Donald Trump, American Preacher April 12, 2016 -Jeff Sharlet
t’s coming,” said the woman beside me, her face flushed beneath her flowing white hair. The long rectangle of the open hangar doors seemed to thrum, space waiting to be filled. And then, slowly, unstoppably, the plane nosed into view — a giant T, a giant R, a U and an M and a P, the plane swelling from its tip to its girth to its wings, filling completely the field of our vision.
We had been waiting five hours by then, standing together on the concrete floor at the regional airport in Youngstown, Ohio, cycling over and over through the Donald Trump rally playlist, swaying together to “Tiny Dancer,” hopping to “Uptown Girl.” We hadn’t really known what to do with Puccini, but we sensed that it was grand — “This is special!” said an older woman behind me. Such was the mood, the deep pleasure of waiting derived not just from the speech to come but from a building sensation of togetherness, rolling vibrations of solidarity and giddiness and anticipation. Much has been made of the anger at Trump rallies. But when I stood among Trump’s crowds, what I felt most, flowing around me, was something like happiness. A sense of freedom. Permission.
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When I ask Trump supporters what they love most about his rallies, they’re at a loss; all of it, they say, “just, just” — the way it makes them feel. How much it makes them feel. American politics tends to produce a limited emotional range, mostly positive, peppered with indignation. But Trump scrawls across the spectrum: not just anger but rage; love and, yes, hate; fear, a political commonplace, and also vengeance. It doesn’t feel political. Politicians have long borrowed from religion the passion and the righteousness, but no other major modern figure has channeled the tension that makes Scripture endure, the desire, the wanting that gives rise to the closest analogue to Trumpism: the prosperity gospel, the American religion of winning.