Donald Trump Will Be the Next President

The next president of the US poses with the Donald Trump 12-inch talking doll– photo credit CNN used by permission

 Donald Trump very well may be the next President. And it is our fault. We have defined the word success wrong. If a perfect storm forms over our next national election get used to saying the words “President Trump.”

Here’s the potential perfect storm:

• It’s 2016 and Hillary Clinton is the Democratic Party candidate
• Half of the Democrats who fought for Sanders stay home
• In the last month of the 2016 campaign the “other Clinton shoe” drops. There always is one with the Clintons. Criminality? Greed? Scandal? The emails? Who knows but you’d better bet it’ll happen. This is the Clinton machine after all. You don’t get a combined annual income of 30 million-plus out of a lifetime “government service” without putting a few skeletons in myriad closets
• It’s mid-2016 and the media hate her. Why? She’s bad at media! She’s no fun at all! Trump is fun!
• Meanwhile the media and Washington insiders have underestimated that a significant black and brown minority will vote for Trump for the same reason many whites will: He’s a celebrity. He’s wealthy. He’s a racist but he’s a rich racist. He is like all those black preachers in the “prosperity gospel” churches.  They rip off their people and drive a Cadillac. God must be blessing them! Right? Some black people go for that prosperity gospel crap. Some will go for Trump.

The rich are deemed smart and successful in a society that is all about striving for money. Trump will get more black votes than you’d think. That’s because we have the wrong idea of what being smart and successful is.

Too late to change that– at least for 2016. People have seen Trump on TV! We have truly entertained ourselves to death.

This is as good times for MSNBC as for FOX. The left does as the does the right—they both suck at the entertainment tit. Thus the left too venerates wealth and fame. The left “hates” Trump but they love to hate him. Trump sells advertising on MSNBC just like he does on FOX. He gives the left something to rant about. Hillary doesn’t. No one rants about her. She’s boring.

Don’t underestimate white bigots’ anger either. Don’t wait for the gun owners and haters to be rational for the sake of their country. They hate America. They will vote for Trump precisely because he’ll trash America and turn it into his own reality TV show in which we’ll all be extras. Don’t underestimate evangelicals who want revenge on America for their having lost the culture wars to gays.

Don’t underestimate how sick we are. We reelected W after he started the most ill-conceived war in American history. He blew up the Middle East. He created ISIS. We got the village idiot with W but we’ll have our very own Mussolini with Trump, someone both dumb and evil in a silly petty nasty little way. Maybe it’ll be a Trump/Cruz ticket. A country that elected a congress that risked the world economy by shutting down the government and threatening default, is a country backward enough to elect Trump.

As i point out in my book WHY I AM AN ATHEIST WHO BELIEVES IN GOD: How to give love, create beauty and find peace there is no bottom to the pit we’ve let the far right and media (left and right) dig. Our very own Putin has arrived. We are the idiots that suck up celebrity “news” like the Russians love strongmen.

We are the idiots that think rich people must be successful and smart. It all depends on how you define success and intelligence.

By any spiritual, religious (other than Scientology), intellectual or aesthetic measure Trump is a pitiful failure– a rich man’s spoiled kid who could have done nothing for himself other than become a brand name in a very dumb period of American history.

Now at last we see where the “values” of consumerism took us. Rich equals smart. Celebrity equals good. Right?

If we don’t like the choice between Trump/Putin and the Clinton nepotistic royals we Americans should have asked ourselves this question long ago:  Is success defined by career achievement, money and power or by the constructive deepening of the content of our characters? 

Frank Schaeffer is a writer. His latest book —WHY I AM AN ATHEIST WHO BELIEVES IN GOD: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

Available now on Amazon