Trump’s voters seem strangely disconnected from the candidate himself. Here is a man who dodged the draft, called POWs cowards, and seems to have pocketed 3 million dollars of the funds he raised for veterans, yet he has many veterans who support him. He bragged about cheating on his wives, reportedly raped his first wife, and  is a noted misogynist, yet has millions of evangelicals are voting for him.  A gifted con artist; he has settled court cases with cheated investors, been caught in numerous lies, has changed positions with regularity, and even now in court defending his scam called Trump University, but still his followers trust him implicitly. He refused to condemn the KKK one day, then does so the next while his son went on a White Supremacist radio show to  assure the listeners he is with them.  Nonetheless, he has garnered a sizable number of minority voters.

Even the very basis for which many have flocked to his cause is fundamentally flawed. His followers quiver in excitement as he rants against immigration, espouse his anti-Washington credentials, and believe him impervious to Wall Street corruption. Meanwhile, they scoff at those who point to his long history of hiring illegal workers. Totally ignoring that as late as 2013, when he met with a group of border jumper activist, that he bragged about the illegals that maintained his golf courses and told them he would support DACA (AKA The Dream Act). As far as Washington, he has been an insider for 40 years. He gave tons to Democrats and a few Rinos so, as he put, “when I called they’d be there for me.” Even his connections to Wall Street are incontrovertible. BY his own calculations, he owes his soul to the big banks to the tune at least 500 million dollars, not to mention he supported the bank bailouts and Tarp too. To his faithful minions, none of this matters. He will make America Great again they say, as if this sound bite were words from God.

A man who indulges in at least 5 of the deadly sins, such a presidential candidate is is unique in American history. Most recently, his propensity to incite violence has come to the forefront. He once lamented that those disrupting his rallies were not being carried out on stretchers, and wished he could punch them in the face. Not surprising, one of his followers later did just that.

It was only a matter of time before the Trump Shirt army and violence prone leftest would clash. The violent antics of the Trump shirts against Black Lives Matter activists made the melee in Chicago predictable, indeed inevitable. Donald Trump has said the violence, which he has been passively encouraging, helps him get votes. Maybe someone should ask if he still feels that way? Given his fleeting connections with the Mob and that he once hired a company known for its thuggery to harass tenants in his apartments, one can assume this fascination with brute force is nothing new.

All of this puts his comments on foreign affairs come in clearer focus. He has said he would target families of terrorist, and talked with admiration about “strong men” like Vladimir Putin. He believes the Chinese almost blew it at Tiananmen Square before finally getting it right (IE: rolling over protesters, whom he calls rioters, with tanks). Recently he went on Twitter to exclaim “Strong men have sound ideas and the force to make these ideas effective.” A Mellon quote that takes on sinister connotations in the present context.

Trump studied Hitlers speeches, and has said he is acquainted with Mussolini as well. This does not mean Trump is Hitler (as some have claimed) or even Mussolini; he does not share their ideologically driven agendas. What he wants is to emulate their climb to power and have their once godlike status. It is in this light that his demands for oaths of allegiance, passive encouragement of violence, and threats to other campaigns must be seen.

With no ideological baggage, and a vow to be flexible, Trump remains a political enigma. Nonetheless, his cult like following, propensity for violence, problematic history, naive economic policies, simplistic worldview, and massive ego do paint a picture of what a Trump presidency would look like. Given this, it is breath taking that Rush Limbaugh would say that a Trump Presidency has more upsides than down. He is of course not alone, there is a cadre of conservatives who have sold their souls for his empty promises (and who knows what else). The truth is, Trump would be a disaster, a disaster that would taint the whole conservative movement for generations. Given this, a vote for Trump is a vote to extinguish the last best hope of saving America. In short, electing Trump is akin to committing national suicide.

“The Conservative Mind”

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