Trump's supporters remind me of mobs past. This one has been nurtured by the Republican Party for years. They have fed it lies and now the base pays no heed to facts or reason. In a low tax economy, wealth will "trickle down". Climate change "is a hoax". The President is "not an American". The US compound in Benghazi was willfully made vulnerable.
It's the slope of imaginary outcomes, which keeps on getting steeper. All that has happened is that the Republican Party lost control of the narrative. Trump has a louder voice. Now the base is tuned into his nightmare vision. They have switched unrealities.
Are we surprised? Not if we read.
"In soothing them, we nourish 'gainst our senate
The cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition,
Which we ourselves have plough'd for, sow'd
and scatter'd..."
The scary reality is that populists will often turn these mobs to violence in one form or another. Take Wat Tyler and his Peasants Revolt, or (the magnificently named) Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre's French Revolution and you end up with the same story. A charismatic figure who is prepared to manipulate people and use their rage in pursuit of his own ends.
If you want to lay the groundwork for it, you'll nurture multitudinous grievances and turn decent, hard-working people into bitter victims. You'll tell them the system is rigged against them, that their circumstances can only be the result of someone fixing the system against them. You'll curry favour amongst the military and the police, whose strength you will need. You'll make promises you cannot keep to enlist the hopes of those you mean to manipulate. You'll blame those who oppose you for your own failures and you'll punish them for the crime of their opinions. And all these things are intended for a purpose: to build your own power.
It is easy to see how the Trump University con worked. Give me your hard-earned money and I will teach you how to turn it into a fortune. We also know how that story ended. Now Trump is using the same technique on the entire country.
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