Fred Trump, like his global real estate mogul son, Donald Trump, was a real estate agent in New York. The majority of his customers were middle class citizens looking to rent apartments. As the story goes, in summer, he often released multicolored balloons into air over beaches, filling them with $50 coupons for the apartments he was selling. Under the tutelage of his innovative father, young Donald learned business and he was able to build his own “Kingdom of Trump.” Now, he even gets to jump into the 2016 presidential election.
Trump’s popularity in the Republican presidential race is often given the balloon analogy: He is soaring now, but one day the balloon will pop and he will fall down to ground. The analogy has even been turned into a jeer, calling him the “Macy balloon.” Like those in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Trump is not a real contender with any degree of practicality, but a fake character balloon. Among the harshest versions is the “toxic gas balloon.” David Remnick, writing for The New Yorker, stated that “Trump’s father was a self-promoter who dispersed discounts in his balloons. The son offers only toxic gas.”
Ironically, the force that floats the Trump balloon is America’s disadvantaged. According to a survey by The Washington Post and ABC, about one-third of white Republican supporters without college degrees support Trump. While they protest the persistent reality that more is given to haves than have-nots, they contradict themselves by supporting a millionaire in the election. Even though Trump is not a self-promoter, many mistake him as a protagonist of the American dream, even believing that he won’t be controlled by money from big corporate interests.
Whatever the reason might be, this class betrayal, whereby citizens will vote the speaker of another class into office, is almost a global phenomenon.
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