http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/04/opinion/the-trump-possibility.html 2016-10-03 12:37:47 The Trump Possibility It’s the last chance to prevent a lazy and limited man who lies and cheats and thinks he has “great genes” from demeaning the Oval Office. === Donald Trump is a thug. He’s a thug who talks gibberish, and lies, and cheats, and has issues, to put it mildly, with women. He’s lazy and limited and he has an attention span of a nanosecond. He’s a “gene believer” who thinks he has “great genes” and considers the German blood, of which he is proud, “great stuff.” Mexicans and Muslims, by contrast, don’t make the cut. He’s managed to bring penis size and menstrual cycles and the eating habits of a This is a man who likes to strut and gloat. He’s such a great businessman he declared a loss of $916 million on his And this man, with the support of tens of millions of Americans, is a hairbreadth from the Oval Office. I am shocked — yes, shocked! — Trump’s burbling about the Iran nuclear deal in the first presidential Of course, Trump has no idea what is in the agreement, since that would require reading it, and so he would not have an inkling that it has slashed and ring-fenced Iran’s nuclear capacity until 2030, reversing the Islamic Republic’s steady accumulation of centrifuges, and has also opened the way for Boeing to sell Iran 80 commercial passenger aircraft — just the sort of job-creating deal Trump professes to like. And this man, whose meanness and petulance and childlike inadequacies have been on display for more than a year now, may become president next month. How is this possible? It is possible because spectacle and politics have merged and people no longer know fact from fiction or care about the distinction. It is possible because fear has entered people’s lives and that fear is easily manipulated. It is possible because technology has created anxiety-multipliers such as have never been known before. It is possible because America is a country living with the dim dissatisfaction of two wars without victory and the untold trillions spent on them. It is possible because a very large number of people want to give the finger to the elites who brought the crash of 2008 and rigged the global system and granted themselves impunity. It is possible because of growing inequality and existential dread, especially among the white losers from globalization who know minorities will be the majority in the United States by midcentury. It is possible because both major parties have abandoned the working class. It is possible because a lot of Americans feel the incumbent in the White House has undersold the United States, diminished its distinctive and exceptional nature, talked down its power, and so diluted its greatness and abdicated its responsibility for the well-being of the free world. It is possible because the identity politics embraced by urban, cosmopolitan liberals have provoked an inevitable backlash among those who think white lives matter, too. It is possible because Trump speaks to the basest but also some of the most ineradicable traits of human beings — their capacity for mob anger, their racist resentments, their cruelty, their lust, their search for scapegoats, their insecurities — and promises a miraculous makeover. It is possible because the Clinton family has been in the White House and cozy with the rich and close to the summit of a discredited political establishment for a quarter-century now and, to people who want change or bridle at dynastic privilege, that makes Hillary Clinton an unattractive candidate. It is possible because history demonstrates there is no limit to human folly or the dimensions of the disasters humanity can bring on itself. Yes, it is possible. There is still time to stop a man who keeps stooping lower. That time is now.