In October 2016, I attended a Trump rally in Naples, Florida. I was and am not a Trump fan, I vote Democrat all the way, but I was curious to see what was so compelling about this cartoonish figure. I figured this was my last opportunity to see him in this way. There was no chance he’d win the presidential election the following month. As I recall, the rally was held in a field. As I walked toward the gathering crowd, an older white man looked at me and said: “Isn’t this great?” Out front, a Black man was selling Trump-themed T-shirts. Eventually, the president-who-surely-wouldn’t-be made a dramatic arrival in a helicopter. Most of the attendees, largely white, hooted in excitement. Finally, Trump made his way to the stage. He was taller than I expected, and while I find his politics utterly repellent, I could see there was something compelling about him. His strongman delivery offered comfort to people who perceived themselves as weak and under threat and wanted to protect their way of life, a way of life based on the exploitation of others and the devaluation of people of color. They didn’t think of themselves as white supremacists, but they were. Trump appealed to their closeted desires: for a man in a blue suit wearing an invisible Klu Klux Klan robe to restore their place in the world, one in which anyone who wasn’t white had no right to exist, to be heard, to vote. At a certain point, the attendees started chanting: “Lock her up!” The only thing more apparent than their racism was their misogyny. Eventually, I left. It was a weird window into an awful world, but surely it wouldn’t lead to a presidency. Yet, here we are. Four years later, the country has been turned topsy-turvy, by a sociopath. Here’s hoping for an empath as our next president.
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