WARNING: The following contains some griping and some sweeping generalization, but these do not negate what I perceive to be true.

Back in the first part of May, Leesa and I visited friends in Nashville, which was fun a usual. We ate and drank with them, hung out in new places and old, had a float (me) and massage (Leesa), and attended my Nashville church West End United Methodist. I did some research for my novel-in-progress.

The only blemish on the trip was that our view of the Nashville skyline was here and there embarrassingly stained by billboards announcing the coming of Trump for a rally on May 24. This isn’t surprising for Tennessee, although I hated to see my beloved Nashville tainted by hints of such baseless adoration.

As always, I wondered and wondered and wondered: “What’s the appeal?” While my wondering has led me to all sorts of speculation and generalization, here’s a simple story that I believe suggests something true about the Trump phenomenon and his adoring base.

When I lived in Nashville back in the 1980s, one job I had for some years was as a clerk in Cat’s Records. During one period, I was assigned to the store on Gallatin Road (or maybe Gallatin Ave. or even Main St.) in east Nashville. I remember this high school girl–I’ll call her Tarah Grump–was shopping in the store one day and told me she was going to see Sammy Hagar in concert (during his pre-Van Halen career). Not a favorite of mine, but hey, if she likes him. . . .

A few days later, she was in the store again, and I remembered to ask her how the concert was.

“It was cool,” she told me. “He said ‘fuck’ like every other word.” Then she said again, “It was cool.”

Nothing about Hagar’s songs or his singing or guitar playing. Nothing about his band or the light show. In a word, nothing of substance.

That’s it, I think — the base appeal of Trump. Like a third-rate stand-up comedian, he just riffs on a bunch of mean phrases and bad jokes that have a base, visceral appeal to his adorers and don’t require any thought or . . . let’s just stop with thought, because if that’s absent or unavailable or checked at the door of the rally or speech or even just an image of DT, then the other things I was going to mention are baseless anyway.

WARNING REMINDER: The previous contains some griping and some sweeping generalization, but these do not negate what I believe to be true.