Why ‘The Donald’ is the renewer of democracy

Illustration+by+Brittany+England%2FThe+Pioneer

Illustration by Brittany England/The Pioneer

Yousuf Fahimuddin,
Contributor

“The Donald” is a gift to democracy. Donald Trump’s existence as a candidate is a movement within itself. Trump is like a piece of art, he’s got value, but is often misunderstood. He is to the political process what Occupy Wall Street was to, well, Wall Street. Maybe not intentionally, but that’s what he is. Hear me out.

Donald Trump is a grotesque candidate and that’s what makes him fantastic, because even though most Americans despise his tendency to devolve into hate speech, we still love to hear it because it’s entertaining. The media is obsessed with him — since the start of his campaign there have been 2,159 reports about him, and that’s just from CNN alone, according to media analytics cruncher Zignal Labs. In total, Trump was the story in reports by CNN, FOX and MSNBC more than 5,000 times during the period of June 16, 2015 to Sept. 14, 2015. Three months of “Trump-mania” figures out to about 55 new stories about him, every day. Naturally his rise in the polls match the proportion of media coverage he’s received.[mks_pullquote align=”right” width=”300″ size=”24″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#102889″]”If a guy can become a frontrunner by insulting a bunch of people and being racist, then our system is heavily flawed.”[/mks_pullquote]

In a field filled with the usual serial politicians peddling lies to the American people like Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush and actual closeted extremists like Ted Cruz or Mike Huckabee, it’s been interesting to watch a candidate make a mockery of the presidential voting process that has become so fake and plastic.

More often than not Trump preaches awful ideas. A wall across the 1,989 mile border with Mexico would cost absurd amounts of money. Despite that, the media is forced to cover him in order to get better ratings and better pageviews. In his absurdity he becomes a more and more popular candidate, not because he’s viable but because he’s fun. And in the process the whole idea of voting for the best candidate to become the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, kind of falls to the wayside.

It’s not like Donald Trump is actually going to put Muslims in internment camps, 57 percent of the country would oppose that, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll taken after the San Bernardino attack. Nor is he going to actually build a wall on the Mexican border. Did Obama shut down Guantanamo? Of course not, they’re both just rallying their respective bases; the Republican hardliners are scared of Muslims and want them out because they’re all terrorists, and the far-left Liberals think Guantanamo is illegal and want it shut down. Even if Obama were to shut down Guantanamo via executive action, that’s easily overturned once he’s out of office. Both actions are so far on the extreme end of things, they’ll never happen.

Sometimes I think Trump himself is running this campaign to show people that the election process is corrupt and clearly doesn’t work. Trump openly revolts against the system by refusing to take donations from corporate investors or Political Action Committees. He retweets memes and satires of himself. His attacks on women, and then subsequent backpedaling, is that of a man who truly doesn’t care, about anything. He said in an interview with Esquire, impressively attacking both women and the news industry at the same time,“You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media writes as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful piece of ass.” A candidate who does all this can’t possibly be taking himself seriously. He just doesn’t care. And maybe that’s the point we’re all missing.

[mks_pullquote align=”left” width=”300″ size=”24″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#102889″]”Sometimes I think Trump himself is running this campaign to show people that the election process is corrupt and clearly doesn’t work.”[/mks_pullquote]

 

Even if Trump is serious and wants to get rid of all the brown people, it doesn’t matter anyway, because Trump won’t be elected. He’s incredibly unpopular amongst general election voters, according to a recent piece by Nate Silver’s political number crunching blog FiveThirtyEight. If this was Europe and Trump was running for office I’d be concerned, but this is the United States, we’re much more tolerant and welcoming than we give ourselves credit for.

Trump is great because he’s ridiculous and raises important questions that would not otherwise be raised in a regular droll presidential race come this far. Ultimately, his campaign forces us to reexamine the political election process. If a guy can become a frontrunner by insulting a bunch of people and being racist, then our system is heavily flawed.

Trump said, “One of they key problems today is that politics is such a disgrace. Good people don’t go into government.” Sometimes, he gets some things right.