Wednesday, September 28, 2016
I’ve been aware as I watch the election unfold that I am rooting for Donald Trump. I don’t intellectually embrace him or much of what he is saying, but I know — it’s so clear — that I’m rooting for him. That’s an observable phenomenon, and it’s undeniable.
—-Law prof. Ann Althouse, in a post that compares Hillaty vs Trump to Nurse Ratched vs. McMurphy, or the “Goody 2 Shoes” sister, “getting away with stuff on the sly” vs. the brother who “thinks it’s all bullshit” and who is “not going to be your good little boy.”
And the truth shall make us free.
This admission is very brave of Althouse, a professor in a liberal stronghold, Madison, Wisconsin, and a member of an increasingly politically monolithic profession in which favoring a Republican, much less a villainous fool like Donald Trump, is the equivalent of dire heresy. Her confession is perceptive and illuminating. It explains why this election is so perplexing and conflicting despite Trump’s crippling character deficits. It explains why Hillary “isn’t 50 points ahead.” It is also perhaps the single aspect of the widespread Trump support that taps into something undeniably positive about the United States of America…unlike, for example, the fact that so many voters are ignorant.
I too find myself rooting for Trump while reviling him. It disturbs me, but the response is emotional. People like Hillary Clinton in our lives deserve to face rebellion, and need to be both opposed and exposed. I have spent much of my own life fighting a lot of Hillary Clintons (of both genders).* Seeing their smug, sneaky, cynical and self-satisfied faces covered with pie is one of the great thrills of existence, especially when you have had a hand in steering the course of the pie.
In the comments to her post, one wag compares Trump to Bart Simpson and Hillary to Lisa. We know that Lisa will be a more competent President, but it’s hard not to favor Bart. (Gary Johnson, notes another commenter, is Maggie).
I still will probably end up voting for Hillary as the most responsible choice. Still, it is gratifying that the United States culture, after all these years, still has a healthy reflex attraction to the rebel, the iconoclast, the rock-thrower, the risk-taker and the outsider.
If only that attraction wasn’t focused on such a boorish, untrustworthy fool….
*At an advanced age, working for a major association, I was once dressed down by the head of the association’s foundation because I dared to move a couple of her extra office chairs into the adjoining conference room for a meeting without asking in advance. Not that she needed them, of course: she just felt that I should have to give her 24 hours notice, or something; she wasn’t around when my chair emergency arrived. The next morning, she found her desk chair missing, with a note made up of letters cut out of newspaper that read “WE GOT YOUR CHAIR. DEMANDS TO FOLLOW” accompanied by an envelope containing one of the chair’s castors. She was not amused, but it made my year.