Trump is positioned to earn the Republican nomination in July -- and it is important you know your role in it.
The appeal of Donald Trump is undeniable. He is brazen and bombastic, tough-talking and relentless. The ultimate showman, he engages the media with a "look! nothing-up-my-sleeves, your-emperor-of-a-government-has-no-clothes," wizardry. He is a mega-star of the magniloquent.
It really isn't too hard to understand his ascension to presidential frontrunner -- the difficulty is in accepting that you helped get him there.
Donald Trump's candidacy could not, and could never, exist in a vacuum. Rather, it is the direct result of yours and my contribution to, and compliance to dutifully play our role in, a morally dystopic, mean-spirited, schadenfreude-fueled culture.
Trump permissiveness lives in the bad plastic surgery slideshows we click through, in the humiliating GIFs of the under-educated and disenfranchised we joyfully share, in our supercilious voyeurism in skimming blogs dedicated to celebrities' hacked sexts -- all of it is complicit in the grooming of his candidacy.
"But I'm voting for Hillary," you say. "I Feel The Bern," you say. "I support the moderate, measured campaign of John Kasich."
If you watched Real Housewives of New Jersey with glee as a woman upends a table and then verbally vomits into another woman's face -- at that moment, you are a Trump supporter.
When you cozy up to watch The Bachelor to see a young woman accept an invitation to the fantasy suite where she will finally be fucked proper in a way that is as titillating for you as it is humiliating for her -- yes, at that moment, you are a Trump supporter.
To be fair, the actual Trump voter may have the grim desire to draw those minutes from small moments into unremitting tropes.
"The Donald" is the ultimate logical incarnation of our culture's "throwing shade" -- creating a meteoric rise in the polls that is nothing less than roosting chickens seeking the very same approval from a presidential candidate they have sought for years in pompous reality show judges.
Perhaps it is time Donald Trump re-branded his campaign with the stark and undeniable slogan, "You Brought It On Yourselves, America."