Last week, I, as well as many others, attended a forum on the upcoming presidential primaries.
The forum was hosted by the College of Arts and Sciences and featured a handful of political heavyweights, from the White House correspondent for The Washington Post, to the Chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party.
At best, half of those in attendance were students. Most were politically active adults who came to hear a candid conversation from political professionals. While the guests spoke, all in attendance were quiet, respectful, eager to listen and doing nothing to draw attention away from those speaking.
That is, all except one man.
He was seated directly to my left and in the front row. He was wearing an American flag flat cap and a white T-shirt with “Trump” boldly emblazoned across the chest. He moved constantly in his seat, eager to speak and eager to draw attention to himself. On many occasions he pulled his shirt down tightly to iron out any wrinkles or creases, lest any break in the fabric distort the oversized logo.
Anytime that Donald Trump was mentioned, even vaguely, he pumped his fist, shaking his hand in the air, and pointed to his shirt. He wanted attention, and he certainly got it. Every eye in the room was on him when the floor was opened to questions, every ear hoping to hear an affirmation of our prejudices against the army that Trump had gathered.
With a rambling question on illegal immigrants voting that was overtly xenophobic and vaguely racist, he certainly did not disappoint.
Just a few days later, another man took center stage. At a Donald Trump rally in New Hampshire, the candidate opened the floor to questions following a brief opening statement. The first person up, a tall Caucasian male wearing a Trump T-shirt, informed the crowd in a determined voice that "we have a problem in this country. It's called Muslims.” He then went on to state that President Obama is a Muslim and not an American.
At first this upset me. It was a shame for one candidate to be defined by a few supporters with a limited grasp of facts and general etiquette.
Yet, now it has come to seem appropriate. The entire gathered army of Trump supporters could be overly generalized as attention loving mass. After all, they have given their support to a man who hoards attention to such a drastic extreme that if it were physical possessions there would be a dead cat somewhere underneath it all.
Now, my classification of nearly all Trump supporters as “attention loving” is not meant as an insult, despite appearances. In fact, it is entirely understandable why they desire such a thing. In a political era that sees congressional approval ratings dip into the single digits, where unpopular incumbents are re-elected on the backs of big money donations and where the voice of the ordinary voter is somehow continually undermined despite the social-media age intended to give every person a voice, it should be expected that eventually the masses might cry out, “Look at me! For God’s sake, hear me!”
Now, every right-wing person who is crying out be noticed and to be heard has found their bullhorn, and when he yells, people listen. They hear him even when they don’t want to. They hear him when he says horrible things and even when he allows others to do the same.
Time will only tell whether Trump and his supporters will continue to be heard or whether they become nothing more than white noise. Regardless of the future outcome, Trump will be on our campus on Wednesday, and it may be in our best interest to hear what he has to say, no matter our opinion of him.