Trump Card: The Rise of Populist Anger

Do not treat Donald Trump like a laughingstock: He represents many factors – he is a vessel rather than the exclusive voice of discontentment – among an electorate angered by upheaval, at home and abroad.

Trump’s rhetoric, distinctive and inauthentic though it may be, sounds real to tens of millions of Americans who look at an economy that rejects them, a culture that mocks them and a governing elite that ignores them.

They hear Trump’s attacks against political correctness – and they cheer, stomping their feet and bruising their hands with thunderous applause because they know, and The Donald knows they know, that they are sick of having to be polite at the expense of being right; that they will no longer tolerate the sort of false tolerance that refuses to call Islamic terror what it is; that continues to destroy free speech on the country’s college campuses; and that squeezes the middle class while it creates an ever-widening chasm between the rich and poor.

Trump is merely a symptom of a much more dangerous disease. For, if we do nothing to reverse these assaults against our commonwealth – and our common sense – and if we remain silent amidst a jobless recovery and the false hopes of President Obama, we will be the United States of America in name only. Trump knows this, and he feasts upon this knowledge, so he can marshal his followers – both online and in-person – to do what few candidates can even imagine, to vote in enormous numbers for this populist billionaire.

Those who dismiss Trump miss the point: The nation is in the midst of an economic and cultural civil war, a conflict that will determine the strength if not the survival of the Union; a battle between the dispossessed versus the One Percent; a secular crusade versus a religious jihad, where the former stands for women’s rights and human rights and the latter seeks to conquer and enslave all of Europe and the Middle East.

Trump sees the world without blinders. And, though his economic proposals may be improbable or impossible, he speaks to voters disgusted by Washington decadence and without contempt for their customs or their cherished traditions.

He sees an invasion, both physical and philosophical – he sees legions of illegal immigrants, some of them violent criminals, and he sees an enemy with an unwavering dedication to killing us, be it in the streets of Paris or the suburbs of San Bernardino, and he demands action.

How many more victories must Trump win, until we recognize these problems? How many more rallies must he stage, until we accept the gravity of these challenges? How long until he wins the White House because we are contemptuous of his candidacy?

The country is in serious trouble.

November 8th is Election Day.

Elizabeth Rice Grossman