Does the US Deserve Donald Trump?

Individual Americans can probably scarcely believe the situation Donald Trump has put them in. Look at Dick Cheney, former vice president under George W. Bush. From the point of view of many liberal Americans, he was an incorrigible bad boy, forever getting himself into trouble. Even today, Dick Cheney can’t see what a colossal mistake he made in 2003 when he misled the United States into the Iraq war.

Normally, left-wing Democrats anoint themselves with a few drops of decaf soy latte whenever Cheney appears anywhere. Suddenly, there’s an overlap in the form of Donald Trump with his rat’s nest hairstyle. Even Cheney finds him to be an “extremist”; or Bill O’Reilly, the 65-year-old moderator on the conservative Fox Network who calls himself a “tough guy.” If Green Party faction leader Katrin Göring-Eckhardt were forced to watch O’Reilly for 12 hours without a break, she would have to be put on life support because she wouldn’t be able to breathe. But O’Reilly himself in a recent interview with Trump came off looking like the voice of reason personified. He warned the bizarre billionaire that he was harming America and the American people with his suggestion that Muslims be barred from entering the U.S.

People like O’Reilly, incidentally, are one of the main differences between German and American media personalities. O’Reilly intensively grills everyone he interviews, even those with whom he privately shares a conservative bent. Many of my broadcasting colleagues — the majority of whom lean toward the left — interview Jan van Aken as if he were Mahatma Gandhi’s nephew rather than just a liberal politician. Hillary Clinton deserves an opponent like Trump. She’s had to endure a great deal of adversity already, and things would be even worse for her if the Republicans came up with a serious competitor — one who was liked by women and who didn’t think Spanish-speaking immigrants posed a threat to him. Instead, a Ku Klux Klan leader showed up expressing his doubts that the nation’s racists could count on Trump to actually make good on his hate speech if he were elected.

If people are allowed to say anything, that also includes Donald Trump — if by pluralism you mean that not only are unions and the communities to which they belong allowed to express their opinions, but people you find totally repulsive may also do so. In the U.S., low-life types like Richard Nixon have made it all the way to the White House; J. Edgar Hoover was head of the FBI for 48 years and didn’t cause much less damage than Trump has. Like all the other problem children this great nation has had, Nixon and Hoover proved to be weaker than what makes up the country. Americans have continuously earned the concept of democracy, which includes sovereignty and self-confidence, since the 18th century.