Could America become Trumpistan in 2016?

Improbable as it might appear at the moment, the sniffing chance of a Trump presidency in 2016 is not something to be scoffed at. After all, this is a country that put George Bush, often seen as a dubious dope, into the White House in 2001 in preference to the magisterial Al Gore. In 2004, it re-elected the man dubbed Dubya over a war hero, the avuncular and intellectual John Kerry.
In 2008, it changed course and did something even more unlikely — voting for a mixed-race African-American junior senator from Illinois, with a striking name like Barack Hussein Obama that echoed both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. So why not Donald Trump, whose incendiary polemic has ignited several bonfires in the 2016 presidential race?
Consider this: Here is a man who is leading in the polls for the Republican nomination despite antagonizing several vote blocks. Hispanics – check, Muslims – check, women – check, Blacks – check, Asian-Americans – check, all immigrants in general – check. This, as someone pointed out, despite two of his three wives being immigrants.
So who's left to vote for him? Well, Bubba, the white blue-collar worker, dubbed by the liberal littoral literati as the Trumpenproletariat, among a few others. Is that enough to tip the Celebrity Apprentice into the White House and lead America into... Trumpistan? Unlikely, but not improbable. Stranger things have happened in America.
The one group licking its chops over a possible Trump presidency is the community of humorists, comedians and satirists who make a living from laughs, for whom Trump is a joke. "A word association poll found the words most associated with Donald Trump are idiot, jerk, stupid, and dumb. In other words, he really could be our next president. He's got everything it takes," gagged Conan O'Brien, a late-night laughmeister.
But what if the joke is on the entertainers? Here's what Seth Meyers, NBC's later night parodist, said weeks ago: "A new poll released today shows Donald Trump is leading the Republican field with 24%. How far are we going to let this go? It's almost Thanksgiving. Trump is still leading. Next thing you know, he's winning Iowa, then he takes New Hampshire, then he somehow actually becomes the Republican nominee. And before you know it, Hillary Clinton is president!"
It's Christmas now and Trump is at 39%, and new polls show he is pulling abreast of Hillary Clinton in a toe-to-toe contest. There is an element of Trumphalism running through the man who is said to give narcissism a bad name. No worries, God will save America, assert non-believers in Trumpmania and rampant, ongoing Trumpery. But for America's Country Trumpkins, The Donald is god. "In an exclusive interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Donald Trump said, ‘I believe in god.' But of course The Donald was talking about Himself," chuckled Meyer's predecessor Jay Leno.
Is he really that bad? After all a country that survived George Bush (or Clinton and Obama, in hardline Republican eyes) can endure some Trumpfoolery? But the presumption — or pretrumption — of tolerance is based on standards that have never been breached before. Donald Trump has gone where no candidate has gone before — far beyond la la land. Into loo loo land.
The infantile moment when he petulantly read out the private cell phone number of a Republic rival at a public meeting is nothing compared to the repugnancy of his scatological descent into chauvinism. Who makes fun of an extended bathroom break, least of all by a female presidential candidate, as Trump did of Hillary Clinton, when he declared that it was "disgusting.'' What could be disgusting about a bathroom break unless Trump fully exercised his fertile imagination to fill himself with revulsion? Worse followed. "She was going to beat Obama, but... she got schlonged," said the Trumpeter, of Hillary Clinton's 2008 bid, summoning a Yiddish word for penis. The charitable explanation is that Trump says things for effect, lighting fires here and there just so that he can heat up the campaign. Schlonged is now like "screwed,'' a word that originally had a sexual connotation but is now widely accepted. But given his record of misogynistic remarks, that's not how many voters will see it.
Declasse does not even begin to describe it. Liberal littoral literate America will be hoping that if it wakes up on November 9, 2016 to find Donald Trump being declared the next president, it's a mistake of the kind Steve Harvey committed at the Miss Universe pageant last week — announcing the wrong winner. But if it turns out its true, then America, and the rest of the world, is really up shit creek — getting schlonged.
No, it's no laughing matter.