[John] Kerry has watched this transition take place in the US since the mid-1990s, from Newt Gingrich to the Tea Party to the Freedom Caucus. “And now you just have Trumpism, which has no relationship to any of the stuff preceding except the anger. It taps into the anger.” The upcoming election is a chance to “break the fever”, he feels. “People want to get on with their lives. People want to solve real problems. People want to see a future, and they’ve learned that the flim-flam, con-artist, orange menace is not providing that.
“My hope is that November the third is going to produce a resounding rejection of what has been going on, and a quick resurgence, even a release of energy of creativity, that’s going to be quite remarkable. And this is where the narrative is so important. People are now feeling the paucity of what has happened, the diminishment of the American Dream. It’s not gone, there are a lot of dreamers still, but it has been tarnished.”
This statement encapsulates well the psychosis I continually see in US media: Trump has no relationship to the American politics of the preceding decades. November 3 will produce a resurgence that will be remarkable. The American Dream is not gone, just tarnished.
