Trump's appeal to the monsters on our street

In 1960, Rod Serling wrote "The monsters are due on Maple Street," an oblique social commentary for "The Twilight Zone" to address prejudice and mob hysteria. Both had fueled the investigations by the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee and the work of U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy a few decades earlier.A dramatic reading of this TV script was part of the seventh-grade language arts curriculum for years in my classroom. It's an important work, which I'm proud to have introduced to so many students because the story has lasting power. Their teacher reflects on it often as the Donald Trump phenomenon advances.The setting is Maple Street, USA, an ordinary neighborhood whose residents were comfortable with each other until "the monsters came." An unexplained roar overhead was unsettling but not overly so until the power went out — electricity, phones,and gas-powered engines.The element of fear is introduced when young Tommy ties the strange happenings to similar ones from a comic book story about alien invaders. It seems aliens in human form were already present to prepare for conquest. The residents of Maple Street laugh nervously until the power comes on in one house only. Minutes later a car starts with no one in the car.Enter suspicion. Why does only that family have electricity? Why does only his car start? Ordinary behaviors become suspect. Who is Steve Brand really talking to alone in his basement on that radio of his? Why does Wes Goodman come outside in the pre-dawn and look up at the sky?As suspicions and accusations grow, Charlie, the neighborhood hothead, gets his shot gun. Steve Brand, the voice of reason (and with weaker support from a few others) tries to no avail to calm the situation and avoid mob hysteria. Charlie ends up killing a neighbor, ironically turning suspicion on himself since — obviously, his victim had to be silenced. Even young Tommy becomes suspect because he "knew." Desperate for a scapegoat, neighbors attack neighbors.The story turns to the spaceship hovering above. The aliens are indeed real. See the pattern now? Just disrupt their comfort zones and sit back and watch them destroy each other, one neighborhood at a time, one after the other, one after the other.Serling's story popped into my mind when I overheard part of a conversation as I left the courthouse after voting in the March presidential primary. One said he had voted for Trump because, "I don't know. He just seems to know something we don't know."A political analyst recently characterized Trump as an empathetic bully. Empathy's a good thing until it's a bully's tool. He tunes in to fears and insecurities then offers himself as strongman protector. It's reported that Trump hired people to do nothing but listen to right-wing talk radio to craft his message and his language. He takes glee in social disruptions like San Bernardino because they deepen fears and solidify his appeal.His social standing and his wealth provide credibility and reassurance. Those inclined to hate "the other" find permission, which is why Trump attracts the KKK and other white supremacist groups.Such cover must offer a lot because Trump's language (in both what he says when he talks about his supporters and what he says when he actually speaks to them) is disdainful and insulting. It is arrogantly anchors his campaign in gullibility and apparent stupidity. It doesn't matter that he's a braggart and a litigious liar. It's OK that his demeanor most resembles a 3-year-old. So what if he demonstrates no moral moorings?We've abandoned reason and caved to irrational fears (or joined the hysteria for the drama) before. It isn't the first time a bully opportunist has managed to exploit insecurities and appeal to basest instincts. It's the first time, though, that one has his toxic platform bolstered by years of political extremists desperately trying to delegitimize their black president with a foreign-sounding name.Since Trump turned to direct verbal assaults against immigrants, or as it's becoming clearer, anyone not white, citizen or not, hate crimes have skyrocketed — particularly against American Muslims. Teachers report a dramatic uptake in child-on-child harassment and intimidation.Hate group numbers are at unprecedented levels which should concern us locally. The Southern Poverty Law Center ranks Tennessee among the five top states with the highest number of identified hate groups with many in East Tennessee.Not since the Cold War threat of mutual annihilation has the future been so uncertain with increasing impacts of climate change, cyber and extremist threat, food and water shortages and unprecedented global unrest. Trump-style anti-intellectual irrationality takes root in such fertile ground. Our monster is no fiction.I'm dismayed that my beautiful state seems poised to endorse the shallow, scheming, hateful changeling who views the concept of being "presidential" like a garment to be donned or discarded to suit his whim. How embarrassing, too, that the rest of the world views the triumph of Trump — the magnified embodiment of the quintessential Ugly American — as our common tragedy.Jennie Young of Elizabethton is a retired language arts teacher.