A Con For The Ages

Paul Waldman writes that Donald Trump is the Whiner in Chief:

Trump weaves a narrative of constant victimhood, telling his supporters not only that they are besieged and brutalized, but also that no one is more a victim than him. There has surely never been a president who spent so much time complaining — the media aren’t good enough to me, I’m not getting the credit I deserve, the Democrats don’t give me due process, my toilet isn’t powerful enough, it’s unfair, it’s unfair, it’s unfair.

The latest -- and most absurd -- example of Trump's  whining occurred this week when he complained that the CBC had cut out his seven second cameo in Home Alone 2:

The president’s favorite TV show, the festival of nincompoopery that is “Fox & Friends,” ran a segment Thursday expressing outrage over the fact that the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. cut out Trump’s seven-second cameo in the 1992 film “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” for broadcast, a crime plainly worthy of extended discussion on national television. The inevitable response came in condemning tweets from both the president and his firstborn son to their millions of followers, delivering the day’s instruction on what to be angry about.

CNN’s Daniel Dale, who is both an indefatigable fact-checker and openly Canadian, explained that the real story is that starting in 2014, the CBC cut eight minutes out of the two-hour movie to make room for commercials, including many other scenes besides Trump’s cameo. But no matter: It’s just one more example of how snooty, elitist poutine-sucking foreigners treat Trump so terribly unfairly. His ability to take offense, and his devotees’ ability to be offended on his behalf, is without limit.

But, as absurd as the whole affair was, it illustrated why such a significant number of Americans support Trump. He tells them they have been wronged -- just like him:

To be clear, many of those people have genuine reason to feel aggrieved (not the billionaires, of course). The system has indeed failed people whose communities were devastated by the loss of manufacturing jobs and the decline of labor unions. When conservative Christians lament that modern society is hostile to many of their values, they’re right.

If you’re puzzled about why the former continue to support Trump despite the fact that he seeks to make their economic lives worse by enhancing the power of economic elites, or why the latter continue to support him despite his personal and policy immorality, this is part of the answer. Trump might spin ludicrous fantasies for them of how he’ll turn their world into a paradise, but he also encourages them to cultivate their sense of victimhood.

The lie behind it all, of course, is that Trump is no victim:

Though he may have been privileged from the moment of his birth, Trump understands that sense of loss well, and organized his presidential bid around it. When he said he’d build a wall and make Mexico pay for it, he was writing a story of the white man’s dignity regained through humiliation and domination of the foreign Other.

His failure to deliver on that promise (and many others) makes the task of keeping his supporters angry and aggrieved all the more urgent. So make no mistake: Amidst what is sure to be a campaign of uncommon, perhaps unprecedented brutality directed at his Democratic opponent, Trump will never stop whining, all the way to next November.

It's a Con For The Ages.

Image: Clean Technica