As I watch the faces of Trump supporters on television news casts, I am generally both alarmed and fascinated by the blind but powerful allegiance they show through their determination to sanctify everything Trump says and does, as though he were a saint, come down to bless and rescue them all from some terrible and corrupt enemy. The irony that he is concerned only with his own needs, desires, and power never seems to occur to the starry-eyed crowds, as the empty puppetry by Trump continues, unabated. His crowds remain as enthralled as children ready to sit on Santa’s lap.
This phenomenon is not new. There have been other Rasputins throughout history, ready to cash in on gullible masses of unquestioning worshipers, enthralled by bitter invectives against some invisible enemy, along with anyone else who won’t believe totally unsubstantiated lies. Trump knows well that kindled rage (sparked by sarcasm and name-calling) provides an adrenalin rush for those who are desperately searching for scapegoats to blame for their own unhappy lives in which they feel a paranoid bitterness about being cheated in one way or another. Trump fans the flames.
The Me Me Me culture in our nation only intensified during Trump’s years in office and seemed to soothe segments of our nation who believed some Americans were getting more “rights” than they deserved. This unfounded rage finally left the United States Constitution in tatters during the January 6 insurrection, watched by the entire world as the most shocking bit of lawlessness since before the American Civil War.
There have been too many people with toxic influence that ended in death and despair based upon the egomania of leaders whom mentally or emotionally weak groups followed. I don’t see any way for this mass hypnosis to abate or end until more people wake up enough to see Trump for who he really is, a sick, egomaniacal fraud, who would sell his own grandmother for a gold watch. JB
About John
About John
John Bolinger was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, where he attended Ball State University and Purdue University, receiving his BS and MA from those schools. Then he taught English and French for thirty-five years at Morton High School in Hammond, Indiana before moving to Colorado, where he resided for ten years before moving to Florida. Besides COME SEPTEMBER, Journey of a High School Teacher, John's other books are ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood, and COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age, all available on Amazon.com as paperbacks and Kindle books. Alternately funny and touching, COME SEPTEMBER, conveys the story of every high school teacher’s struggle to enlighten both himself and his pupils, encountering along the way, battles with colleagues, administrators, and parents through a parade of characters that include a freshman boy for whom the faculty code name is “Spawn of Satan,” to a senior girl whose water breaks during a pop-quiz over THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Through social change and the relentless march of technology, the human element remains constant in the book’s personal, entertaining, and sympathetic portraits of faculty, students, parents, and others. The audience for this book will certainly include school teachers everywhere, teenagers, parents of teens, as well as anyone who appreciates that blend of humor and pathos with which the world of public education is drenched. The drive of the story is the narrator's struggle to become the best teacher he can be. The book is filled with advice for young teachers based upon experience of the writer, advice that will never be found in college methods classes.
Another of John's recent books is Mum's the Word: Secrets of a Family. It is the story of his alcoholic father and the family's efforts to deal with or hide the fact. Though a serious treatment of the horrors of alcoholism, the book also entertains in its descriptions of the father during his best times and the humor of the family's attempts to create a façade for the outside world. All John's books are available as paperbacks and Kindle readers on Amazon, and also as paperbacks at Barnes & Noble. John's sixth book is, Growing Old in America: Notes from a Codger was released on June 15, 2014. John’s most recent book is a novel titled Resisting Gravity, A Ghost Story, published the summer of 2018
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