THE STEALTH GENIUS OF STUPID

I think the first time I ever really paid attention to the sausage-fest that is Donald Trump was when I read a story years ago about how he used to continuously badger the Forbes Magazine people for ranking him too low on the Wealthiest People in the World lists. The author of that year’s particular story commented that in his lengthy time publishing the series, no one had every called to complain that they should be ranked higher. He said the opposite was more the case: really rich people would ask to be ranked lower for tax purposes, in kind of an homage to the old saw, “if you have to ask how much it cost, you can’t afford it.” The author explained that the truly super-rich don’t need to flaunt it.

Yes. The Donald is a world-class turd in the punchbowl. A racist, a misogynist and an idiot.

But on that last point – idiot…Really?

Could it be that there is some true genius in Trump that gets passed over on first read?

Here me out.

Today, news broke that Trump, back in the 80’s and 90’s used to pretend to be another person – a hired PR flak – that would call reporters and brag about what a great person, fantastic lover and brilliant businessman Trump actually was.

Think about that for a second. The Republican nominee for the President of the United States used to routinely assume a false identity to pitifully boast about how many women he slept with!  My God, think about how pathetic, and truly sad that is.

But here’s the deal. While yes, this is a fairly big story that is on the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post and CNN, it’s kind of being met with a collective shrug, roll of the eyes and a yawn.

Why? Because Trump has so inoculated the media and many of us to the ridiculous opinions and behaviors that are uniquely his own. His entire presidential campaign up to this point has been an exercise in one-upping the unbelievable and juvenile things the Donald can say. We are weary to the stupidity, vapid language and empty rhetoric. There is literally nothing he can say or do that will truly shock us anymore.

And here is where I have to begrudgingly hand it to the flaming haired maniac. By hammering us with so much dumb and so much hate and so much know-nothingness during the primary, might he have been softening up our collective outrage for when the real show begins?

If the town drunk shows up for the first time ever on Sunday morning for church – only slightly buzzed but otherwise well-behaved – doesn’t the community give him a huge Atta boy for the change? Correspondingly, if the town matriarch and community pillar takes up an adjoining pew smelling slightly of mimosa, scandal ensues!!!

Could it be that Trump is smart enough to know that his ridiculous and mean-spirited comments during the primary might help dull the stench of the truly fetid pile of vulgarity and financial mediocrity – if not downright failure – that is his past as we enter the general election? That by cramming the border wall and the Muslim ban and the nuke Iraq statements down our throat in April, he will help many people gloss over his bankruptcies, ties to organized crime and Trump University lawsuits come October?

I think so. I hate to say it (My god, I really hate to say it!), but Trump is quite shrewd in this regard. He has so poisoned the well of civility and political discourse that his real misdeeds and disqualifiers for the highest office in the land are not going to seem as awful as they should be.

Now don’t get me wrong – I don’t think he will win. I think demographics, electoral math and true political skill will conspire against him.

But I also strongly believe that he would have never gotten to this point if he just straight up ran for president as a traditional republican candidate. True, his celebrity and name recognition would have carried him past the lower wrung candidates like Huckabee and Santorum and Fiorina, but a standard campaign would have petered out long before now.

And now that he is his party’s nominee, the spade work of his violent and racist rallies and the women and minority-hating Twitter rants at least provide him with some cover for what Hillary Clinton and the democrats are going to rain down upon him.

His past is a true weapon against him. Laid bare, the history of Trump is the exact opposite of what his fans want to believe. No, he’s not an ultra-conservative, tell-it-like-it-is, champion of working class whites. He’s an elite, corporatist who ships jobs overseas, leans left on social issues because he’s a big city oligarch and reaches for the Purell the second after he shakes hands with working class people he’s dedicated his life to disenfranchising at every turn.  At the end of the day, Trump’s not racist, he’s classist, and if you are white but under a certain income bracket, you are significantly beneath his station.

So…I can’t believe I’m writing this, but give it up a little for Donald Trump. Never has stupid been used in such a smart manner.