Lessons Learned From Those of Us Who Know.
Welcome to the new reality. Welcome to four years of upcoming protests.
If you think that any one event will be Trump's downfall, I believe you are mistaken. This is going to be a battle of attrition, a la the Gulliver takedown with a thousand tiny Lilliputian arrows and a lot of rope to tangle up the giant. The David vs Goliath, stone to the forehead strategy doesn’t work.
If you think that any one event will be Trump's downfall, I believe you are mistaken. This is going to be a battle of attrition, a la the Gulliver takedown with a thousand tiny Lilliputian arrows and a lot of rope to tangle up the giant. The David vs Goliath, stone to the forehead strategy doesn’t work.
We Canadians who live in Toronto had Mayor Rob Ford. Back in those days, I genuinely thought he wouldn’t survive his own mistakes. I also thought the onslaught of parody and satire would take him out, but it didn't. I’d hazard a guess that the pressure contributed to his substance abuse, but his personality likely contributed to that just as much as anything else. For some reason that I still cannot explain, the abuse didn’t slow him down. I certainly saw other candidates crumble under far less pressure and ridicule, but Ford kept marching on.
Savage public ridicule has its place in history with some even succeeding in overthrowing the government. So, take heart. Before the French Revolution, pornographic, vicious pamphlets called libelles helped shape the public uprising. “The avalanche of defamation that overwhelmed [Marie Antoinette] between 1789 and her execution on October 16, 1793 has no parallel in the history of vilification,” wrote historian Robert Darnton.
The parodies about Trump began sweeping in when many thought he didn’t have a prayer of winning. Not only more resilient than the Queen of France, he was enervated by the attention. Two prevailing theories suggest the mockery ignited Trump’s run for the presidency.
The first theory sources from the Comedy Central Roast of Donald Trump that ran in March 2011. Didn’t see it? Comedy Central Canada will be running it all day on Friday, January 20. Liz Shannon Miller of Indiewire thought this event may have galvanized him into or at least towards making the decision to run. His last words certainly indicate it was on his mind. “If I decide to run, you will have the great pleasure of voting for the man who will easily go down as the greatest President in the history of the United States. Me. Donald John Trump. God bless America and good night.” http://www.indiewire.com/2016/09/donald-trump-election-roast-comedy-central-1201729118/
If you want to see Trump’s edits to his rebuttal, click here: http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/Trumprebuttal.pdf
If you want to see Trump’s edits to his rebuttal, click here: http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/Trumprebuttal.pdf
The second theory comes from the May 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner when Obama took pot shots at Trump who was sitting, unhappily, in the audience. Three days before that dinner, Trump had ramped up the ‘birther’ conspiracy (something he devised shortly after the Comedy Central Roast to delegitimize the sitting president) to such an extent that the White House released Obama’s long-form birth certificate. The worm did a U-turn and Obama weaponized this material. Then the other Seth – Meyers - went at Trump, calling his presidential aspirations a ‘joke.’
It’s interesting to note, (no, actually it is deliciously ironic to note) that the day after that dinner, the news broke that Bin Laden was dead, interrupting “Celebrity Apprentice” in the process.
Trump’s love of revenge is by now well known, so cue ‘Telephone Line’ by Electric Light orchestra and watch Steve Buscemi in Billy Madison. I’m imagining Trump has his own list of ‘People to Kill.’
This might be good news because all this backstory leads me to believe that what built Trump’s ego up can eventually wear him down. With every Baldwin impersonation, every Stephen Colbert reading of a Trump tweet in that tinny canary voice, every Luther the Anger Translator video, every Trump hand-flapping accordion video, every nude Trump statue with the truly offensive buttocks, every French public urinal with Trump’s face on it - will stretch his thin skin to the limit. He reflexively takes on every battle and he takes every battle personally. Statistically, the population of Toronto could not provide enough mockery to take out Rob Ford, but the proportionate population of the US might be able to drive Trump to the edge and over.
Let loose the dogs of comedy.
