Is it maybe some sort of primitive (and really crude) male-dominance signalling thing?
Even though Trump is thankfully headed downward in recent polling, it still shocks and amazes me his numbers are now, or have ever been, higher than single digits.
As a white male I find it especially disgusting and shameful that a majority my fellow white males are still supporting the "fascist, loofah-faced, shit-gibbon" after all of the time they've now had to witness this on-going trainwreck of a human being.
The abject horror of Trump is and always has been so blindingly and stunningly obvious to me it's difficult to imagine any barely conscious human being perceiving Trump otherwise. It's far different from the "the dress is blue/the dress is white thing". It's like I'm looking at a steaming pile of elephant shit and someone else is telling me they see a bed of roses.
Even the Trump portrayed on Fox News, with all the care they take to put him in the best light possible, is an odious, blithering huckster, one whose talent as a huckster should only be effective on the very dimmest of marks.
It makes me think of the "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" scene in the Wizard of Oz, but a version where the instruction to pay no attention actually works, Dorothy and her friends blithely concur that the man behind the curtain is nothing worthy of notice, and the full illusion of The Great and Powerful Oz remains miraculously unbroken.
Trump of course receives enormous help from right wing media, but there's only so much a fully dedicated army of liars, con artists, and sycophants should reasonably be able to accomplish. No matter how united and resolutely devoted to their cause they were, a planet-wide conspiracy of weather reporters couldn't convince me that a raging blizzard was, in fact, a warm, pleasant, sunny day. The task of selling Trump as a "strong leader" and "great president" in any rational universe should be as insurmountable.
Yet somehow they fall for it. A huge number of people fall for it.
I can't help but wonder if maybe it's some sort of primal dominance signalling that I'm largely immune to, but to which a freakishly large portion of the human population, especially men, is susceptible. Something that works even when all of the higher-level signalling that developed in our species sometime after our ancestors climbed down out of trees (you know, the stuff about Trump that screams out "I'm an ignorant, incompetent, narcissistic, bullying asshole, totally lacking in empathy and human decency, just barely covering my Marianas Trench-deep insecurities" ) is an utter disaster.
Plenty of other dictators and dictator wannabees display Trumpian sorts of ugly, ridiculous, and buffoonish characteristics too. I can see how clever psychopaths with great acting ability and polished, surface-level charm can pull off a rise to power, but what is it that leaves us human beings so susceptible to blatantly craven clowns?
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