious with Trump; he said to me: “All he had to do was read the teleprompter for four years, but he just couldn’t do it. Now, after what he said about the coronavirus, people look at me like I’m dumb to vote for him. How hard can it be to just read from a script?!?” My friend should be forgiven. My friend never worked in television, but I have. I have even worked with Donald Trump.

In the fall of 2004 I was a stagehand in Studio 8H where Trump hosted NBC’s Saturday Night Live. At that time he was producing and hosting “The Apprentice.” His was a genuinely unimpressive performance; he has no gift for comedy. But he certainly was overwhelming personally. “You people did a hell of a job for me,” he said to the assembled stage crew waiting to shift the scenery between takes. “I want you all on my team!” With that flourish, he walked away to the dressing rooms.

I knew his book, “The Art of the Deal,” had been ghost-written by someone else, and I never had watched “The Apprentice,” but at that moment, I felt like a million bucks. I almost would have voted for him. Almost.

Dwayne Walls, Pittsboro