I don't know much about American politics, and I don't know if this was the case with other presidents, but there seems to be a cult of personality surrounding Trump. I don't remember ever seeing Americans get so obsessed with any politician before Trump. Did Obama and Clinton have such a large following? I don't remember the political divide being quite as large as it currently is either. It just feels like I am watching a country which will tear itself apart.
Also, what is the relationship between USA and the rest of the world currently? In my small friend circle, you people are seen as a laughingstock. I can't help but fear that I am watching a fall of a superpower.
I seriously don't see what the appeal of Trump is, he says a lot of dumb shit, makes a fool out of himself and his country constantly, and people somehow eat it up.
Well, I can tell you what the appeal for Trump was, because I used to be a massive Trump supporter in 2015-2016. Now keep in mind that I'm French, so seeing a guy run against endless wars in the Middle East (where America gets the oil and we get the refugee crisis and terror attacks) felt pretty good especially when Merkel was inviting the entirety of Syria and Irak into Europe. I wouldn't support these either if we got the oil by the way, I'm against these wars in general.
In America he was basically the first in a long time to run as a populist, appealing to the working-class, against mass immigration, against SJWs in universities etc.. So I would definitely have voted for him back then. Also, the idea of that guy running the US was funny as fuck and Clinton was an unlikeable bitch. Now I'm a bit more mixed, because the "meme magic" just isn't there anymore, also Joe Biden seems way more sympathetic, in that you would have a beer with him but not with Clinton. That said, the insanity of some lefties in the recent protests (those who want to destroy Lincoln statues for example) makes Trump look good.
To answer your question, most French people see Trump as a lolcow and hate him. No candidate would win in France acting like he does. He's basically an American stereotype down to eating mostly McDonald's.
However I'm also worried about the cult of personality around him. Again, I was massively for him in 2016, but I would never unironically call him anointed by God or something like that. I did ironically call him the God-Emperor, but I didn't start believing in my own memes lol. By the way, as you can guess I'm not a leftie but Right-Wing Watch does have a lot of stories about insane Trump supporters who think he's basically the Second Coming on their website. It's a section called "Right-Wing Bonus Tracks".
The closest I can think to such a fanatical following in France would be about Charles De Gaulle or Jean-Marie Le Pen, but let's just look at what these people did in their lives.
De Gaulle : WW1 veteran, leader of the French Resistance in WW2 (in London before D-Day, in France itself it was Jean Moulin but he was tortured to death by the Gestapo). Also ran the country during its best economical times, gave independence to African colonies (although we now know he did it not only for economical or humanistic reasons also because he wanted mainland France to remain White and the only solution for that was independence from his point of view because he was against having some kind of Jim Crow laws which we used to have until 1946 in our colonies).
Le Pen : Involved in politics as a populist since the 50s (although he had a Reaganite phase in the 80s), fought in Algeria and Indochina (as a volunteer, there was no draft for Indochina and he went to Algeria of his own free will while being a member of French Parliament), speaks French eloquently, was basically right decades before many others about mass immigration and leftism (just look are the recurring terror attacks happening now). Of course he's not a saint, just look him up, but people voted for him in spite of that, not because of that.
But even then, nobody claimed they were anointed by God himself.
The biggest lolcows were the ones against them. Both barely avoided assassination attempts, and when Le Pen was elected to the second round of the French election in 2002 the liberal tears were even bigger than those shed by liberals when Trump won.
Finally, I would say that from where I live Americans are basically headed for Civil War 2 if they keep polarizing like that. And you sit on the world's biggest nuclear stockpile, so yes, that's worrying as fuck.
www.independent.co.uk
