True Believers

I read recently about a pro-Trump person who said this: “There is nothing you can say that will make me not vote for Trump.” That was her cheerful response when she was presented with a litany of the candidate’s misstatements, lies, and assorted idiocies She was doing what Trumpists do: Putting her hands over her ears and humming loudly when confronted with the facts. What these folks are hearing from Trump has nothing to do with facts and is coming to them over a different frequency, like a dog whistle. It has everything to do with the none-too-subtle permission he grants them to blame their problems and failures on others and to see themselves as victims. It also has to do with a you’re-not-the-boss-of-me streak of childish resentment and stubbornness which essentially says this: I’m doing what I’m doing not because I think it’s right but precisely because you don’t want me to. This is what we’re up against as we try to stop this man who would be king from smashing our democracy.

And then we have the Bernie Sanders true-believers, with their loose talk about “revolution” and their adolescent demonization of Hillary Clinton. It is not unreasonable to support the political candidacy of Sanders, an intelligent and experienced politician with a good heart, while still having reservations about the wisdom and/or viability of some of the things he advocates. It’s another thing entirely to obsess over him – to worship at his altar to the point of believing that his candidacy will save the country and another’s destroy it. Some Sanders supporters who express rabid antagonism for Clinton – a middle of the road, not-insane politician who comes from pretty much the same place on the political spectrum as Sanders – are now making noises about voting for Donald Trump if they don’t get their way. Down this path lies a what-was-I-thinking moment, as President Trump attempts to make good on his bizarre promises and nonsensical ideas 

For now, though, we have the empty-headed musings of the actress Susan Sarandon, in which she suggested that a lot of Sanders people would be unable to bring themselves to vote for Clinton and would vote for Trump instead, because Trump “will bring the revolution immediately if he gets in then things will really, you know, explode.” Here is New York Times columnist Charles Blow:

“What was Sarandon talking about with her coy language? ‘Bring the revolution’? Exactly what kind of revolution? ‘Explode’? Was the purpose to present this as a difficult but ultimately positive development? The comments smacked of petulance and privilege. No member of an American minority group — whether ethnic, racial, queer-identified, immigrant, refugee or poor — would (or should) assume the luxury of uttering such a imbecilic phrase, filled with lust for doom. Be absolutely clear: While there are meaningful differences between Clinton and Sanders, either would be a far better choice for president than any of the remaining Republican contenders, especially the demagogic real estate developer. Assisting or allowing his ascendance by electoral abstinence in order to force a ‘revolution’ is heretical. This position is dangerous, shortsighted and self-immolating. This is not a game. The presidency, particularly the next one, matters, and elections can be decided by relatively small margins. No president has won the popular vote by more than 10 percentage points since Ronald Reagan in 1984. There is no true equivalency between either of the Democratic candidates and this man, and anyone who make such a claim is engaging in a repugnant, dishonorable scare tactic not worth our respect.”

Note to Sanders fanatics/Clinton demonizers: You are way too far down in the weeds here. Take a breath and see the bigger picture.  You know the idea that Donald Trump would be better for the country than Hillary Clinton -- something a good many Republicans inexplicably continue to believe, or at least say they believe -- is ludicrous.  Shake it off.

At Long Last

It was during the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954 that the Army’s lawyer, Joseph Welch, rebuked unrepentant demagogue and relentless smear artist Joe McCarthy with these words: “Senator; you've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” There has been no shortage of information on the foolishness and demagoguery of Donald Trump. He has been fully exposed, and we know that he has no sense of decency. But what about his followers? What do they see in him? Who are these people who have so much admiration for this uninformed egotistical blowhard who trades in hatred, resentment, and fear. We’re a ways into this political season and the Trumpists have been steadfast and growing in number. At long last, have they no sense of decency?

An important clue is in the free-floating hostility they proudly harbor (and angrily express) toward everything and everybody they perceive as being aligned against them; which, apparently, is everything and everybody. It is to Mr. Trump they look to vanquish these ghostly tormentors, and their faith in his ability to do it appears to be based entirely on his swaggering, kick-ass attitude and carriage. It certainly can’t be based on anything he actually says because every word that has come out of his mouth so far has been either impenetrably vague, completely incomprehensible, or simply wrong. They live in a fantasyland of imagined enemies and armchair pugnacity.

A characteristic that true believers of every political persuasion have in common is the tendency (need?) to sanctify their candidate and demonize their candidate’s opponents. Their guy, they believe, will make everything all right. The other guy will make everything all wrong. They are, they seem to think, electing a king or a dictator, and not merely the head of the executive branch within a representative democracy in which making good on the wild promises one makes in a campaign setting is extremely (and deliberately) difficult. In fact, it is now clear that Trump and his people are quite impatient with democracy and its processes, and would prefer an office-holder who can make everything right for them by executive decree. Government by and for the people? Nah. We just want our daddy to tell us what to do, and make it all better.

Whatever “it all” is. In some quarters, followers of Trump are characterized as being perhaps wrong-headed in their embrace of Trump but having grievances that are legitimate, involving the changing economic and employment landscape of recent years. If that’s the case, there is an exquisite irony here, as these folks – staunch advocates of small government, free markets, individual responsibility, and rugged independence – whine about everything government hasn’t done for them lately.

You would think that they’re an army of the unemployed. In fact, these people are not, for the most part, unemployed. As for the economy in general, it has created 14-million private-sector jobs since 2010, dropping unemployment to under 5 percent. Housing and construction are strong, the auto industry is thriving, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has more than doubled in the last eight or so years. So things are actually pretty good and the problems and conditions that have steam coming out of these folks’ ears are largely illusory.

No, chalking up their anger and frustration to economic dislocation gives them far too much credit. Because what they’re really about is bigotry, The message they get from Trump comes in the form of permission to hate – to believe in the existence of, and to blame their problems on, the hated “other.” Trump legitimizes the antipathy, the latent distrust, that this largely white, male, blue-collar constituency has for various groups – blacks, religious minorities, women, etc. They pine for the good old days when you could put these groups down without fear of violating “political correctness.” And, like the acolytes of demagogues everywhere, they are certain that whatever is missing from their lives is somebody else’s fault.