Never trust anyone who says trust me this much.
Never trust anyone who says "trust me" this much. Nate Gowdy


You only go to a Donald Trump rally for one reason: to see how afraid you need to be. I went to the Donald Trump rally in Everett yesterday, and here was the answer I got: very very very very very afraid. I know it’s unfashionable among Democrats and “progressives” to acknowledge that fear is an essential component of the electoral process, but guess what: There is a foot sticking through the other side of the door to hell and it’s attached to Donald Trump’s leg. I know the odds against him winning are technically very long, but they are not long enough. They could never be long enough.

I waited in an unimaginably long line for three hours then cringed in an almost (though blissfully not quite) full arena for two more with the worst people in America—people with no wit, grace, compassion, reflectiveness, irony, or style. (I may be generalizing, but I'm also correct.) These people despise Hillary Clinton, homeless people, and “illegals” with a fervor that cannot ever be overstated.

We tend to refer to this group with euphemisms—the “disenfranchised white lower-middle working class”—but those euphemisms aren’t real. They’re not poor. They’re not disenfranchised. They’re selfish, isolationist, and defiantly small-minded. They are the last stand of Ronald Reagan’s old, white, suburban America trick. And they are on fire.

All fires metaphorical (for now).
All fires metaphorical (for now). Nate Gowdy

These are the people who elected George W. Bush when everyone thought he was a complete joke. Only this time, they aren’t even evangelical Christians. They don’t even believe in bullshit. They feel left behind by the culture whose advancements toward equality and inclusion for other groups are the great achievements of our time. Where you see how much further we have to go toward making that inclusion more inclusive, they see how much further away the world has gotten from a place they can recognize or even bear to look at.

One would like to believe there is room for human connection between all people, and that our differences are overstated. One would not be so sure after standing in that line for a few hours. Our differences have not even been fully articulated, but here is the main one: They fucking HATE you. They really do.

They're so desperate to be addressed by ANY political leader that they have settled for Donald Trump as a white knight, despite the transparency of his falseness, the nakedness of his opportunism, and the bald dishonesty of his promises. Those things you see and hear when Trump speaks? The noxious tone? The contemptible ideology? The bovine rhetoric? The incitements to racial bigotry and violence? Those are music to these people.

The life you save will be your own.
The life you save will be your own, exclusively. Nate Gowdy

And you know, it’s not like they fucking fought WWII. They’re my age. A little older. A little younger. They never fought for anything except the right to drive a bigger SUV or keep sex ed out of schools. They fought the cola wars. They took their stand in the battle of Less-Filling/Tastes Great! They are the people who never wanted to leave the suburbs, because the suburbs were built to preserve their self-centered, incestuous cosmology.

They call themselves the Silent Majority, just as they did when they were backing Nixon against hippies. I don’t really believe they constitute a majority. The trend of my lifetime seems to lead away from that kind of provincial, backwards, walled-off thinking. BUT I DON’T KNOW THAT FOR SURE BECAUSE I LIVE IN GODDAMN SEATTLE.

Trump_in_Everett__Credit-_Nate_Gowdy_-13.jpg
Nate Gowdy

I went to the Trump rally in Everett so I could know how it felt to be among Trump people. This is how it felt: FAMILIAR. I’m old enough to remember when America mostly felt this way, even in the cities. I know a lot of America still feels this way. But is it most? Is it even 50.1%? Is it close enough to cover the spread of people who will vote for Gary Johnson and Jill Stein to send a message to HRC supporters who mock them on Facebook?

Is there just ONE MORE of them than there is of us?

That is the question that keeps me awake at night. That is why I went to the Trump rally—my second, actually: So I could stand next to them and remember what America used to feel like all the time, everywhere.

Theres a feeling I get when I look to the West...
There's a feeling I get when I look to the West... Nate Gowdy

Trump was way better at this one than he was in Lynden. He was—I won’t say presidential, but more plausible, a more confident headliner. When I saw him mount the stage, I thought this: He could win. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. He could win. I mean, he could. I know what the polls say. But polls are fallible.

His audience was more confident, too, and greater in number. Their favorite thing was when one of the (two) protestors tried to disrupt the proceedings. As instructed (by a sinister pre-speech announcement), they swarmed on the troublemaker, jumping up and down and pointing violently at them while shout-barking "TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! until "security" came to take the bad people away. It was the most eloquent possible expression of their worldview, and the ideal illustration of political discourse in 2016.

It was some comfort that the room was only about ¾ full (despite the VERY aggressive lies about record-breaking attendance that Trump himself, and several of his cronies put forward to the contrary; my man is obsessed with his draw). But not much comfort, because it was still a lot of people. Enough to make me wonder how accurate the polls are, and how long they’ll hold.

(The Bradley/Wilder/Dinkins effect may not be the ideal analogy, but I also wonder how many Republicans who claim to be willing to “hold their nose” and vote for HRC will vote Trump without admitting it in advance—as long as they’re already holding their nose.)

Here is what they were saying in line:

and this:

I wanted to know they were wrong, but I don’t know that, and NEITHER DO YOU because polls are an inaccurate measurement of the human capacity for self-concealment.

None of this is news, I know. But something you already know is something you are likelier to forget, especially since time now moves faster than it ever did before. The Democratic National Convention—when many of us were finally able to breathe a sigh of relief about voting for Hillary Clinton—seems like it happened months ago, and she has bungled plenty of things since. So that comfort is a ghost now. You spend a few hours listening to, eavesdropping on, feeling, the visceral hatred these people all feel for HRC (based, it must be said, 100% on lies and myths they seem to have been spoon fed the way some of us were given strained peas) and it’s hard to remember that anyone doesn’t—especially when you know so many who do.

Shades of Noel Coward, but the insouciance of a Ray Stevens. (P.S. These people want you dead)
Shades of Noel Coward, but the insouciance of a Ray Stevens. (P.S. These people want you dead) Nate Gowdy

And if HRC wins, it’s not like their hatred is going to dissolve. It will manifest in all manner of civil disobedience (which will be interesting, since they all love cops so goddamn much), but despite what their ugly-ass t-shirts advertise, these people are unlikely to get their shit together enough to start a meaningful civil war. They’ll just keep being furious, keep refusing to consider that they have been duped into living an obsolete lifestyle, and keep spouting the empty, hateful rhetoric that led us to the disgraceful state of affairs we’re in today.

But at least she'll be president, and Donald Trump won’t.

These people used to be the mainstream, and they’re DESPERATE to reclaim their place at the center of the national experience. That won't happen, even if Trump wins, because he's lying to them more than he's lying to everyone else. But it won't matter. They will have been re-enfranchised. They are the barbarians. This is the gate. Can we at least get together on the need to keep them from crashing through it?

Please?

Counterpoint: Rich Smith went to the Trump rally and came away cautiously optimistic