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Christie Blatchford: In a Bizarro World kind of way, I think I actually wanted Donald Trump to win
Christie Blatchford | November 9, 2016 4:54 PM ET
A Donald Trump supporter holds a sign aloft at an election night rally at the New York Hilton on Nov. 8, 2016.
Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesA Donald Trump supporter holds a sign aloft at an election night rally at the New York Hilton on Nov. 8, 2016.
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In the words of the great American singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman in New Beginning, “The whole world’s broke and it ain’t worth fixing, It’s time to start all over …”
Is that what the election was all about then, blowing up the works to see what might emerge from the ashes?
It has that vaguely apocalyptic feel, familiar enough in the land of the late Rob Ford, another man who defied his own personality and the odds to become that oxymoron, the wealthy one-percenter populist.
Blowing up a broken system seems to me a better explanation than some of the others being offered up on Tuesday night.
Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images
Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images President-elect
Donald Trump shakes hands with his vice-president, Mike Pence, while flanked by family members election night at the New York Hilton Nov. 9, 2016.
It quickly became clear that against all the best advice from the best people (from Bruce Springsteen on down), contrary to almost all the pollsters and pundits and despite his nakedly flawed own self, Donald Trump had somehow done it.
Certainly, there are uncomfortable elements to his shocking win — what my favourite CNN pundit, Van Jones, Tuesday night called a “whitelash” and the appeal to those who would turn the clock back to a time when white people and black better knew their places.
But Trump didn’t create the divided America. As befits a self-promoting entrepreneur, he simply took advantage of it.
I would like to report that I am as horrified by the spectre of Trump-as-president-elect as I was by the spectacle of Trump-the-candidate, but it wouldn’t be true. I have too much natural affinity for the underdog for that, and maybe too much regard for the will of the people.
Or perhaps I’ve covered too many criminal trials, where you learn pretty quickly that the system isn’t good only when it goes the way you think it should.
There’s something fundamentally useful about the process of 12 people thinking things through in their jury room and coming to a decision. I may not always agree with the verdict, but I sure as hell appreciate the process, and I’ve far more faith in the jurors than I do in the administrators — by which I mean the judge and lawyers.
Jack Dempsey/AP
Jack Dempsey/APSupporters cheer while watching president-elect Donald Trump's acceptance speech on television at an election night party Nov. 8, 2016, in Greenwood Village, Colo.
I was plenty repelled, God knows
I was plenty repelled by candidate Trump, God knows.
But I am mostly immune to the celebrity culture in which we all live, don’t watch the sort of TV show that made him a household name, am never drawn to those who are famous, let alone famous for simply being famous.
That was a big part of what Trump had going for him — the shallow celebrity that in most other ages might have been ridiculed.
The other big part was his record as a businessman, and though what I know about the world of business could fit on the head of a pin, I know enough to know his is at least a spotty and controversial record. The Trump “brand” is too over-the-top, nouveau riche Richie Rich for my taste.
Lee Jin-man/AP
Lee Jin-man/APA woman walks by posters of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump at an election watch event hosted by the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea, Nov. 9, 2016.
But he understood not just reality television but also social media, and the appeal of broad-strokes media, like Twitter, better than anyone else. As Van Jones said, where Franklin Roosevelt mastered radio with his fireside chats and Ronald Reagan TV, Trump mastered social media, where to be the villain, or the buffoon, is not a bad thing, so long as you have the most followers.
I loathed much of what Trump said during the long campaign and virtually all his alleged ideas. He struck me from the get-go as a garish cartoon figure.
His comments about women in the notorious 2004 Billy Bush video, wherein he said when you’re “a star” like him, you can do anything, everything, to women, including “Grab them by the p—y”, were, as Trump once put it about himself in another context, “braggadocious” and even pathetic.
Etc., etc.
Related
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Yankee stay home? Clinton-loving Canadians in no mood to help Trump-averse Americans move here
Kelly McParland: Donald Trump victory launches second American revolution
So I went into election night believing I was indeed with her, as an early slogan of Hillary Clinton’s had it.
I never loved her.
And her easy dismissal, way back in September, of half of Trump’s supporters as falling into what she called “the basket of deplorables” — people who are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and Islamaphobic — was at least as disgraceful as Trump’s careless appeals to those instincts in his base.
Clinton tried to walk the line back, but her disdain for suffering Americans was palpable at that moment, and how they must have felt it.
Yet I imagined I thought she was still the better candidate. And I was steeped in the dogma that he had “a narrow path” to electoral victory, while she did not.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
Alex Wong/Getty ImagesA group of Trump supporters celebrate in front of the White House after midnight on Nov. 9, 2016.
To my surprise and with some horror, I found myself instead pulling for a Trump win, if not for him precisely, then for all those who feel left out of their own government and country and the global economy — all those in the decimated Rust Belt and in the sad hollowed-out cities, those with the crummy jobs, those who are still afraid to see a doctor because of the cost, those whose dreams have been diminished and who have lost so much.
It’s a bizarre time, or as an episode of the old Seinfeld show put it in one episode, a Bizarro World, where everything you thought you knew is turned on its ear.
Early this morning, for instance, there was one presidential candidate, making a conciliatory and pretty gracious victory speech. That was Trump. And there was the other, unable to summon the grace and the courage to make a concession speech. That was Hillary Clinton.
Maybe the people didn’t get it so wrong.
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/christie-blatchford-in-a-bizarro-world-kind-of-way-i-think-i-actually-wanted-trump-to-win
Christie Blatchford | November 9, 2016 4:54 PM ET
A Donald Trump supporter holds a sign aloft at an election night rally at the New York Hilton on Nov. 8, 2016.
Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesA Donald Trump supporter holds a sign aloft at an election night rally at the New York Hilton on Nov. 8, 2016.
Twitter Google+ Reddit Email Typo? More
In the words of the great American singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman in New Beginning, “The whole world’s broke and it ain’t worth fixing, It’s time to start all over …”
Is that what the election was all about then, blowing up the works to see what might emerge from the ashes?
It has that vaguely apocalyptic feel, familiar enough in the land of the late Rob Ford, another man who defied his own personality and the odds to become that oxymoron, the wealthy one-percenter populist.
Blowing up a broken system seems to me a better explanation than some of the others being offered up on Tuesday night.
Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images
Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images President-elect
Donald Trump shakes hands with his vice-president, Mike Pence, while flanked by family members election night at the New York Hilton Nov. 9, 2016.
It quickly became clear that against all the best advice from the best people (from Bruce Springsteen on down), contrary to almost all the pollsters and pundits and despite his nakedly flawed own self, Donald Trump had somehow done it.
Certainly, there are uncomfortable elements to his shocking win — what my favourite CNN pundit, Van Jones, Tuesday night called a “whitelash” and the appeal to those who would turn the clock back to a time when white people and black better knew their places.
But Trump didn’t create the divided America. As befits a self-promoting entrepreneur, he simply took advantage of it.
I would like to report that I am as horrified by the spectre of Trump-as-president-elect as I was by the spectacle of Trump-the-candidate, but it wouldn’t be true. I have too much natural affinity for the underdog for that, and maybe too much regard for the will of the people.
Or perhaps I’ve covered too many criminal trials, where you learn pretty quickly that the system isn’t good only when it goes the way you think it should.
There’s something fundamentally useful about the process of 12 people thinking things through in their jury room and coming to a decision. I may not always agree with the verdict, but I sure as hell appreciate the process, and I’ve far more faith in the jurors than I do in the administrators — by which I mean the judge and lawyers.
Jack Dempsey/AP
Jack Dempsey/APSupporters cheer while watching president-elect Donald Trump's acceptance speech on television at an election night party Nov. 8, 2016, in Greenwood Village, Colo.
I was plenty repelled, God knows
I was plenty repelled by candidate Trump, God knows.
But I am mostly immune to the celebrity culture in which we all live, don’t watch the sort of TV show that made him a household name, am never drawn to those who are famous, let alone famous for simply being famous.
That was a big part of what Trump had going for him — the shallow celebrity that in most other ages might have been ridiculed.
The other big part was his record as a businessman, and though what I know about the world of business could fit on the head of a pin, I know enough to know his is at least a spotty and controversial record. The Trump “brand” is too over-the-top, nouveau riche Richie Rich for my taste.
Lee Jin-man/AP
Lee Jin-man/APA woman walks by posters of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump at an election watch event hosted by the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea, Nov. 9, 2016.
But he understood not just reality television but also social media, and the appeal of broad-strokes media, like Twitter, better than anyone else. As Van Jones said, where Franklin Roosevelt mastered radio with his fireside chats and Ronald Reagan TV, Trump mastered social media, where to be the villain, or the buffoon, is not a bad thing, so long as you have the most followers.
I loathed much of what Trump said during the long campaign and virtually all his alleged ideas. He struck me from the get-go as a garish cartoon figure.
His comments about women in the notorious 2004 Billy Bush video, wherein he said when you’re “a star” like him, you can do anything, everything, to women, including “Grab them by the p—y”, were, as Trump once put it about himself in another context, “braggadocious” and even pathetic.
Etc., etc.
Related
Edit post John Ivison: Inexplicable Trump victory caught Trudeau Liberals off guard, but Canadians must accept it
Yankee stay home? Clinton-loving Canadians in no mood to help Trump-averse Americans move here
Kelly McParland: Donald Trump victory launches second American revolution
So I went into election night believing I was indeed with her, as an early slogan of Hillary Clinton’s had it.
I never loved her.
And her easy dismissal, way back in September, of half of Trump’s supporters as falling into what she called “the basket of deplorables” — people who are racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and Islamaphobic — was at least as disgraceful as Trump’s careless appeals to those instincts in his base.
Clinton tried to walk the line back, but her disdain for suffering Americans was palpable at that moment, and how they must have felt it.
Yet I imagined I thought she was still the better candidate. And I was steeped in the dogma that he had “a narrow path” to electoral victory, while she did not.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
Alex Wong/Getty ImagesA group of Trump supporters celebrate in front of the White House after midnight on Nov. 9, 2016.
To my surprise and with some horror, I found myself instead pulling for a Trump win, if not for him precisely, then for all those who feel left out of their own government and country and the global economy — all those in the decimated Rust Belt and in the sad hollowed-out cities, those with the crummy jobs, those who are still afraid to see a doctor because of the cost, those whose dreams have been diminished and who have lost so much.
It’s a bizarre time, or as an episode of the old Seinfeld show put it in one episode, a Bizarro World, where everything you thought you knew is turned on its ear.
Early this morning, for instance, there was one presidential candidate, making a conciliatory and pretty gracious victory speech. That was Trump. And there was the other, unable to summon the grace and the courage to make a concession speech. That was Hillary Clinton.
Maybe the people didn’t get it so wrong.
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/christie-blatchford-in-a-bizarro-world-kind-of-way-i-think-i-actually-wanted-trump-to-win
