Donald Trump's disgustingly brilliant bluster

Speaking of speech, these are confounding times.

There seems to be little you can say on college campuses, or few speakers you can invite to campuses, without getting into all kinds of trouble. The free exchange of ideas, part of the very purpose of higher education, has devolved into student demands that campus be a place safe from having to confront dissenting views.

Then there's Donald Trump, who says whatever he wants of the most vile or untruthful nature and suffers no apparent consequence.

It would be an astonishing candidacy on any level of government, but he's vying to be president of the United States.

Now, truth-twisting and truth-ignoring have been part of political campaigning basically forever. But most candidates, when called unimpeachedly on an untruth, respond by ceasing to use it, reinterpreting it, or in rare cases actually apologizing.

Trump does none of that. Forget the art of the deal, he's perfected the art of the double-down. He repeats the untruth more loudly, offers nothing new or real to back it up, and demands apologies from those who dare to question him. This appeals to those who think that if they're yelling louder they must be right. It's barroom politics, it's brazen, and it's apparently brilliant because it's working.

In July, experts said he'd implode by September. In September, they said November. Now we're two days from December, two months from the Iowa caucuses, and Trump still is riding high.

Voters say they like him because he shakes things up and says things others won't. True, because they're not factual.

He says President Barack Obama wants to accept 250,000 more Syrian refugees when it's 10,000.

He tweets out blatantly false crime statistics based on race, then defends that by saying it was merely a retweet.

He says he saw thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheering as the Twin Towers fell on Sept. 11, a claim thoroughly debunked. Then, after disgracefully mocking the physical disability of one debunker, a New York Times reporter, Trump says he couldn't have been mocking the reporter because he'd never met him and he has "one of the all-time great memories." This despite the reporter having been on a first-name basis with Trump while covering his business career extensively in the 1980s.

Another puzzler: He leads the pack in a Republican Party that believes in smaller government, but his proposals to register and track all Muslims and deport 11 million immigrants would further bloat the federal bureaucracy and increase spending.

But no one stokes fear and anger like Trump -- and that's carrying the day, because it often does in uncertain times. Those others are the reason for your problems, he says. His solution: "I'm going to do it, nobody can or ever has done it better, and we're going to win again. Believe me." After all, he says he can predict terrorism because he can feel it.

We can lament what he's done to the tone of the campaign debate, how his conduct emboldens rivals in their speech. But we cannot dismiss him. He's tapping into a rawness that's real, and inflaming it. People are angry. They are disillusioned. They are disgusted with politicians and politics as usual. Trump is the vehicle for their frustrations.

He's been called everything from an immigrant-bashing carnival barker to the lizard king. But he's yet to self-destruct, despite the expectations and fondest wishes of some in his own party.

There's still time, but we're getting closer to the point where the candidacy that's a joke becomes a joke on us.

Michael Dobie is a member of Newsday's editorial board.

By Michael Dobie

michael.dobie1@newsday.commwdobie

Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.