The good, the bad and the ugly of Trump

Sept. 28, 2015

Kyle Guthrie
[email protected]

“Be careful what you wish for.”

When I think about Donald Trump as a serious contender for the office of president of the United States, this age-old adage comes to mind.

I need to mention that I don’t really have an allegiance to any political party. I consider myself a moderate constitutionalist, and I despise the Democratic Party just as much as the Republican Party.

Believe me when I say I thought it was just as much a joke as the rest of the world when I heard Trump was running.

But then his campaign began picking up steam, and as he became a serious contender for the Republican ticket, the joke stopped being funny really quick.

On paper, Trump is strangely everything I want in a candidate. He didn’t have to cater to special interest groups for his campaign, he spoke his mind honestly and didn’t play the politically correct game that so many Americans are sick of, and he seems to want to put the wellbeing of disabled veterans in the forefront.

But with all of this considered, did it have to be THIS guy?

As much as I love the idea of Trump not playing the politically correct game, there’s a big difference between not being politically correct and just being a condescending jerk.

And if the last GOP debates are anything to go by, he doesn’t have a very good concept of many issues.

When faced with a question concerning Iran’s special forces unit, the Qud’s, he didn’t know the difference between them and Kurds. When asked questions that he doesn’t feel comfortable answering, he resorts to his default answers of illegals being the problem, Obama being a Muslim and so on.

But I guess we had better get used to this rhetoric, because I have a strong feeling he’s going to be our next president.

This prediction has nothing to do with his qualifications or the demographics of the coming election, but with one undeniable fact about American politics and citizens.

Americans are utterly obsessed with celebrity culture. I believe this is one of the biggest contributing factors in mass shootings, because the shooters know their name will be splattered in headlines for months after.

Hell, after the Boston bombing, Rolling Stone magazine ran what can only be called a glamour shot of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, as if he was a rock star.

This same tactic goes on in American politics. People love the idea of seeing a celebrity in a political office, and you would be hard pressed to name a serious celebrity candidate who ran for office and didn’t win.

Obama’s campaign knew this, and they played on it brilliantly by making Obama a celebrity even before he announced his candidacy by throwing him on countless TV interviews, magazine covers and news articles.

Past celebrity candidates such as Eastwood, Schwarzenegger, Reagan and Franken have done well in their elected office, but they still had the common sense to use tact and restraint, a trait Trump seems to utterly lack.

There are a few good things to come out of Trump’s campaign, regardless of whether or not he wins.

The biggest benefit seems to be that constituents and candidates are both waking up to the fact that everyone is sick of the political correctness game. Every single attack made against him following a statement (and his subsequent refusals to apologize) hasn’t slowed his campaign one bit.

I’m not sure what’s going to come from this election, but if numbers and predictions are anything to be believed, this next year is certainly going to be interesting.