Ichabod's Kin
A place for politics, pop culture, and social issues

          Our long national nightmare of presidential debates is done. Donald Trump’s Rat Race is over—and the rat didn’t win. Indeed, he lost all three in the court of public opinion, regardless what some very partial pundits said. Enough people know a jerk when they see one, and god help those who don’t.

          It began some years ago when the notorious “Town Hall” meetings first revealed an underlying anger in a slice of the American public. GOP pols saw an opening and adopted a fatal assumption: that the irked populace was mad only at Democrats and Obama.

          But this took a nasty turn when Republicans angled aggressively for those unhappy voters and rode to Washington on the Tea Party bandwagon, promising to send all liberals a-packing.    Sadly, Obama outplayed them at every turn whilst they slumbered in denial. Suddenly the GOP were targets of the anger and, lo, it hath been their coffin ever since. With nowhere else to go, and no one to believe in, the Angry Folk, like the village rabble of a Frankenstein movie, found a new hero in Donald Trump who has led them down the primrose path to ultimate disillusionment. Such was the Comeuppance.

          It is also a psychological truism that, for many, once a conviction has been formed, it is difficult if not impossible to change. And Trump followers are that in spades.      

          That little Miffed Minority that to now has held us all hostage for their political Fifteen Minutes of spleen-venting, were enough in number to skew polls for a while and charm other impressionable gentry to join their ranks. They ranted about unemployment and the inability to pay bills–till the truth came out that that’s not who they are.

          Indeed, the average hothead who has fueled Trump Nation makes $75,000 a year, meaning that in a general sense those who make, say, only $50-$25K are balanced by others making $100-$125K. Hardly a pittance—and another reason they drive around in cars better than yours or mine.

          Turns out they’re just unhappy souls, willy-nilly, mayhap aggrieved of migraines by which they bethink themselves to have heard calls to revolution, but they are not true Minutemen, merely flash-in-the-pan palookas who will turn tail when voting results come in—and thereafter deny they ever supported Trump. Till then, to observe them during interviews with media has been to witness the worst of illogic. All those years of expanding education facilities and opportunities, including of the “higher” sort—when existing colleges and universities were put on steroids and junior- and community colleges came into being and thrived, did them no good at all. (I’ve excluded so-called online “universities,” a la Trump’s and so many others that are nothing but degree-mills, at a shocking cost to the misled students).

          But too many grads of traditional Ed learned to merely to make widgets, or to con the public into buying things it does not need (otherwise known as Marketing)—but not to think critically and independently as a sword and shield against charlatans and snake-oil salesmen.

          But there is more. As a consultant to warring groups it was my questionable privilege to see how people get sore at each other, choose up sides and thereafter abandon all reason and civility—of which there are various levels, from early stages of mild disagreement to the devilment of wanting to kill each other, if not literally, at least to the point of ruining others in name or well-being. Such is our current state of affairs. Donald’s minions hate Hillary so much that they would rather vote for Beelzebub than even to stay at home come Nov. 8.

          We can only pray this will soon be over; Donald exists because too many drink his tea, never spout an original thought, and parrot what they’ve heard from him and his spokespersons. The difference is that the latter are paid to do so, and in the next election will be hired guns for someone totally unlike him.

          But I’ll take great satisfaction in the moment the electorate tells him “You’re Fired!”—and he’s thereafter best known as: a Loser.