Counting coup on Trump doesn't count

Student groups celebrated their driving Donald Trump out of Chicago over the weekend, while the man who tried to rush Trump's podium in Dayton OH --without a weapon, as far as I know -- boasts of having "bullied the bully" and "delegitimizing" Trump. In other words, there's a lot of self-delusion going on if these people think they have at all weakened the Republican front-runner. If anything, they'll probably make him stronger as a backlash builds against increasingly organized disruptions of Trump's campaign events. People like these should know from experience that nothing enrages or emboldens extremists than attempts to silence them. They should understand that they aren't delegitimizing Trump at all for anyone outside their ideological safe space. Seeing an older video of Tommy DiMassimo, the Dayton provocateur -- whom Trump seems to have mistaken for an Islamic State sympathizer -- makes it plain that people like him are operating on id as much as Trump and his fans are. They seem to be driven by the same impulse to denounce by insult while basking in their own righteousness. You don't make a spectacle out of stepping on the American flag and expect to accomplish anything positive in this country. Iconoclasm and a threat to occupy the public sphere are all such people have to offer. I'm not normally bothered by this sort of leftist excess, but for leftists to mistake their exhibitionism for political accomplishment at this time, much less exalt it to a higher plane of activism than the electioneering outreach necessary to stop Trump, is pathetic. What do they propose to do if Trump is elected President? Bumrush the inauguration? What will that prove? That they won't accept Trump as their President? They don't get to do that unless they do everything in their power to get people to vote against him,and if they fail he'll be just as much their President, whether they like it or not, as Obama is the President of his haters, whether they like it or not. And even though the Obama haters were dedicated to opposition and obstruction from day one, they did not make a scene at either of Obama's inaugurations of the sort that you know the Trumpophobes are planning should the day come. The sort of displays DiMassimo puts on, equivalent to the tantrums of Trump and his people, won't accomplish anything toward any goal he may have for a better country or world. But I doubt whether he has any real goal apart from self-expression, which under a decadent sort of liberalism becomes an end unto itself, whatever else happens to the nation. After all, isn't that what we boast of, in essence, when we condemn the authoritarians of the world: that we are free as long as we can say Fuck You to our leaders and our fellow citizens? You'd think the authoritarians would take note and let their people blow off steam as ours do -- but they probably take their people too seriously to do that.