Trump, Dog Whistles, and the Republican Full Monty

shutterstock_196597046 (1)

There is angst and gnashing of teeth in the Palaces of Privilege.  The soft, pale, elderly Mandarins of Republican power met recently, all atremble, beseeching Turd Blossom for good news, but for the old whores of Capitalism he had none.

He told them what they already knew: Trump has them by the place where their balls should be.  They confess a terror never felt before.  And they should.

They’re stupefied.  They can’t believe this raging boor is publicly calling bullshit on the con they’ve run forever.  He’s selling “anti-politics” or “populism”, riding a typhoon of “incivility”.  They mourn bitterly the lost capacity for decent political compromise which they, particularly, never had.  They call it everything but what it is: frank exposure of the monumental fraud, that grisly, stinking embodiment of deception–Republicanism–that has raped America so often and so thoroughly.

Because what he’s doing is yanking open the fly of their threadbare costume and letting the sorry, bare organ of their mendacity hang out for all America to see.

Consider: A very rich man wants his wealth and privilege defended but, because voting determines government policy, knows there are far too few of him to win elections.  He has to persuade those with less, little, or nothing, to vote for his punks. This can only be done by manipulating their ignorance, prejudice, and fear to convince them, against all evidence, that they are warm natural partners.

With Americans, this is easy, given big bucks.  Advertising proves people can be made to buy any rubbish by being shown cartoons and wanked by paid buffoons.  This tactic works remarkably with the most specious and insane political notions.

The favored method in Republican politics since Nixon has been code-talking: attaching obvious, but socially unacceptable, connotations to certain words so as  to convey unstated meaning.  It works like a dog whistle.  The primitive creatures targeted, titillated at a deep instinctual level, do hear, and get the message.

Republicans have perfected this technique to enlist, as passionate supporters of the obscenely wealthy, and–which is much worse–the ruling Capitalist powers in banking, finance, health, education, energy and war, the great mass of that despised and hoodwinked underclass it is intentionally, methodically destroying.

Trump, very rudely–unimaginably so, to Dollar Patricians–has simply discarded the wimpy euphemisms whistled to death by the Establishment, and thus exposed the stunning ugliness of its cynical, amoral hustle to open public view.

In so doing he lopped off the huge trunk of the crude, dull, confusedly furious underclass–who were never fully satisfied by dog whistle memes and wanted a spade called a spade, so to speak–away from the rotting but controlling root of the 1% Boardroom Mafiosi.  He gives his folks red meat and they roar for it.

The likely short-run effect of this blowhard apocalypse, absent a Black Swan event, is his nomination and run as head of a pantsed and gagging Party.

And that’s the best case scenario.  The ultimate threat is that his running, win or lose, may have the same effect on Republicans–for very different reasons, sure–that Lincoln’s running as a Republican had on Whigs: the Party’s total dissolution.

A Party of blatant 1% rule, whose whole object is to enable and defend money privilege, no matter how vile and criminal, only exists by grand hoax.  When its cover is blown and it presents the Full Monty to a gaping world, it’s done.

The next best thing to destroying and replacing Capitalism itself would be the destruction of its strongest defenders.  There is real hope for that as Trump continues his Punch assault on the Judys of Republicanism.  All their money has not bought them love.  At this point, all they can do is to writhe and squeal.

Paul Edwards is a writer and film-maker in Montana. He can be reached at: hgmnude@bresnan.net