Remembrances of Chants Past

   There is something particularly pathetic about the specter of president-elect Donald J. Trump’s recent “Thank  You” rallies, including the one he gave in Orlando, Fla., Dec. 16.

   With vanity unbound, Trump seems to prefer the adrenalin jolt of appearing before charged-up crowds to the dull day-to-day details of preparatory governance. 

   It is hardly surprising that a man with a hummingbird attention span and a bottomless need for adoration should want to appear before worshipping throngs. What's especially troubling is the nature of his free-form asides in his otherwise prepared speeches. The man simply cannot seem to let go of the campaign and election. He revisits them incessantly, suggesting a twisted nostalgia for glories past. 

   In Orlando, he spent fifteen minutes of his fifty-minute speech criticizing the “dishonest” media’s campaign coverage. Then, like all small men, he gloated about his victory. 

   Underneath Trump's braggadocio, however, one detects the stench of fear. Trump loved the rough and tumble of the campaign: the crowds, the “movement,” the energy, the constant attention (including from the “dishonest” media). He now seems desperate to capture the glories of his crusade and his conquest, but there’s no sense of joy in the work ahead.

   He’s like the half-drunk guy at the end of the bar, retailing the same tired story about some now-fading moment of distinction. “That last week was magic,” he said in Orlando, referring to the days before the Nov. 8 election. “Everywhere we went, we had crowds like this.” The only thing more important to Trump than the size of his hands is that of his crowds. He suggested that the Orlando gathering numbered “twenty-two thousand,” with more waiting outside. (Trump has proved himself bereft of fealty to truth, fact, and evidence, so one takes his estimate with a pillar of salt.)

   He also seems incapable of praising his supporters without applauding himself. In Orlando, he referred to recently being named Time’s “Person of the Year.” To the crowd, he said, “They should give it to you, because this is a movement, folks." He quickly added, "Although I have been a very good messenger, do we agree?” Classic Trump: flatter the flock, then pull focus back to yourself and take credit. (Earlier, he’d said that “the movement… is not about me.” Uh huh.)

   Trump’s supporters, of course, play their symbiotic part in fanning his peculiar nostalgia. It doesn’t take much for them to chant, “Lock her up!,” evidently unmindful that Hillary Clinton has long since conceded defeat and found her way to (mostly) private life. It’s as if tens of thousands of Chicago Cubs fans gathered at Wrigley Field a month and a half after the World Series to cheer, one last time, as the team replayed key moments from all seven games.

   The president-elect does seem to sense a change in the tenor of his post-election crowds, and in Orlando, this drew from him something of a rebuke: “Here’s what I noticed. Four weeks ago, just prior to—and always prior to—[the election], you people were vicious, violent, screaming, ‘Where’s the wall? We want the wall!’ Screaming, ‘Prison! Prison! Lock her up!’ I mean, you were going crazy. I mean, you were nasty and mean and vicious, and you wanted to win, right?” He meant these things, alas, as compliments. “But now,” he went on, “you’re mellow, and you’re cool, and you’re not nearly as vicious or violent. Because we won.” Under the bluster, one detected a hint of melancholy. He who feeds off violent energy dies a little when violent energy abates.

   Trump is not conflicted only about about the multitudes from whom he seeks worship. He also decries the “dishonest” media at the very same moment that he craves, demands, and crows about their attention. After pointing to the crush of cameras in Orlando, and denouncing them, he added, “That is a lot of [camera] people. Man! I’ll tell you—that is a lot of people back there!” In other words: we hate the media—but look how many are covering me!

   And yet, typical of a petty tyrant’s squabbling dissatisfaction with those whom he thinks should fawn, even the putatively elevating media coverage Trump receives is never quite to his liking.

   In Orlando, he offered a bizarre disquisition on the “Person of the Year” honor: “Time magazine, and the Financial Times, a very big deal, just gave me ‘Person of the Year’.” He purports to hate the media—until he's offered plaudits by outlets that, in his view, rate. Then, they’re “a very big deal.”

   He went on: “So, in the past it was called ‘Man of the Year.’ Now it’s called ‘Person of the Year.’ What do you like better? Do you like ‘Person of the Year’?” Boos. “Do you like ‘Man of the Year’?” Cheers. “Well, they wanna be politically correct. But I had an idea… If it’s a man, you go, ‘Man of the Year’—Trump. If it’s a woman…, maybe you go, ‘Woman of the Year,’ or ‘Person of the Year.’ Right? … Shall we speak to the people at Time magazine and say, ‘We want it again next year, but we want “Man of the Year”?’”

   Thus the president-elect of the United States of America, still the most powerful nation on Earth, is peppering his public speeches with corrections to media outlets who insufficiently aggrandize his endlessly needy ego. 

   The true pathos of Trump's post-election rallies lies in the mutually dependent and deluding relationship he and his supporters inhabit. Rally attendees wanted an authoritarian, and they got one. Yet they seem to reanimate good-old-days chants (“Lock her up!”) as though brandishing a crucifix against the looming vampire of Trump’s inevitable betrayal of them, even as he pines for fast-vanishing days of simple, violent rallies.

   Trump has filled his Cabinet with Wall Streeters, oil executives, anti-labor crusaders, and billionaires. These people do not represent nor care about the interests of Trump's core supporters.

   In Orlando, Trump said, “The American worker is finally going to have a champion in the White House.” The crowd howled. But it was possible that behind the throaty cheers lurked an as yet unspoken sense that those ordinary Americans will be let down, once again, by those who run the show behind Trump's deflect-and-distract "reality" show.
   Those supporters elected Trump believing they were in on the con. Soon enough, it will dawn on them that they’re the ones being conned, after all.