The terrifying prospect of Trumpism unbound

Like a pack of slobbering pups eager to please their master, how trainable, in the arena of stupid dog tricks, is the modern Republican voter? In his presidential tenure's final exasperation conference last week, Barack Obama offered a clue: 37 percent of Republicans hold a favorable view of President Putin, a Russian despot hellbent on disfiguring European borders and destroying the postwar, U.S.-led, liberal international system. Twenty percent fewer Republicans hold a favorable view of their own nation's president.

By itself, the latter statistic is essentially unobjectionable. I haven't any 10-year-old polling at hand, but I doubt that even 17 percent of Democrats held a favorable view of America's then-sitting president. Still, I even more seriously doubt that more than one-third of Democrats would have leaned favorably toward Kim Jong-il, Robert Mugabe, or Sudan's Omar Al-Bashir, simply because a top party leader asked them to do so. Today, not so with a sizable, cringeworthy swath of Republican voters, who, by Donald Trump, have been ordered to fondness for Vladimir Putin. The proffered post-WWII theory of the obedient, right-wing authoritarian personality persists in its more-than-theoretical serviceability; it is asked by its domestically triumphant, neofascistic ghoul of a leader to look kindly on a foreign tyrant opposed to virtually every American interest -- and with no further question, it does.

"Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know," observed mass-movement analyst Eric Hoffer, the brilliant philosopher-author of The True Believer (1951). Crucially, a hefty segment of Republican voters have chosen not to know, among other things, the morbidly anti-Western Putin. Curiosity, inquiry, an independence of mind, the pursuit of objective knowledge -- the indispensable foundations of 17th-century, post-Renaissance Enlightenment thought, which emancipated the West from gothic superstitions and medieval ignorance -- are grimly fading features of the fanatically partisan Republican soul. Indeed, an eager willingness not to know the readily knowable is the Trumpist's most cherished ticket to group acceptance.

Quite aside from Trump supporters' substantial but nonetheless minority embrace of the intensely anti-American Putin, ponder this further finding from a recent Washington Post poll. Asked "Who do you think won the most popular votes?" in last month's presidential election, a majority (52 percent) of Republican respondents named Donald Trump. For weeks, the ubiquitous and factually inescapable headline news of Hillary Clinton's popular-vote victory (nearing three million) has somehow either escaped Republican notice or, more likely, I suspect, this Republican majority is breathtakingly insistent on rejecting irrefutable knowledge of what it wants not to know -- of whatever it wishes not to believe. The dimensions of Republicans' madly housed epistemic closure have transcended even their willfully pernicious ignorance of the George W. Bush and Tea Party epochs.

This unfolding phenomenon of mass-movement derangement is, it seems to me, historically and domestically equaled only by antebellum sectionalism's descent into national disorder and violent decay. The firebranded Southern Trumps of that era dispatched vast arrays of ruinous untruths to their benighted followers; reserve, reason and rationality were thrust aside as egregious antitheses to the "higher" cause of raw power. And it is that, today -- the wholesale appropriation of unlimited, unconstitutional power -- that neofascistic Trumpism so vividly seeks.

In that there loomed another once-civilized nation's plunge into the following century's madness. One "Enabling Act" crisis and America, as we and much of the world have admiringly known it, could pass into generational infamy.

Have a nice day.

 

Comments

[David & Son of Duff]

Maybe, baby, but I can't help wondering how many Dems wept buckets on the death of that other murderous, anti-American thug, Fidel Castro?

Jes' askin'!

[Peter G]

Some say as many as three, but nobody has been able to actually name one.

[Peter G]

They have a hard road ahead of them if their intention is to follow the path of authoritarian fascism. Creating the necessary conditions for success will first require destroying pretty good economic conditions and driving unemployment much higher. But only for Trump supporters. You'd need to get them good and riled while still not noticing who screwed them. Then maybe something along a Reichstag fire would be called for. Unfortunately America is so diverse now that they would probably just create enemies stronger than themselves. To be honest I just don't think they are smart enough to pull it off. It would be, neologistically, unpresidented.

I have often written that my personal preference has always been not to attribute to malice what can be fully explained by stupidity. We'll have our hands full just dealing with the latter. Our salvation? About three months into his term Trump is going to discover being president is hard, demanding and relentless. And then he will delegate power to the conflicted mass of interests he has assembled and retire to the Twitterverse. Let's face it, the guy is not bright.

[The Dark Avenger]

Probably as many as wept for that muderous, pro-American thug Pinochet.

Any more inquiries, old bean?

[Another Matt]

That's right. I think the opposition needs to make politics as boring and procedurally lugubrious as possible for him, and not play on his turf of perpetual outrage and intrigue. That might mean letting some of the most stupid things pass without comment, or at least without the "this is not normal!" freakout.

[Anne J]

Welcome back, PM I am happy to see you writing again. I hope your health is improving every day, please take it easy. I have been reading your articles, but the subject matter is just too depressing to comment on. Even being here in California I worry about losing the health care that has kept my defective heart functioning these last five years. It's depressing to see my country being taken over by a bunch of authority addicts and it's depressing that my state pays more in taxes to the federal government than it receives while having almost no representation. My only consolation these days is that it's much more quiet and peaceful out here in the political wilderness than it is in the echo chamber. I am proud to be one Republican who voted for Hillary Clinton, and who refuses to toe the party line. As a left leaning Republican, I've been in the political wilderness a long time. It's not so bad here. Much better than the echo chamber or the 24 hour news shouting matches. Right now, I prefer to be on the outside looking in.

[Marc McKenzie]

Well, according to some reports, Putin wept too.

Got anything more idiotic to add, bub?

[Marc McKenzie]

"Let's face it, the guy is not bright."

No, he certainly isn't. In fact, I'd go one step further--he's making George W. Bush look like a member of Mensa.

[Matt]

A recurring mistake on the part of the Dems, pundits, media, and blogosphere is dismissing Trump and his supporters as "stupid." While I would agree Trump is not "book smart" in the classical sense, the man (like most con artists) is decidedly "street smart" insomuch as he knows how to manipulate and play people like fiddles. Multiple times now he's obfuscated real stories with an outlandish Twitter hot take (flag burning), or galvanized his support by making the "liberal elite" act like, well, elitists ("unpresidented").

The situation, in my view, is not at all dissimilar to what I see in the hospital every day. Members of the medical profession handwring and bitch about the sorry state of health of the average patient and dismiss many of them as stupid because they keep making poor health choices despite being presented with "the proper way." What rarely enters into the thought process is how well the message is being delivered and how it's received. We in the medical profession often fail to recognize we take understanding "the proper way" for granted because we have years of training. We also often don't make the effort of ensuring we explain things in a way patients can understand--many doctors still operate in a world where their word is gold because they're the doctor, so patients have to do what they say. Unfortunately, that world died with social media and the Internet.

I see the same trends in politics. Mistrust of authority, be it a doctor or a government official, is pervasive. Most Democrats are flailing, blaming, and making excuses instead of engaging the electorate. Meanwhile, Trump need only point at their madness to reinforce his rhetoric.

Are there people who can't be reasoned with? Absolutely. I can figure out within seconds if I'm talking to a paranoid anti-vaxxer that will never trust me (or anyone else). However, there's a sizeable portion of people out there who are willing to engage and listen--they just need to feel like they're not being talked down to and their concerns are being heard.

[David & Son of Duff]

At last, some effort to apply reason although how far it will penetrate the dim, Dem mindset is arguable.

[Matt]

Elitism is far from a democratic monopoly, David. And while I'm highly critical of the way most of the "alt-center" is behaving right now (especially since it is mirroring the backlash to the 1968 election with irritating regularity), it does not change the inherent danger of the populist games Trump and the Republicans are playing. They are overpromising things to an angry mob they can't possibly deliver.

My argument is simply that instead of exhibiting the nihilistic tenancies ala the Republicans for the past 6 years (and believe me, part of me just wants to watch this backfire horribly), the Dems need to get their shit together and offer a real alternative message and get ready to pick up the pieces when the wheels come off the Trump bus.

[David & Son of Duff]

Matt, whilst I do not quite accept all of your description of current trends in the American body-politic, I do absolutely and totally agree with this:

"the Dems need to get their shit together and offer a real alternative message".

And to begin with, they should drop all the gratuitous insults to their fellow Americans which, though they might act in the same self-relieving mode of a really good fart after a heavy meal, will actually convince Trump voters they were absolutely right - as well as Right!