I wrote an essay years ago entitled Radicalisation and the Fifth Column that threatens to undermine America from within, but though it looks prescient today, I don't think I had the faintest idea what was going to ensue once Donald Trump was elected president. That essay was about the (now very tame looking) move by Tea Party senators to use a government lockdown to stymie Obama's healthcare reforms. In it I argued that Ted Cruz, a strident voice at the time, represented a sort of radicalisation that had its roots in the Dirty Harry/Hans Solo/John McClane trope of Hollywood action men. Hollywood, I argued, has long promoted an image of a maverick lone wolf who alone can see through the corruption and ineptitude of officialdom and indeed government itself. They therefore choose which laws to follow and which to break, and in doing so are lauded as heroes. A large swathe of Americans, I argued, have become radicalised by this incessant diet of anti-establishment machismo to the extent where they regard destructive rulebreakers as more worthy of respect than the forces of law and order themselves.
Well, it seems now as if that process of radicalisation was both deeper and broader than I suspected at the time. My tone then was one of wry amusement at the quirks of a society that spent too much of its time watching movies. Ted Cruz and his like seemed a bit of a joke - an irrelevance in the brave new post-racial world that Obama's election had summoned up. How wrong could I be?
Trump's presidency, viewed from over the pond, was disturbing for two main reasons. The first (and truly terrible) reason was the substance of what he was doing - reinforcing white supremacy and brutal prejudice against immigrants and Muslims; destroying international collaborative structures; and giving aid and succour to dictators across the world. The second reason was almost as bad though. In all this time it was clear that for all his stupidity, narcissism, misogyny, ineptitude and racism, nearly half of the population of the USA liked what he was doing. And then, when he capped his four years with the most callously ignorant mismanagement of a global pandemic, the response of 74 million of his fellow Americans was to attempt to give him four more years as president.
And then the final act. An attempted insurrection that, had it not been hamstrung by its own ineptitude, could have led to Trump being installed as permanent dictator (he often promised to his rallies that he would serve 8 or maybe 12 more years). Shortly after the failed invasion of the Capitol, Trump's allies began turning against him and his popular support collapsed, to the point where (according to Pew) it now stands at a mere 29%. Leaving aside that even that figure represents near enough 90 million Americans who still reckon Trump is the man for the job, one might assume that this is evidence of the US finally coming to its senses.
Well, yes and no. It is worth remembering that the defection of Trump's allies was nowhere near immediate. Even after being shut away for their own protection whilst an unruly mob stormed the Capitol, 147 Republican lawmakers continued the attempt to defy the will of the People by voting against the certification of the electoral votes.
Since then the mood has unquestionably changed though. Ten Republicans voted to impeach and a growing number of senators are suggesting that they might even vote to convict. And in the wider population, though Trump's aggregated popularity still stands at 38% or so, it is plummeting at an unprecedented rate. One might assume that this is because of the emerging understanding of just how potentially terrifying the Capitol invasion was, and I am sure things like the death of Officer Sicknick have disgusted many. However I would argue that the main feature for Trump's falling popularity is not the realisation that he is a narcissistic sociopath (that surely was always obvious) but the fact that he is also a proven loser.
Just for a moment imagine that the mob had seized and destroyed the electoral votes, had maybe taken some prominent Democrats and 'turncoat' Republicans hostage and had then been called off by Trump and instructed to hand their hostages over to the authorities. Imagine then that Trump had declared a state of emergency, cancelled the election results as fraudulent and instigated martial law (he has packed out the pentagon with sycophants and clearly has supporters in the armed forces, if not at the highest level).
The question is, would his popular support then have cratered? I am afraid to say that if anything it would have hardened. This would have been Trump definitively doing the thing his supporters had been praying he would - taking on the Swamp.
But his support has cratered, so why? I wrote a while back another (then tongue-in-cheek) essay, suggesting that the continued support for Trump could be explained by another Hollywood trope, the High School bully The thing is about bullies, while they reign supreme everybody wants to be on their side, but when get their comeuppance those same people turn against them. And maybe the explanation is as simple as that. For all the grand-guignol theatrics and the violence-and-hate-laden conspiracies, Trump's Great Awakening/Kraken Unleashed/Trust the Plan (other melodramatic terms are probably available) wannabe coup was a failure.
And in Hollywood, nobody likes a loser.
