My response to a friend asking me about 2024 [View all]
Last edited Mon Dec 11, 2023, 12:11 AM - Edit history (1)
Sometimes putting things in writing helps me make sense of complicated issues. Like many of us, I am struggling with what America has become and how we got here. I am trying to make sense of how someone like Trump can attract so many rabid followers in spite being such an obviously defective human being. Why are seemingly sensible people attracted to a figure who I find repulsive in so many ways? What has affected their thinking that somehow fails to convince me that he is anything but a deeply troubled narcissist and a shameless cheat?
I have acquaintances, even some friends, who are well educated, successful members of our community who see a savior when all I can see is a charlatan. How can they perceive him so differently than I do? What colors their perception of this man that doesn’t do the same to mine? We have many common interests and points of agreement, but our diverging opinions of the former president seem insurmountable. Their embrace of Trump seems so illogical that I can’t find a starting point for any dialogue in which I might hope to change their views.
Consider the absurdity of their choice to lead our country. Trump is a twice impeached former president who has never received the votes of a majority of voters, an indicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, a prodigious liar, a chronic business failure, a self-confessed sexual assailant, a fawning admirer of autocrats, an unapologetic racist, a serial philanderer who has cheated on all of his many wives, a draft-dodging coward and particularly loathsome in his appearance and demeanor. I could go on, but you get the idea. He has no redeeming qualities other than a rapidly approaching expiration date. Any of his myriad faults should be disqualifying for the highest office in the land and yet he is the overwhelming choice of most Republicans.
Speaking with the few Trump supporters I know, I have learned that they have different sources of information than mine and starkly different positions on social issues. Many of them are outspoken about their religious beliefs and how their faith guides their lives. Some are not shy about sharing their prejudices. I think I may have found a common thread that might explain Trumpism and the rise of right-wing autocrats across the globe.
Sources promoting Trump and other like demagogues have a common link to what can only be described as dark money. The Koch network of mega donors, the Heritage Society and Fox News are common examples of the very wealthy using their great financial power to shape our society. Why they are promoting a buffoon who thinks democracy is expendable is not hard to see. With a growing disparity of wealth from the top to the bottom, real democracy has become increasingly problematic for the few at the top of the food chain. They do not believe that we are all equal in any sense and those far below their lofty perch are somehow less worthy to choose the course of history. Even with built-in limits to true majority rule, like the Electoral College and a non-representative senate, controlling the outcomes of our elections is more challenging for them in every election. Changing demographics and an enlightened electorate are their enemies.
In recent years, they have used wedge issues to dupe voters into voting against their own best interests. Their message: “Vote for our guy and he will preserve your right to own and use any weapon of war your heart desires. He will put the force of law behind whatever your religion dictates. He will assure you that no one who doesn’t have your exact sexual orientation will enjoy any of the rights you do. He will make certain that you will never have to compete with anyone whose skin color is darker than yours or whose first language is not English.” The idea is to enlist aggrieved less fortunate voters in the battle to protect their growing wealth and power. Unfortunately for them, that didn’t work in 2020.
More recently we are hearing their challenges to the very idea of democracy. They grudgingly accept government, but only as a means of advancing their wealth and enforcing their prejudices. Defense spending is sacred because it is the driving force behind the growth of obscene fortunes. Law enforcement can be a tool to suppress the growing mass of Americans less white and less privileged than them. They paint American ideals like diversity, equality and inclusion as something to be feared and rejected. Branding anything intended for the better good of all as “woke” is an effective way of discrediting any socially beneficial function of government.
Their first reaction to losing the 2020 election was to discredit the election itself and to attempt to bring the machinery of democracy to a halt. They waged a wholesale assault on the truth. Under Trump’s exhortation, they launched a bloody, brutal assault on the legislative branch. Sadly, they had willing accomplices in Congress who were either in on the plot or just willing to stand by and watch democracy die.
After gaining a slim majority in the 2022 elections, congressional Republicans used their newly regained power to make government as ineffective as possible and to hobble the Biden administration. The halls of Congress became an echo chamber for disinformation and fear mongering. Congressional Republicans put their allegiance to Trump and the powers that helped him gain the White House ahead of any sense of decency or duty to their real constituents, the American people. The few who cared packed up and left or were defeated by Trump surrogates wanting in on the action.
The money behind the attack on democracy is not all domestic. The ultra wealthy seem to have a common bond that reaches beyond international boundaries. Russian oligarchs, Saudi princes and American titans of tech enjoy a special kinship forged by their shared quest for power. The money legally injected into American politics has always been detrimental to our Union but billions of unaccountable dollars are now spent by individuals, organizations and governments to change the political landscape across the globe.
Trump will not be remembered as a transformative president but as a blunt instrument employed by the rich and powerful to bludgeon democracy into submission. Defeating him in 2024 must be our immediate priority but, long after he is pushing up daisies in Bedminster, the peril to our precious and once unquestioned democracy will persist.
= new reply since forum marked as read