13 Things to Consider About Donald Trump Right Now

From Esquire

Last night, after Trump won Indiana-effectively making him the Republican Party nominee for president-experts took to the airwaves and Twitter to declare that there's nothing to worry about here, Trump is 10 points behind Clinton, there is no way he can win. These are the same experts who, over the last several months, have calmly explained that he'd drop out before it began, that he wouldn't win a primary, that he had a ceiling.

This is so much worse than most people understand. Those people who say Trump's a 'psychopath'? They're underestimating the problem. Here's why.

1. No candidate like Trump has ever gotten nearly this far. George Wallace: A regional candidate who didn't come close. Barry Goldwater? More of a movement man than a spawner of a movement. Trump is a spawner of movements. I don't mean that he's a leader. I mean that his curdled but relentless imagination expands beyond his own being. Put aside the punditry on "uncharted territory" in terms of outsider candidates. We're in uncharted territory of the American Right.

2. Pundits say Trumpism is motivated by anger. If only. Movements driven by singular emotions burn fast and are easily co-opted. Trumpism is simultaneously loud, obvious, and emotionally complex. It's like a Quentin Tarantino movie without the happy ending.

3. It may not have an ending. If the GOP establishment had managed to steal the nomination from Trump, there would have been violence in Cleveland as facts, for once, roughly aligned with the paranoia of the hard right. Cleveland might be calmer now. But if Hillary beats Trump, the same. And if Hillary doesn't beat Trump...

4. Hillary might not beat Trump. There are all sorts of political analyses about why. Forget those. Consider only the openness of our fate: Hillary might not beat Trump.

His curdled but relentless imagination expands beyond his own being.

5. Because beyond Trump's lies, Trumpism is fueled by a set of truths. American racism is a truth. In Trump's hands it isn't ideological, it's emotional; it's fluid, it ebbs and flows according to region and moment and opportunity. It's clever. And the misogyny that's supposed to make Trump ineligible for the national stage? That misogyny built the national stage. Then there's class. Class is real, but since the political elites of both parties mostly pretend it's not, it's Trump's for the taking. Trump is taking.

6. Trump takes. "My whole life, I've been greedy, greedy, greedy," he says. "Now I want to be greedy for the United States." Ignore the preposition, who the greed is allegedly "for"; keep your eyes on the verb: Trump takes. It's what he does. Takes what? It doesn't matter; what matters is the action.

7. But Hillary probably will beat Trump. So, really, it's all ok, to the extent that Hillary is, regardless of what you think of her, definitely not an apocalyptic comb-over. Which reminds me: That hair, it's one of Trump's genius moves. That's right, suckers: Keep laughing at the hair.

8. And then Hillary will be president, and Trump will sulk away and he won't be able to take much of anything. Only, remember how he was going to be greedy for America? He was going to take so much! And if he doesn't take it-if those who believed it would be taken for them do not receive it- then some among them will take whatever they can.

Trump takes. It's what he does. Takes what? It doesn't matter; what matters is the action.

9. There's so little that Trump's followers can actually take. They can't take back factories or steel mills, they can't take back a regressive racial order. The most common sentiment I heard at Trump rallies is that he will "bring the races together." They can't even take reality. What they can take is a metaphor.

10. It's the metaphor that Trump has given them. Yes, given: He takes but he gives. That's the miracle, for the believers, of Trumpism. The contradiction is the metaphor: despair as redemption, violence as a kind of inner peace, chaos as a resolution of that which is experienced as-and that which, for many, is-suffering.

11. This will hurt them more than it will hurt us.

12. But it will hurt us. A lot.

13. This, I think, is the story Trump has begun telling. Wallace couldn't do it. Goldwater couldn't do it. The Kochs couldn't do it. But Trump? Those little hands are strong. He opened the book that couldn't be opened. And now we're on the first page.