Nevertheless, I agree with Blow when he says, "His [Trump's] whole campaign slogan, 'Make America Great Again,' is in fact an inverted admission of loss -- lost primacy, lost privilege, lost prestige."
Later, Blow says, "(It is curious that Trump never specifies a period when America was great in his view. Did it overlap with the women's rights, civil rights or gay rights movements? For whom was it great?)"
When we experience non-death loss in our lives, we need to mourn each non-death loss in a healthy way, just as we need to mourn the death of a significant person in our lives in a healthy way. Non-death loss would include lost prestige. But the healthy mourning process involves experiencing rage -- and feeling the feeling. However, not all people are capable of mourning in a healthy way. Indeed, some people are incapable of mourning in a healthy way.
For example, in the book Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President, 2nd ed. (2007), the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Justin A. Frank, M.D., writes that former President George W. Bush has "impaired abilities to mourn" (page xvi; also see pages 15, 16, 67, 68, 110, 185, 187-188, and 255).
In addition, Blow says, "Trump's wall is not practical, but it is a metaphor. Trump's Muslim ban is not feasible, but it is a metaphor. Trump's huge deportation plan isn't workable, but it is a metaphor."
No doubt all of us need certain personal boundaries in our personal lives in order to develop our ego-strengths optimally.
Blow says, "There is a portion of the population that feels threatened by unrelenting change -- immigration, globalization, terrorism, multiculturalism -- and those people want someone to, metaphorically at least, build a wall around their cultural heritage, which they conflate in equal measure with American heritage."
No doubt people tend to feel threatened when they sense real or imagined threat to their personal identity and their personal boundaries. Up to a certain point, feeling threatened by real or imagined threats is understandable.
Nevertheless, there is a point beyond which suspicion, conspiracy, and paranoia tend to become the opposite of pro-social. Certain things that Trump says and that his most ardent supporters support are the opposite of pro-social. For example, he recently claimed that the elections in November are "rigged" (his term), another conspiracy theory to go along with Trump's "birther" conspiracy theory that President Obama was not American-born.
As Blow suggests, Trump's most ardent supporters may be racists and sexists. No doubt Trump is evoking deep hates and fears and resentments in his most ardent supporters. In Jungian terminology, he is evoking "shadow" stuff deep in the recesses of their psyches.
But when "shadow" stuff surfaces in an individual person, the Swiss psychiatrist and psychological theorist C. G. Jung, M.D. (1875-1961), would have that individual work through the process of integrating the "shadow" stuff into their ego-consciousness. Such an integrative process is not easy to work through. Will Trump's most ardent supporters work through the "shadow" stuff that is surfacing in their psyches?
Unfortunately for us, we Americans as a group are confronted with the public surfacing of "shadow" stuff in Trump's most ardent white working-class supporters without a college degree. We have heard the expression "political theater." In ancient Athens during its experiment with limited participatory democracy, public theater emerged featuring tragedies and comedies. According to Aristotle's Poetics, tragedies evoked catharsis. But can Trump's political theater evoke catharsis in a healthy way in American culture today?
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, Trump is undoubtedly evoking deep hates and fears and resentments in the most ardent white working-class men who support his candidacy. Up to a certain point, we should empathize with his ardent supporters, but we should let them know that we do not agree with Trump or with them. His most ardent supporters may be racists and sexists, as Blow suggests they are. But the nuns I had in grade school taught us that we should hate the sin but love the sinner. No doubt that is easier said than done.
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