What is it about Donald Trump and huge rallies?
The Republican Party’s presumptive nominee likes them. He believes they are the perfect setting for his enormous appeal, showcasing his popularity among thousands of cheering Americans.
Mostly though, Mr Trump’s rally-fests seem to degenerate into anger-expression sessions – they find targets within the gathering (such as the media) or spit murderous fury at the world outside the venue. Sometimes, they draw equally disgraceful violence from those who don’t support Mr Trump’s ideas and public statements. The anti-Trump violence in San Jose was a terrible and indefensible response to the Republican candidate’s race-baiting xenophobia. Violence is not the answer to anything.
Anyway, this poem, ‘The crowd at the ball game’, by one of the late great modern American poets William Carlos Williams, seems to explain something of the nature of Mr Trump’s rallies.
Especially these lines:
The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly
by a spirit of uselessness
which delights them—
And again:
It is alive, venomous
it smiles grimly
And yet again:
It is summer, it is the solstice
the crowd is
cheering, the crowd is laughing
in detail
permanently, seriously
without thought
(Full disclosure: Williams, who worked as a doctor for more than 40 years in his New Jersey hometown of Rutherford, may not even be considered “American” by Donald Trump. After all, Williams’s father was English and his Puerto Rican mother had French, Dutch, Spanish, and Jewish ancestry. Mr Trump has said that the Indiana-born-and-bred Judge Curiel is “Mexican” simply because his parents are of Mexican blood.)
The crowd at the ball game
by William Carlos Williams
The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly
by a spirit of uselessness
which delights them—
all the exciting detail
of the chase
and the escape, the error
the flash of genius—
all to no end save beauty
the eternal—
So in detail they, the crowd,
are beautiful
for this
to be warned against
saluted and defied—
It is alive, venomous
it smiles grimly
its words cut—
The flashy female with her
mother, gets it—
The Jew gets it straight— it
is deadly, terrifying—
It is the Inquisition, the
Revolution
It is beauty itself
that lives
day by day in them
idly—
This is
the power of their faces
It is summer, it is the solstice
the crowd is
cheering, the crowd is laughing
in detail
permanently, seriously
without thought
