When I think about Donald Trump, I usually visualize Larry ‘Lonesome’ Rhodes, Andy Griffith’s character in Elia Kazan’s 1957 film “A Face in the Crowd.” Rhodes is a master manipulator, the embodiment of the wrongness of mass media and consumerism, and a fake populist everyman.
But Donald Trump is also many other things. Like other fascist leaders, demagogues, and “great men of history” he is a symbol more than a human being. For his MAGA people and other followers, Trump is a messiah. He is a force for vengeance and destruction. And as I have explained before, he is also their teacher, preacher, father figure and a type of lover.
