On June 17, 2015, I Correctly Predicted Donald Trump Would Win.
Here’s That Article, In Full, Unedited
I sincerely believe that anyone who wants to run for President of the United States in the next three decades is an asshole. In a moment that felt like the other shoe dropping, Donald Trump announced yesterday that he’s running for you guessed it, President of the United States. However, in my eyes, Donald Trump’s not an asshole. Donald Trump is indeed flawed, but he’s also a great, great man. Amazingly enough, I’m sure there tons of other ’80s kids who would be inclined to agree. In the 1980s, by allowing Mike Tyson to become a global mega-star, Donald Trump made all of our wildest dreams come true. Can he, as President make an entire country into mega-successful superstars? Probably not, but I’m sure there’s enough folks out there nihilistic enough to vote in favor of watching him try to reclaim the magical era of Americana he had a very instrumental hand in creating yet again.
In 1988, I was 10 years old and there was one athlete I loved more than any other pro athlete, and his name was Mike Tyson. Mike wasn’t just a boxer, he was a folk hero. He was angry, tough and talented, hitting people with punches that made their body do a different type of impossible thing that Muhammad Ali’s punches didn’t make people’s bodies do. Both Tyson and Ali were important to me, as they were early inspirations for me as a young black child that success by your own hands in a world where everything that looked powerful was white was possible.
Therefore Donald Trump, as the owner of the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino — the home of so many Mike Tyson fights — was a amazing and very wealthy man to me who was directly responsible for bringing Mike Tyson’s bouts to fruition. Thus he was — and in many ways still is — in my book, heroic. Does that mean he should be President? Possibly.
When I was 10 years old I knew very little about civil rights past the fact that white people were mean to black people and black people retaliated. Thus, the fact that Donald Trump was proudly a supporter of Mike Tyson and Don King’s desire to be very publicly powerful and rich black men made him somewhat of a hip white guy in my eyes. He was certainly more hip than Ronald Reagan, Baltimore Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken, Jr. and Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs, then the most important white men in the world to me.
Of course, as I got older I learned about slavery, and then I learned about Black Power, too. This changed my view of Tyson and King, who I saw as willfully being underlings of this wealthy white guy, and weren’t about being iconic figures as black power for black people advocates. Rather, they were just a black boxing promoter trying to get over and his prized pugilist who was punching people in the face as literally a job, a hustle serving the purposes of him just trying to survive. The Donald in this case? A wealthy white business making a short-term investment in boxing as a thing that could make more things happen.
Furthermore, though flawed, Trump’s still a heroic figure to me because hell, it’s hard for any of us to admit that our childhood heroes ever did anything wrong. Sadly, over time I somehow warped my brain to believe that Trump ideally saw doing good by Mike Tyson — aside from Len Bias, the ultimate tragic ’80s sports figure — but going through Don King in order to do so as a cross worth bearing in order to potentially being even more of an iconic American.
As life and times (and his presidential announcement) have proven, in the chase of his singular American heroism Donald Trump has proven to be an asshole. However, linked to his electoral aspirations, his behavior showing him as the least altruistic of all of the world’s wealthy do-gooders could be an asset to America righting our ship. At a time where the altruistic goodness in bi-partisan participation gets rejected in Congress like Dikembe Mutombo blocking a shot during his NBA career, maybe Trump’s desire to be rich, wealthy and powerful (but with reclaiming American excellence as a goal) is needed.
Am I wrong to think that there are some Americans who are totally okay with potentially trading away clean air, world peace, regulatory oversight of industry and goodwill with many continents of the world for domestic tranquility? That’s what a wheeler-dealer like Trump would do in office. Trading black lives mattering and marginalized and minority American populations having increased social freedoms for relaxed regulations for keeping out water supply clean and abundant? That would totally happen, and on some level would be the equivalent of Donald Trump wanting to take credit for trying to help Mike Tyson but willfully bringing Don King into the equation.
This is an insane world possibly headed towards (more) cataclysmic occurrences. It’s going to require someone or something as insane as the times in order to create the balance that could bring them to an end sooner rather than later. Electing Hillary Clinton is the equivalent of upgrading from a band-aid to a carefully applied gauze wrap. If we want a solution that ends all of the ills of the world-at-present immediately (and yes, may cause 100 other things to go wrong), we can only hope that Donald Trump is taken seriously.
I mean, the man who tried to save Mike Tyson’s life by birthing his career is trying to save America. If you’re as much of a boxing fan, Black empowerment advocate or ’80s baby as I am, this is change that we can support.
Or maybe I’m nuts. I’ll let you decide.
EDIT: Obviously, I wasn’t nuts.
Originally published here: https://www.patreon.com/marcuskdowling
