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Look at it this way: Does Donald Trump believe he's smarter than most anyone else in politics? Does Donald Trump have ideas for how to "fix" the country? Does Donald Trump believe his ideas are better than anyone else's? Does Donald Trump believe he'd make a great President? Would Donald Trump accept the position of President if he won it? Will Donald Trump's personal ethos and intricate psyche be offended if his candidacy isn't taken seriously, leading him to stay in the race much longer than he otherwise would? Does Donald Trump have the money to stay in the race as long as he wants? The answer to all of these questions is "yes," and, taken collectively, this catechism explains why and how the Trump presidential run is both metamodern and, yes, sincere.
Specifically, we can expect that both those attracted by irony and those attracted by sincerity are and will be drawn to metamodern politicians like Trump. For instance, disaffected young voters who believe politics is a farce will flock to Trump's cause because they see, in his ridiculous public persona, a reification of how preposterous politics has become. So they'll be Trumpets (Trump followers), but cynical ones. On the other side of things, the Tea Party will be attracted to Trump because his latent bitterness -- packaged as merely arrogance -- appeals to their earnest instincts. Tea Partiers are angry, and sincerely so, and this manifests as an almost impossible-to-credit arrogance which we find, also, in Trump. (Consider, for a moment, the "constitutional" critique the Tea Party offers of the Obama presidency, a critique so entirely devoid of specifics about the Constitution or any knowledge whatsoever of constitutional law or the history of the Republic that its self-righteous ignorance is both awesome and spectacular. Ask a Tea Partier how Obama has weakened the Constitution and either they won't know or they'll offer a paper-thin explanation that folds under even the slightest scrutiny; none of this, however, puts even the slightest dent in their sincere outrage on the topic.) When you add to disaffected youth and enraged Rightists a small bloc of politically uneducated voters who, incredibly, see the political neophyte Trump as being capable of running the world, you end up with a high enough percentage of the Republican electorate that, yes, Trump will be in all the debates -- including the much-maligned Fox one in August.
