A Rare Right Turn

I'm honestly trying not to write too much about Donald Trump. I don't want to turn off readers, and I want to maintain my own sanity. But it's hard; he's such a perfect demonstration of all that's wrong with humanity. I mean, people were comparing his presidential run to that of David Duke in the eighties to demonstrate the shift in America's acceptance of extreme ideas. And the next thing you know, David Duke actually endorses Trump, and he waffles over it, and there are no consequences. It's like political gods (or devils) are toying with us.

(And I'm glad to say that Android is still interpreting my swipe of "presidential run" as "presidential ruin.")

But sometimes something comes up that I just can't ignore, like when NASCAR endorses Trump for president. That had sports journalists wondering, has a major sports organization ever endorsed a presidential contender before? It's hard to imagine, say, the NFL endorsing a candidate, if only because they rely on fans from all parts of the political spectrum. But to be clear, NASCAR itself didn't endorse Trump; the CEO of NASCAR, Brian France, merely endorsed Trump, at a rally, accompanied by several current and former drivers. It was enough that many people thought it was an official endorsement from the racing series itself. Trump himself wrongly said that the endorsement came from NASCAR itself, but on the list of Trump exaggerations, that doesn't even crack the top thousand.

At this point, I must ask you to stop and get all the "France endorses Trump" jokes out of your system.

This whole incident says a lot about the Trump phenomena and the cultural split in America. France felt comfortable endorsing him, presumably because NASCAR fandom is uniformly behind Trump, or close enough that an endorsement will do more good than harm. As I've mentioned before, NASCAR may like to portray itself as part of the sporting mainstream, but they are also willing to play right into their own stereotypes. Indeed, the organization has put considerable work into expanding outside its traditional white audience, which makes this whole thing perplexing. But that just demonstrates how Trump's support is so divorced from his actions. The campaign is entirely about attitude, so Trump's enemies seem to be the only ones concerned about his actual words.