If Trump has a demise in politics, it will come at the hand of his "loyal" base. I always think of it along the lines of this passage from a James Lee Burke novel:
I was guilty of that age old
presumption that the origins of social evil can be traced to
villainous individuals. That we just need to identify them, lock
them in cages, or even march them to the executioner's wall and this
time, yes, this time, we'll catch a fresh breeze in our sails and set
ourselves on a true course.
But [politician] Bobby Earl is out
there by consent. He has his thumb on a dark pulse, and like all
confidence men, he knows that his audience wishes to be conned. He
learned long ago to listen. He knows that if he listens carefully,
they'll tell him what they need to hear. It's a contract of mutual
deceit by which they open up their flack vests and take it right
through the breastbone. If it weren't he, it would be someone like
him. Misanthropic, beguiling, educated. Someone who, as an
ex-president's wife once said, allows the rest of us to feel
comfortable with our prejudices.
I think the end, for Bobby Earl, will
come in the fashion that it does for all his kind. Unlike the
members of the pool and that great army of villainous buffoons trying
to sneak through life on side streets, Bobby Earl wants power so
badly, that at some point in their lives, they make a conscious
choice to embrace evil. It's not a gradual seduction. They do it
without reservation, and that's when they leave the rest of us. You
know it when it happens, too. No amount of cosmetic surgery can mask
the psychological deformity in their eye. Then, unbeknownst to
themselves, they set about erecting their own scaffold. Their most
loyal adherents become their executioners, just as Mussolini's people
hanged him upside down in a filling station, and Robespierre's
followers trundled him over their heads to the guillotine. Then the
audience moves on and seeks a new magician.
A Stained White Radiance – James Lee Burke
Key to Trump's ascension: "Someone who [...] allows the rest of us to feel comfortable with our prejudices."
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