John Anthony Chansley, George Wallace and Donald Trump

 

John Anthony Chansley was released from jail in January, 2023. Non-descript in prison attire is not how we see him. In our mind’s eye, Mr. Chansley will remain a figure with painted face and bare chest, draped in animal skins, wearing a horned helmet, carrying a spear. He was part of the mob which broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in an attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected president.

Donald Trump likes some people in uniforms. Just not those who have worn the uniform in defense of democracy. He’s called those men and women “losers and suckers.” Standing on the sacred grounds of Arlington cemetery, he looked around and wondered out loud, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” He speaks of “his army” and “his generals.” One of “his generals,” Michael Flynn, pleaded guilty for conversations he had with the Russian ambassador. He was pardoned by Trump in the last weeks of his term.

Trump also assured anyone who would listen that the racist thugs in Ku Klux Klan garb carrying torches in Charlottesville included “some good people.” To him, the silly looking Halloween shaman, John Anthony Chansley, and the others committed to the violent insurrection of Jan. 6, were “patriots.” No one should doubt if he’s elected presidential pardons will be flying out of the Oval Office for the insurrectionists who have had their day in court, were found guilty, and are serving time. These are his “patriots,” his “good people.”

Trump voters in the state of Indiana are complicit in all of this. All should know Trump is a con artist and a felon. He has a rap sheet as long as a CVS checkout receipt. He’s a convicted felon still owing millions to a former Indiana University cheerleader for liable following a sexual assault. His personal life, five children by three wives, “Stormy Daniels,” is a soap opera minus the soap.

His vaunted financial astuteness is a record of failed enterprises, bankruptcies and adverse court settlements including $25 million worth when the hot air went out of his Trump University scam.

He will be selling his God Bless America Bibles (printed in China), hawking gold sneakers, and pitching $100,000 watches for a long time before he has paid off his legal debts and the lawyers who couldn’t save him in courts of law.

Trump’s speeches have become rambling, personal, dangerous rants. His targets are chosen on impulse. Still Hoosier Republicans accept the thickness of Trump’s lies and the thinness of his ebbing and garbled intellect. Why do they still plan to vote for him this year? It’s not really all that surprising.

Trump is an accomplished demagogue. He succeeds by inflating the dangers of the complex world of the present without the slightest vision for the future. He does, however, welcome one and all to return to the past. It’s a past (see MAGA; see Project 2025) bathed in highly selective memories, filled with heroes and villains, an US vs.THEM challenge, but as with all hungry for power, only under his self-proclaimed matchless leadership.

The last time Indiana saw anything like this was from a man running for president in 1968. In that year, the racist demagogue George Wallace, as a third party candidate, won 11.45% of the Hoosier vote. Maybe I go to the wrong bars and coffee shops, but after the 1968 election I don’t remember any of the Wallace voters speaking out, taking pride in their vote. Win or lose, I predict the same sheepish non-response from Trump voters in 2024 and beyond.

— Gary Daily