It's midnight in America. Only TRUMPMAN! can save us.


Last night, listening to the man whom Republicans have selected as their savior from what they see as the nightmare of today’s America, I wondered if we’re sharing the same country. 

This ‘white peoples’ party’ – as it seems to have become – appears to be filled with angry older, pudgier, balder white folks who are dog-paddling against the rip tide of history. Every few yards they lift their heads from the buffeting waves to yell ‘Noooooooo!’ hoping that – to borrow from the closing line of ‘The Great Gatsby’ – they will be ‘borne back ceaselessly into the past.’

Fat chance. 

Months ago, a perceptive pundit speculated that Trump and his supporters share one characteristic above the anger and regret that glues them together: authoritarianism. This unhealthy trait was on full display last night when, after accepting his party’s nomination, a full-throated Trump shouted at the world for an hour. He assured us that, when he becomes POTUS, 'Americanism' not 'globalism' will be the mercantile principle. Crucially, Law and Order shall prevail. Why? Because he is ‘the law and order candidate’ and ‘I alone can do it’ because ‘I am your voice!’ 

I imagined a future when we might look back at this moment, this man, and wonder where he had brought us, and why enough of us had allowed it (many Germans might have thought the same at the end of WW2.) Brought us to an isolated, ingrown land of losers where the rest of the world shuns us, where we are suspicious of each other, where millions of people who are not white and patriotically ‘Merikan’ are marginalized and where, if you’re not comfortable chanting ‘USA! USA!’ every time dissent is voiced, you better leave quietly.

Scary thoughts. Scary man.



Brian Clewly Johnson

Amagansett
July 2016

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