Another Explanation for the Rise of the Trump Reich

I've read all of Kurt Vonnegut's books. And read all of them from Player Piano through to Galapagos twice. And read Breakfast of Champions, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Cat's Cradle a few more times. But I love him so . . . so I have been thinking about having another run at the whole Vonnegut Œuvre. In publication order, of course. So I picked up Book The First--Player Piano--yesterday and started nibbling at it.

And this morning I hit this bit on page 50:

"He took it as evidence that his money and name could beat the system any time and, paraphrased, he'd said as much. The hell of it was that his attitude won grudging admiration from his fellow engineers, who had got their jobs the hard way. Paul supposed, gloomily, that beaters of systems had always been admired by the conventional."

And that's really it, isn't it? Why the callused-handed guy (or gal) who has worked hard all of his (or her) life and has very little to show for it still defends Trump? Because he (or she) admires The Beater of Systems. 

There's a superb The Jam song entitled "Saturday's Kids" which proclaims, 

These are the creatures that time has forgot,
Not given a thought, 
It's the system,

Hate the system, 
What's the system?

Because, after all, anybody who has reached adulthood has been screwed by The System. It's pretty much what The System is for, isn't it? So when we see this guy who does not back off when The System rears its ugly face, who does not flinch when those metallic mandibles clash and spark . . . well, we see someone we think can stand up for us. And what he says doesn't really matter very much. In fact, what he does doesn't matter very much. He will beat The System that has beaten us.

And so . . . Heil Hitler. Heil Trump.

That's how it is on this bitch of an earth.

Of course, we could do something about that. If we want to.