Which is not to say that Trump isn’t monstrous because beyond doubt he is a monstrous human being, vain, greedy, slothful, and utterly lacking in nay compassion or empathy he fully fits the bill but the real monster is the one he claimed, the Republican Voter Base.
When LBJ arm-twisted, cajoled, and pushed through landmark civil rights legislation he is have said to have commented that the Democrats had lost the south for a generation. At the time the Democratic Party had two major social elements, the northern liberal wing and the southern segregationists. This split had been a major factor in Democratic politics for decades with progressive goals being achieved by continuing to give tacit approval by way of inaction to the racist policies employed in primarily southern states. LBJ ruptured this agreement and starting in 1968 with Nixon’s Southern Strategy the GOP made plays for the disaffected racists now soured on the Democratic Party. After a brief reversal with the election of Jimmy Carter the transformation was completed with the ‘Reagan Democrats’ of the 1980 and 1984 elections.
With subtle and sometimes not so subtle messaging the GOP whistled to this new fragment of its electorate with messages that provoked anger and fear because those are far more powerful motivators than policy. As the Democratic Party pushed to open society to more and more persons who had been pushed to the fringes with drives for equality and rights and numerous fronts the GOP responded by enraging this element more and more. Abortion, gays, and other ‘social’ issues which when you strip is all away always come back to individuals living their own lives, were the wedge issues to enrage the base and turn them out to vote. After the vote? The issues could be forgotten save for red-meat speeches to re-energize them for funds and marches.
The problem with anger as a motivator is that like a drug people develop tolerances. What was enraging last election is merely annoying this one and next cycle will be purely background. The doses have to become larger and more intense, distorted truth no longer works and manufactures lies and less coded speech are required to fuel the fury. This has the side-effect of driving away more moderate voices and voters but if you gain more than you lose then you still win and you control the mob, right?
You control until someone comes along willing to feed them hatred less diluted than your own. Trump rode down that escalator in 2015 and took control of a mob that had been decades in the making and with its fury fully behind him cowed the entire GOP into submission. Th elite well-educated master found themselves chained to the beast, dancing to its tune, and the tragic result we witnessed last Wednesday, the full-throated assault on democracy, the rage that demanded their whims be catered to and the power of their lies.
Trump fired the gun at the head of democracy with it was the GOP that forged and loaded it.
