I keep wondering what Donald Trump's big attraction is. An obvious part is his vocabulary. He repeats favorite words and phrases. "Fantastic. Great. Incredible. Awesome. Smash. Amazing. Tremendous. Beat. Unbelievable. Terrific. I wanna tell you. Gonna [fill in blank]. Something very special. Like you wouldn't believe." This is puff language, the language of the huckster, booster and carnival barker...how Trump closes the deal. It's cotton candy language: very sweet but mostly air.
You don't need to be terribly intelligent to be a huckster and booster. But you do need to know how to work a con, to know your audience and to keep your audience's focus on the beneficence of the deal. You need to place dramatic and familiar images in your messages, words about walls, invasions, weaklings, whores and rapists. You need to speak of the easiness and quickness of assurance and satisfaction, emphasizing the audience's plight or need. And repetition is the mode.
Trump is working a very well established American tradition that's been with us since Capt. John Smith lured impoverished and victimized Europeans to settle North America, since Horace Greeley boosted the settlement of the West by prompting recent young immigrants and down-and-out tenement dwellers to move to the promise of Manifest Destiny, providing the railroads with homesteaders. And, finally, perhaps the greatest huckster/booster of them all, P.T. Barnum, the original ring master, who proved you can count on needy suckers being born every minute.
Barnum provided major attractions for his new Americans—opportunities to experience the excitement of the newness and the thrilling entertainment of The Circus, a state of mind as well as the thing itself. He opened his American Museum in 1842 in lower Manhattan and stuffed it with unimaginables, like "dioramas, panoramas, 'cosmoramas,' scientific instruments, modern appliances, a flea circus, a loom run by a dog, the trunk of a tree under which Jesus’ disciples sat...Ned the learned seal, the Feejee Mermaid (a mummified monkey’s torso with a fish’s tail)...Chang and Eng the Siamese twins" and other such wonders. (Wikipedia, Barnum's American Museum)
They were all the wonder of the unknown. They perfectly represent the tradition Trump is working these days. His vocabulary screams of grandeur, the wide can-do, inclusive spectrum of making America great again—exactly, again, the way it was in the heady days of the mid- and late-1800s. No vision could be farther from what American life confronts every minute of every day in this 21st century. The whole thing is the thrill, excitement and warm feeling of nostalgia—it is the promise of The Circus, its side shows, daredevils and exotic wonders. And like The Circus it leaves the emptiness after the show is over, the void that is the essence of cotton candy. Pundits keep wondering why so many people keep showing up at Trump rallies and town halls. The "supporters" keep coming because they want to experience the spectacle again, to be filled with the wonder of grandeur, the uplift of empty language and stagey gestures. They want Trump's "reality" TV spectacle to replace the actuality of their lives.
At the American Museum's peak of popularity, it attracted "as many as 15,000 visitors a day. Some 38 million customers paid the 25 cents admission to attend the museum between 1841 and 1865. The total population of the United States in 1860 was under 32 million."(cf. Wikipedia) Barnum eventually had to find a way to keep people moving to the next exhibit. He decided to post a sign toward the end, promising "This way to the egress!" He knew most of his customers would think it would lead them to the next wonder. In fact, it led to a doorway, which opened on the clutter, noise and manure of lower Broadway.
Trump continues to bark about the numbers he attracts. And he likewise has devised a plan to keep them moving, promising the next wonder, while knowing that he has no idea what will be on the other side of the doorway that opens to the actuality the numbers will need to face. Caring only about the gross numbers, Trump will continue triggering the thrills until the numbers dwindle at which time he will move on to another show, another deal.
You don't need to be terribly intelligent to be a huckster and booster. But you do need to know how to work a con, to know your audience and to keep your audience's focus on the beneficence of the deal. You need to place dramatic and familiar images in your messages, words about walls, invasions, weaklings, whores and rapists. You need to speak of the easiness and quickness of assurance and satisfaction, emphasizing the audience's plight or need. And repetition is the mode.
Trump is working a very well established American tradition that's been with us since Capt. John Smith lured impoverished and victimized Europeans to settle North America, since Horace Greeley boosted the settlement of the West by prompting recent young immigrants and down-and-out tenement dwellers to move to the promise of Manifest Destiny, providing the railroads with homesteaders. And, finally, perhaps the greatest huckster/booster of them all, P.T. Barnum, the original ring master, who proved you can count on needy suckers being born every minute.
Barnum provided major attractions for his new Americans—opportunities to experience the excitement of the newness and the thrilling entertainment of The Circus, a state of mind as well as the thing itself. He opened his American Museum in 1842 in lower Manhattan and stuffed it with unimaginables, like "dioramas, panoramas, 'cosmoramas,' scientific instruments, modern appliances, a flea circus, a loom run by a dog, the trunk of a tree under which Jesus’ disciples sat...Ned the learned seal, the Feejee Mermaid (a mummified monkey’s torso with a fish’s tail)...Chang and Eng the Siamese twins" and other such wonders. (Wikipedia, Barnum's American Museum)
They were all the wonder of the unknown. They perfectly represent the tradition Trump is working these days. His vocabulary screams of grandeur, the wide can-do, inclusive spectrum of making America great again—exactly, again, the way it was in the heady days of the mid- and late-1800s. No vision could be farther from what American life confronts every minute of every day in this 21st century. The whole thing is the thrill, excitement and warm feeling of nostalgia—it is the promise of The Circus, its side shows, daredevils and exotic wonders. And like The Circus it leaves the emptiness after the show is over, the void that is the essence of cotton candy. Pundits keep wondering why so many people keep showing up at Trump rallies and town halls. The "supporters" keep coming because they want to experience the spectacle again, to be filled with the wonder of grandeur, the uplift of empty language and stagey gestures. They want Trump's "reality" TV spectacle to replace the actuality of their lives.
At the American Museum's peak of popularity, it attracted "as many as 15,000 visitors a day. Some 38 million customers paid the 25 cents admission to attend the museum between 1841 and 1865. The total population of the United States in 1860 was under 32 million."(cf. Wikipedia) Barnum eventually had to find a way to keep people moving to the next exhibit. He decided to post a sign toward the end, promising "This way to the egress!" He knew most of his customers would think it would lead them to the next wonder. In fact, it led to a doorway, which opened on the clutter, noise and manure of lower Broadway.
Trump continues to bark about the numbers he attracts. And he likewise has devised a plan to keep them moving, promising the next wonder, while knowing that he has no idea what will be on the other side of the doorway that opens to the actuality the numbers will need to face. Caring only about the gross numbers, Trump will continue triggering the thrills until the numbers dwindle at which time he will move on to another show, another deal.
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