Is Donald Trump Reading Your Blog?

Is Donald Trump Reading Your Blog?
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I've never crossed paths with Donald Trump, but his type is very familiar to me because I grew up in Manhattan. I think of him as a New York Blowhard, and they're as much a part of the scenery as the skyline.

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I've run across the type in cabs, bars, subways and buses, classrooms, at parties and even family gatherings. These people of both genders love attention. They love to fulminate about anything and everything. They love the sound of their own voices. They spout opinions as if they're facts. They have a whale of a time holding the floor. For them, as humorist Fran Liebowitz wrote years ago, the opposite of talking isn't listening, the opposite of talking is waiting. Mocking people is what they live for.

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And Trumpism flourishes sublimely well on the Internet when people can post without personal contact--because nobody can interrupt them at all. If you dare to post a blog that criticizes any show, movie, performance, or book that somebody admires, a Trumpist will strike. That Trumpeter will inevitably ramble, miss your points or distort them, and condescend to you as if you're the world's biggest idiot.

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You'll be called a hater, ignorant, or something else from a very limited store of epithets. Responding is a waste of time because you'll get trapped in the echo chamber of the poster's self-regard. But you'll be tempted... If you succumb, you're playing the poster's game because anything you say will be turned against you as further proof of your inferiority.

Their ultimate and cheapest shot is to wonder why you're blogging about whatever it is when "there are so many more important things going on in the world."

Which includes everything rattling around in their heads, of course.

Lev Raphael is the author of 25 books in genres from memoir to mystery which you can find on Amazon.

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