Mexican-American philanthropists from Chicago take a moment during their ceremony at a swanky Guadalajara restaurant last week to urge any dual citizens in the crowd to vote for Hillary Clinton.
A Guadalajara businessman unfurls a huge banner along the Ajijic highway imploring Americans to “vote for Hillary and support Mexico.” An Ajijic get-out-the-vote activist reveals that dual citizens are absentee voting in unprecedented numbers, presumably for HRC.
The list goes on. Ever since Donald Trump’s claim to fame became his insults against Mexicans and Muslims, it’s been a foregone conclusion that, as election time nears, Mexicans will rush into Hillary Clinton’s arms.
But locally, this stampede doesn’t stop with Mexicans. A British woman and her Portuguese husband attended a recent gathering of Americans supporting Clinton. “We don’t want another unpleasant surprise like Brexit,” she explained, referring to the June vote in England to leave the European Union. “We want to do anything we can so Trump doesn’t get elected.”
Similarly, I was surprised in February to overhear a large group of Canadians in Ajijic engaged in animated breakfast conversation about … Donald Trump? But aren’t Canadians preoccupied with their own problems?
“Everyone is afraid,” the activist explained. Just as people around the globe were ecstatic when Obama was elected, now the possibility of the orange-haired boy from New York City living in the White House has the world in a dither.
Even among U.S. television news channels there is a glaring dearth of support for Trump, including the famously conservative Fox News, which recently aired ample coverage of the allegations by women against Trump.
All this obvious fear and loathing makes one wonder just who likes Trump, who doesn’t see him as a despicable and dangerous Jabba the Hut character. What of that hefty percentage who tell pollsters they’ll vote for him and who turn up at his campaign stops? Are they turning tail or insulating themselves from any painful reality checks these days?
Of course, there is the gathering armada of big-time Republican defectors — the Bushes, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Condoleeza Rice, etc. Likewise, locals report that Republicans Abroad and the Lakeside Tea Party have disappeared, ceasing their active meeting and advertising schedule of a few years ago. The only visible Trump supporters one Ajijic resident could point to were a small group of moneyed golfers.
Similarly, Facebook friends who used to dismay me with their proclamations of Trumpian ideals have gone silent. Okay, truth be told, I had only three Trump-loving friends and I unfriended one of them, but the other two are now posting paeans to autumn beauty and cute babies.
One young American man just confessed to his mom his shameful secret — his preference for Trump — but then clammed up, except to declare he isn’t going to vote anyway. A local DT supporter — prone to hit-and-run epithets directed at Hillary Clinton, such as “Murderer!” — seemed to be isolating himself when he said he hadn’t watched a debate, but later checked out Web sites for “right wing crazies.”
These sites, of course, in lieu of major news media, are the campfires where the faithful warm themselves, where emotion, a tendency to confuse popularity with accuracy and a “post-truth” mentality reign supreme.
So when Mexicans ask, as they do repeatedly, how so many Americans can support Trump, I sometimes point to these sites. It isn’t difficult to whip up a decent-looking news program set, and blog templates give a professional veneer to faux “journalism” sites. But look a bit closer and you may wonder if an organization that doesn’t check grammar is any more careful about facts. Social media can be fantastic tools for exposing police brutality, but they just as easily spread lies, I say.
I sometimes also add that nonstop wars, horrifying mass shootings, killings by police of black men and killings of police by enraged individuals reflect and promote an isolated, Serpico-style craziness that is made to order for the likes of Trump.
But I can’t leave the topics of the media and who supports Trump without touching on conspiracy theories — the effluent of the Internet, the lifeblood of the Trump candidacy. The election is rigged and the mainstream media are out to get him, Trump repeats. But conspiracy theories range much farther than this.
For the sake of full disclosure, I admit I’m a Christian and have seen a UFO, both of which dispose me to look favorably on improbable claims. But before you stop reading, listen to three somewhat similar theories on collusion in Trump’s candidacy, which well educated Americans in Guadalajara told me. I was all ears.
“The powers that be won’t let Trump get elected,” said an Oregon man with a master’s degree. “If he wins, he’ll be assassinated.”
Okay. Then there was this scenario from a New York architect. “Trump doesn’t even want to be president. And he doesn’t like to lose.” Both theories suggest Trump abandoning his candidacy, which we know hasn’t happened.
Or has it? A third theory, from an Indiana native with a bachelor’s degree, asserts that Trump is the product of collusion in high places which aims to clinch the election of an historically weak candidate, Hillary Clinton.
But why would Trump agree to that? “He parties with the same people Bill Clinton parties with,” said my informant, a fact I believe true based on research about an April lawsuit filed by a woman, Katie Johnson, claiming Trump raped her at sex parties when she was 13.
Could the theory have merit? If the idea was to select a really bad opponent for Hillary, doesn’t Trump totally fill the bill? In fact, isn’t it hard to imagine a worse candidate? He’s cozied up to hated foreign powers, alienated allies and America’s southern neighbor, Mexico, millions of whose nationals live within U.S. borders and are voting against him in droves. He invented facts (global warming is a Chinese hoax) and proposed fantasies (the wall). If Trump’s handlers, assuming they exist, were trying as hard as possible to lose the election, what better techniques could they advise?
Come on, Trump’s defects are old news. He’s a king of glitter, a beauty-queen impresario who breathes new life into the archetype of woman as sex object, a man whose ex-wife testified he pulled out clumps of her hair and raped her because he was angry over his treatment by her hair implantologist (with good reason, as is now clear). Why would his followers ignore this unless they are sitting ducks for manipulators?
Even recent news — the sudden glut this month of women declaring he accosted them — has an orchestrated air, especially since nobody except a few exemplars of yellow journalism paid any attention at all to Katie Johnson’s lawsuit six months ago.
In this scenario, are Trumpers undeceived savants, as they see themselves, or manipulable chumps? Or are we all chumps? Should we all give up and stick our heads in the sand?
I prefer the solution of Zeynep Tufekci, a young, female, information science professor and New York Times writer, who analyzed this campaign and advises, “The predominant internet business model isn’t always great for democracy, but it’s not the only option. We should support subscription, donation and philanthropy funded sources of information.”
Did you get that? By buying this newspaper, you’re counteracting the confusion of this campaign. Do I need to make a full disclosure to say that?