People find it hard to believe that Donald Trump’s approval rating is still at 36 percent. And these people wonder what is wrong with these people that they can’t see what an infected prolapse Donald Trump is. How can anyone still support him?
The answer is not that complicated, but it is invisible to most of the hand-wringers due to the left’s inability to see and overcome its own prejudices.
The secret, for those interested, is that these people do not actually support Donald Trump at all.
They support the idea of Donald Trump.
That’s what they fell in love with and voted for and that’s what they support today. They support their dream of Trump, and the warm, comforting feeling they get from their image of who he is.
In short, they worship an imaginary Trump which is partly of their own making.
In this, they are merely completing the journey that the American right wing has been on ever since Rush Limbaugh convinced them that being a “ditto head” (as in, “you know what he says? Ditto for me too!”) was a good thing and not a source of great shame at your complete failure to do the hard work of thinking for yourself.
Which is very un-American of them. Their founding fathers built their democracy with the idea that every citizen would form their own informed opinion and contribute to the marketplace of ideas.
But then again, these people love an imaginary version of America, too.
Holy crap, it’s hot today. Heatstroke sucks.
Anyhow, the Trump supporters of today have divorced themselves from reality entirely. It’s the only way they can can maintain their belief in him.
In that, they are merely conservatives.
What makes the Trump version of this intellectually disabling conservative disease is that this time, they have to ignore not just what the “biased” mainstream says and does, but what the man himself says and does.
Thus, they have embraced pure idealism. To them, Trumps now partakes of the perfection of the ideal without any of reality’s weaknesses. They are now free from all need to take in information, let alone make up their minds about it.
This, for them, is bliss.
However, no matter how deeply anyone embraces this insipidity, their brain continues to work. So maintaining this form of Zen ignorance is not without cost. It requires his adherents to ignore massive amounts of cognitive dissonance and that takes a hell of a toll on people.
Also ignored : the strong part of the conservative mind that wants to be “normal’.
Preferably extraordinarily so.
The modern liberal is fond of thinking of Trump supporters as brainless sheep perfectly content to believe whatever Fox News tells them
But that’s not true. They are not perfectly content. They are, in fact, increasingly unhappy and under a lot of strain.
They just lack the mental flexibility to change their minds based on new information. It’s something that few people find easy, and it is, of course, always easy and fun to talk about someone else changing all their fundamental beliefs based on what you, yourself, see as the obvious truth.
And you, of course, are perfectly objective and all your opinions are based on a rational and sober evaluation of the facts, not like those brainless people on the right.
But tell me this : when was the last time you changed one of your own fundamental beliefs based on new information?
Not in a long time, you say. “But that’s different. I don’t have to change my fundamental beliefs because I’m right!”.
They think the same thing, friend.
Anyhow, my point is that this state of suspended reason is fragile and hard to maintain. And it can’t withstand direct betrayal. Right now, Trump’s supporters can still fool themselves into thinking he’s going to make America great again eventually, but that only lasts as long as it takes for Little Donny to get around to hurting them and/or people they know personally.
In fact, it can’t withstand even oncoming harm. The fragility of his support means it could crumble just from the strain of accumulated proximal embarrassments. And if he does something that violently contradicts one of the right’s sacred talking points, like says something bad about Christianity, or get caught in some kind of sex scandal that is way too pruriently fascinating for them to ignore, then he will lose the social conservative support that is already on life support.
But first, they will need a way out. A better candidate for their support, be it politician, pundit, or philosophy. These people cannot tolerate doubt and so they can only leave a position when they have a better one to run to and go back to blessed certainty.
It’s both an intellectual and emotional need for these people.
It is my belief that nearly all his supporters are looking for that way out now, some with frantic intensity. They need a way to exit Trump fandom that doesn’t require them to come right out and admit they were wrong.
They can’t do that, either.
We saw a preview of it during the 2016 election. We saw it when the “grab them by the pussy” tape came out. That conversation was so gobsmackingly offensive that it gave a lot of Trump supporters the break they needed to abandon him by saying “Okay, NOW he has gone too far. ”
It’s hard to say what Trump revelation could do that now. Like I said, these people are not even paying attention to what Trump actually says and does any more. Damning evidence that Russia controls him might do it if it is accompanied by some kind of shocking mental imagery, like a tape of him badmouthing America as being full of stupid sheep he can easily deliver to Putin.
Luckily, destroying Trump’s presidency can be done without winning these people over. His list of impeachable offenses reads like he used the impeachment clauses of the United States Constitution as a workbook.
So all it will take is for enough of the Republicans in the House and the Senate to smell the wind and defect in order to start impeachment proceedings against him and he is one cooked goose.
It’s only a matter of time.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.