President Trump and The Ides of March

The Ides of March fell on the 15th of March in the ancient Roman calendar. We know about it because of English literature and Julius Ceasar, a play by William Shakespeare, where a soothsayer warned Ceasar to be aware of the Ides of March.

President Trump had his Ides of March on the 24th of March, 2017, when Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives told him that some of his Republican Party brethren will vote against the bill repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA), known as Obamacare.

President Trump had no choice but to pull the bill from the floor. It is too early to tell how the silent majority, who voted for him in 2016, will feel about the shelving of Trump's top five election promises.

This piece was written before the U.S. presidential election in 2016. Donald Trump was elected through a democratic process which will culminate in his inauguration as president, on 20 January 2017.

It is what America wants, what America will live with, for the next four years and defend if need be.

Anti-Trump protests scheduled for the inauguration are problematic because it was a neat high jump, a clear majority, so some voters are lying if they say they didn't vote for the man.

Someone voted for Donald Trump, including some of the protesters that will be wielding placards. His win is the will of the people. Democracy at play.

http://nonqaba-cinemamytake.blogspot.ca/2015/05/egghead-followers-and-omelettes.html

The possibility of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States of America lies in the silent half majority that does not care about the last lap October television debates. Hilary Clinton fared well. Donald Trump fared well. Who cares? It is all Greek to me, they say.

The President Elect who will be inaugurated in January 2017, will be the trump card of game changers who fly under the radar of polls and political analysts. We don’t know who they are but they know that they will vote for Donald Trump in November.

They are anonymous like faceless people who follow us on Google, Facebook or Twitter. They don’t have their photos and we don’t mind because it is the numbers that count. Advertising dollars might start streaming in if you have 250,000 followers. They don’t care that half of them are faceless.

Trump is also about numbers. His silent followers will be silent no more on 8 November 2016. For them, Trump is the man.

They feel that they will regain their voice about American values, or should we say what they think are American values in 2016. At last, a man who has balls, they pump fists in the air. They do this behind closed doors because the world is polite now.

Politicians have to say nice things because many people are listening. We don’t want them to take offense do we? The silent half majority cannot wait for 8 November to tick Trump on the ballot.

If the silent half majority could talk, they would probably mention three main reasons why they are the Trump card.

Firstly, we have feelings about the United States that we cannot admit in public because we might lose our jobs: church choir master, shop steward, event organizer, software developer, president of our cultural organization or even lose customers.

Secondly, we don’t want to be constantly reminded about the state of the economy, race relations, women as full human beings, who Kim Jong-un is, the difference between South and North Korea, global warming and the Arctic, how American workers lose jobs to offshore workers who don’t have the phrase minimum wage in their vocabulary, healthy school lunches or banks repossessing our homes when we are laid off.

Thirdly, we love fiction. That is why Ronald Regan, an actor famous in cowboy movies was president of the United States of America from 1981-1989.

Life in general is very harsh. We don’t like our families, neighbors, co-workers and what we see on the street. That is why the world of fiction is such a good alternative for us. Before YouTube, Hollywood gave us heroes, who fought the bad guys and made America safe. Who the bad guys are is another topic for debate.

Another example of graduation from the screen to politics is Arnold Schwarzenegger. The star of movies such as Total Recall became Governor of California from 2003-2011. He was not born on American soil, but that is immaterial. What matters is that he acted before a camera.

The camera is not reality because there are many people behind the scenes who decide what that ‘reality’ is going to be.

Producers know what they want and writers deliver a script based on that expected 'reality'. Somebody calls ACTION, cameras roll and there’s the editing. If the ‘reality’ show is 30 minutes, editors should cut and trim to 30 minutes. That is a ‘reality’ show.

Donald Trump is part of television history because he was the host of The Apprentice from 2004-2015. The idea had such popular appeal, countries all over the world had their own version.

The Apprentice was called a reality show and Donald Trump was the star. People love television and movie stars, more than people they live with at home, therefore, part of the silent half majority that might vote for him are people who were once on the show, their families and friends, television production staff and fans.

Politics is supposed to be about bread and butter issues, but what also contributed to Donald Trump securing the Republican Party nomination was his television presence and The Apprentice in particular.

The show was entertainment, but for some of his fans, it was reality, reality that the man can run a country. What Trump says about taxes, women or immigrants might be unpalatable to some voters, but they go down well with the silent half majority that will vote for him.