Donald Trump: the Politics of Fear and Violence

American presidential politics is always a contact sport. The stakes are invariably so high that being polite to the opposition is normally difficult, and is often honored only in the breach. The 2012 "there is a village in Kenya that is missing its idiot" bumper sticker offended me at the time for its ongoing birtherism and for its underlying racism; but I was obliged to remember its earlier and softer equivalent when George W. Bush was President - the one about the existence of a similar village problem in Texas. So, in that election cycle at least, I had to cut Republican supporters a certain degree of slack.

But this time round, the bumper stickers are worse - often much worse - and they are in large measure because in 2016 conservative animosity to both the current and likely next president is so intense. The 2016 election cycle is fuelled by a level of anger in and around the base of the Republican Party that is way in excess of any thing found in Republican circles in 2012. It is also an anger that has no parallel in and around the base of the Democratic Party. It is true that, as a party, the Democrats in 2016 remain divided. There are still many disgruntled Sanders supporters out there who are frustrated with Hillary Clinton; but that frustration does not stretch out to any equivalent fury with their Republican opponents. The Republicans in convention in Cleveland were full of anger and despair at the current state of American domestic and foreign policy. The Democrats in Philadelphia were not; and that difference between the two parties is now coloring the way in which each party is approaching the clash between candidates as the general election approaches.

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