Comentario de John Médaille:
Why is Trump doing so well? Well, he starts with a recognizable brand, but I don't think branding is the main thing at all. If it were, Bush would have done better. I think the secret is that Trump talks in concretes, Cruz & Rubio talk in abstractions. C&R are going to "restore American Freedoms"; Trump is going to restore American jobs. C&R will protect the Second Amendment; Trump will protect us from Muslims, Mexicans, and the Chinese. Never mind that it's all nonsense; It *sounds* concrete, sounds like he actually has a plan that actually addresses our concretely felt needs and fears. "Conservatives" (and I use the term advisedly) have been speaking in abstractions for so long that they have practically disappeared up their own asses. Their slogans sound like slogans, even if they are backed by a real plan (let's give them the benefit of the doubt); Trumps slogans sound like a plan, even if it's only backed by vague abstractions. The brand gave Trump a foot in the door, a place on the stage. But like all good brands, he crafted it so that people could read into it whatever they liked. Without have any reality about him at all, he has become, like Coke, "the real thing." For a public whose minds have been conditioned since birth by advertising, relentless, 24/7 propaganda for everything we have, Trump has intuitively grasped the real meaning of this phenomenon, which is this: things have no real meaning at all, save the meanings we can be taught to assign to them. Okay, all you postmodernist philosophers; discuss.
