Let’s celebrate everything Donald Trump has given America

I come today to praise Donald Trump, not to bury him. With less than a month to go until Election Day, and with an extra-large mug of tea by my side, I’d like to take this moment to celebrate the former president and all he brought to the country.

Nine years ago, most of the nation laughed at the brassy businessman as he descended his golden escalator to announce his candidacy for president of the United States in front of a crowd of paid extras. We laughed because Donald Trump has always been a ridiculous figure. Those of us who grew up in the New York area have long been accustomed to the swaggering real estate developer talking his way in front of the cameras, pontificating about the love lives of celebrities, celebrating his own sexual conquests, bankrupting several companies, and generally making a buffoon of himself.

Nobody’s laughing now.

For better or for worse, Donald Trump gets all the credit for reshaping the American political landscape. Trump’s greatest achievement is not the presidency. On the contrary, it is saving an entire nation. Gone forever is the illusion of political friendliness and decorum. Although Mike Judge predicted it and Sarah Palin sounded the alarm, it was Donald Trump who ushered in the WWE era of American political life.

I don’t just mean that political flamboyance, always a minor part of American life, has now become so de rigeur on both sides of the aisle — for every Lauren Boebert, there’s a Jasmine Crockett — I mean that Trump has shone a light on the hypocrisy, absurdity, and scripted nature of the entire American political landscape.

The conventional wisdom used to be that politicians needed a certain decorum. Gravitas was the word most often used to refer to that particular class of statesmen who might one day occupy the Oval. Trump destroyed all that, realizing that the arsenal of new media outlets and options required a showman. Someone who could create sound bites at will could control the airwaves and chat rooms of an entire nation.

Trump was the first politician to fully realize that in the attention economy the currency of the kingdom is of course attention. The more of it, the better. Check out how Kim Kardashian turned a sex tape into a billion-dollar Hollywood empire. Trump did the same for Washington DC. Alone among politicians, Trump has turned a scandal into an asset. All the way back in 2016, when he correctly predicted that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without losing a single supporter, the chattering class didn’t understand what he meant. Shoot someone? Get rid of it? Hell yes. As long as you never apologize and never stop feeding the base.

Marco Bello/FilePhoto/Reuters

Democrats pat ourselves on the back and say, “Not us.” Well, I’m not so sure. For proof, we need look no further back than Bill Clinton, whose own bad behavior never reached Trump’s level, but whose own lies and peccadilloes foretold the Don. I’m old enough to remember a line of embarrassed Democrats standing in front of the press to defend a man who had betrayed the nation’s trust as well as an intern. So let us not get too high and mighty with our own holiness.

Trump has also exposed and turned on its head the symbiotic and parasitic relationship between the political class and the traditional media class. While Fox News was the first to create an “opposition” against the so-called mainstream media, it was Trump who blew up American journalism.

By refusing to play the game as it has been played for decades, Trump has and continues to confuse the practice of journalism. “Alternative facts” are not only commonplace now, they are the basis for a false reality in which millions upon millions of Americans live. Gaslight has become the only light with which these people can see.

Trump understood that the media could turn against itself. When he stuck his finger in the eyes of the journalists watching him, he understood that they couldn’t poke back without compromising their “objectivity.” The nation watched a powerless media sputter in its responses and felt vindicated.

How did the media do that? nice when someone talks to you themas so many felt she was it spoken to? The more outrageous Trump’s statements, the more his people absorbed them. Not because they necessarily agreed with everything he said and said, but because saying it is a testament to his own virtue.

Are they Real eating cats and dogs in Springfield? What difference does it make as long as it activates the libs?

Cheney Orr/Reuters

The outrage caused by his casual racism, misogyny, xenophobia and threats of violence is like food for these people. “F–k your feelings,” is their battle cry. Does this mean that his supporters actually have no empathy? I don’t think so. Talk to them one-on-one and they’re generally great people. What they share is a sense of victimhood and outrage, fueled by the same media they turn to for solutions. Donald Trump comes in and promises that he alone can solve the problem, while at the same time doing everything he can to fuel those feelings of victimhood and discontent.

It’s brilliant.

The result is clear. Distrust. Paranoia. Americans are scratching at the open wounds of our own history. Americans are looking for the Red Bull rush that comes from scapegoating those most likely to be factual victims of a system that has historically isolated the rich, white and powerful and, despite their fears, continues to do so. Donald Trump certainly didn’t invent the scapegoat, but he is its most successful propagator since Joseph McCarthy. Is there anyone in our history who has been better at turning Americans against ourselves for the purpose of personal enrichment? None come to mind.

There is still a month. One more month before we can get rid of Donald Trump as the most powerful political force in the country. Another month before we at least have a chance to turn the page on this deeply ugly chapter in our history. I don’t think the MAGA movement will go away when Trump finally, mercifully, rides that golden escalator to his penthouse in the sky, but I think we at least have a chance to stitch together something like an uneasy truce.

In the long term, this ceasefire can be built upon. But the old rules are gone. Trump destroyed them. He brought American nativism to its ugliest, spawning an army of idiots, crooks, swindlers, and—most ominously—students. Regardless of how this election ends, we will be dealing with the Trump effect for decades to come. He deserves his place in history.