Everything about this man is phony, yet his supporters and defenders claim to appreciate his authenticity. It's all phony. It works, in large part, because the man, himself, at his core, is phony. It also works because his cult following are of the easy mark sort, easily tricked by the superficial, prone to "faith" and "feeling", because that is their training.
And that's America. Can't remember the name of the sociologist, but I'll never forget the argument: Americans are uniquely easy marks by virtue of our own American story being so unbelievably whitewashed and mythologized. That we are told so fervently and frequently from the beginning that America is the "greatest" country, despite the obvious inherent subjectivity—never mind the objective issues with such a claim, well this sets us up to fall for a character like Trump, or even one like Obama.
Except Obama, to his credit, actually tried to deconstruct—ever so delicately—some of our self-mythologizing. But of course that was met with dismay and contempt… by those then drawn to Trump. Because some of us need to be told, unequivocally, that USA is the best. For some of us, our identity depends on it.
Show's over, America. Time to stop the storytelling and get to work.
