Trump Nips Media Hand That Feeds Him
"I don't know any -- honestly I don't know David Duke," replied Trump, and "... I just don't know anything about him."
Why lie? Trump later blamed a lousy earpiece for his fib. Yet he looked and sounded as though he heard the question quite clearly but simply did not want to answer it. Sure, he might upset pragmatic Republican establishment voters, but he was not about to disappoint his base.
Considering how much white nationalist support he has attracted, he may be right. Various reports (Evan Osnos' excellent article "The Fearful and the Frustrated" in the Aug. 31 New Yorker was notably thorough) indicate Trump's promises to ban Muslims and deport 11 million undocumented immigrants, among his other excesses, has attracted the dwindling multitudes of white supremacy like cats to catnip.
Trump's attack against press freedom ironically bites the media hand that has fed him and his surprisingly successful campaign. He has uncovered a cauldron of boiling resentments, particularly among the same class of struggling working-class white Americans who complained in the 1960s that there was no civil rights group to speak for them.
Instead they turned to the Democratic presidential campaign of Alabama's former segregationist governor George Wallace, which bears striking similarities to today's populist uprising led by Trump.
In similar fashion, candidate Trump sounds less concerned with denouncing bigotry than with using it. He wouldn't be the first. Democracy requires tolerance for a wide variety of views, including the goofy.
But I no longer wonder how civilized democracies crumble into tyranny and chaos. Trump has shown us the first steps: Feed people what they want to hear, not what they need to know.
========
(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)
(c) 2016 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
