John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY LOUIS STAPLES IN THE INDEPENDENT
Donald Trump is preparing to make 2020 the ‘immigration election’ – and his dishonest marketing ploys are working
"The US president knows how to identify grievances among white Americans and then sell them a product – himself – to alleviate all their problems"
That is concise and perfect statement of how Trump governs.
We could go further, of course, and say that in truth he has nothing of substance to offer.
As another writer recently said of him, the deal maker hasn’t any deals, not a single one, in the best part of three years.
But the blundering, bombastic man has destroyed many things, from international trade arrangements to important security treaties. His complete lack of couth has alienated important leaders in many traditionally friendly countries and brought the level of domestic political discourse to a new low.
The ugly truth is that in marketing, your product does not have to be any good. You just have to define a market and convince those people that they need it.
America’s entire modern history demonstrates that conclusively, in everything from poor, short-lived products flying off warehouse shelves by the millions after manipulative television infomercials and the immense success of televangelists in building wealthy empires, to the remarkably impoverished representation and leadership that American elections produce year after year in Congress.
Indeed, polls for years have shown that the least respected institution in America is its Congress, yet nothing ever changes.
And the demonstration of marketing in America continues on through a whole series of titanic, destructive and largely pointless events from the Vietnam War to today’s destruction of great swathes of the Middle East in the continuing Neocon Wars. Many millions of lives extinguished for no good reason.
“…nor should we underestimate the American electorate’s weakness to his marketing techniques.”
Now, that statement is considerably less penetrating. What we shouldn’t underestimate is the very poor understanding of a very large fraction of the American people, including Trump.
That is part of the reason America does such a poor job being any kind of world leader. The attitudes, values, and logic of television pitchmen, legions of phony evangelistic tent preachers, and shoppers at Walmart do not make for any kind of leadership.
The latest poll gives Trump a 40% approval rating. While not high, I think it rather stunning that a man who has achieved precisely nothing but make himself the center of attention can have the best part of half of Americans approve of him.
We really are plumbing the depths here of the American public’s genuine ignorance.
The true father of a great deal of contemporary American society was P. T. Barnum, not its Founding Fathers.
As a last note, America’s leadership role in the world largely was owing to circumstances like its coming through WWII virtually undamaged, allowing it to become a marketer to everyone for a while.
But that time is passing now, and all the privileged class of Americans is very angry about it. Hence, the remarkable level of aggression we see on so many fronts. And the inhabitants of America’s vast gulag of trailer parks are unhappy about it, too. Hence, Trump.
