Over 50 percent of Americans planning to vote in the Republican primaries say they’ll vote for Trump even if he is in prison at the time.
The stern resolve tinged with hysteria one can read on their faces suggests they’d feel the same way if their hero were caught on a CCTV camera mugging a pensioner. Quite simply, as far as his fans are concerned, Trump can do no wrong.
This isn’t even about their voting intentions. Confronted with the evil of two lessers, voters still have to choose one who is less of a lesser. Thus, given the choice between Biden and Trump, even I would vote for the latter, much as I consider him revolting on many levels, both personal and political.
Yet my decision would have no emotional component whatsoever. It would be strictly transactional, wholly based on a coldblooded weighing of the relative pros and cons. Having compared the two candidates, I’d pinch my nostrils, decide to take the rough with the smooth and vote for Trump.
No doubt some of Trump’s intended voters go through the same exercise. But – and I hope my American friends will correct me if I’m wrong – my impression is that the core of Trump’s supporters see only the smooth and none of the rough.
Since no one since Jesus Christ has been sinless, such devotion suggests that their minds are disengaged. Taking over instead is something else, something I can’t easily define. Emotions, yes, but also something infra-emotional, some passions bubbling in the viscera and bone marrow.
This scares me, as does anything that dehumanises man. People aren’t supposed to be jukeboxes whose buttons can be pushed to get the desired tune. Even biological taxonomy classifies us as sapient, pinpointing sapience as our defining characteristic. This means that anyone putting his mind on hold thereby suspends his humanity.
Far be it from me to equate Trump with dictators like Hitler, Stalin or Putin. Unlike them, he has lived and functioned his whole life in a civilised country, and much of that experience has rubbed off. What upsets me is the similarity between the public response to those monsters and to Trump.
One sure sign of mindless political hysteria is the readiness to reduce the entire complexity of politics to catchy slogans.
While some may be more benign than others, typologically I see little difference between Deutschland über alles and MAGA. The latter desideratum is infinitely more attractive than the former politically and civilisationally. But the emotional and psychological makeup of those responding to such rallying cries is eerily similar.
I must own up to a personal idiosyncrasy. Having spent much of my working life in advertising, I’ve seen how easily slogans can be used to manipulate even otherwise sensible people. Hence my choice was to despise either slogans or mankind, and the first was more acceptable than the second.
And yet I’ve seen the same Pavlovian response to Trump appearing in the MAGA cross-section of America’s population, from truck drivers to the editor of a highbrow conservative magazine. The lover and student of humanity in me has his curiosity piqued.
Detestation of Biden, richly merited as it is, doesn’t quite explain this. Yes, most Americans feel they are worse off now than they were three years ago. Then they look at their senile president and see why.
Biden can’t even outscore Trump on moral rectitude, never mind dynamism, general intelligence and psychic health. Even a good chunk of the Democrats see him alternately as a disaster or else an unfunny joke.
This means that if, as seems likely, Biden is their candidate, the turnout of potential Democratic voters will be low, giving any competent Republican candidate an open goal to aim at.
DeSantis, Ramaswamy and Haley are usually mentioned in that context and, whatever the polls may be saying, I’m sure any of them would win against Biden by a landslide. That makes Trump Biden’s best hope.
For one detects the same febrile stridency among those who hate Trump as among those who worship him. That may galvanise Democratic turnout for any candidate of their party, even Biden. Their support would turn from at best tepid to red-hot.
That’s exactly what happened at the last election, when even those who correctly saw Biden as a corrupt and incompetent nonentity came out in force to vote against Trump. Hence it’s possible, even likely, that Newton’s Third Law will come into play this time too: every action causes an equal and opposite reaction.
The more piercing the screams and the more bulging the eyes of the MAGA throng, the greater will be support for Biden or any other Democratic nincompoop (one can’t detect any other type among the potential candidates).
Trump’s supporters could do worse than recall Thomas Jefferson’s strategy during the debates on the Constitution. The key issue was the balance between centralism and localism, the power of the federal government versus state rights.
Federalism, as conceived by Messrs Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Jay, Hamilton et al., spelled slow death for state rights – especially the right to secede. That was exactly the desired end Jefferson saw in his mind’s eye, but for the time being he had to settle for a palliative.
“Half a loaf is better than none,” was how he put it. As a result, a constitution inspired by modern centralism had to include various nods towards traditional localism. The wounding issue continued to fester, eventually bursting out into the horrific Civil War. But at the time, Jefferson never took his eyes off the political ball.
If Trump worshippers shun half a loaf, they may end up picking up crumbs off the Democrats’ table. They love Trump so much, they may end up with Biden.
You may have said this already, I don’t recall, but there seems to be a greater likelihood that Trump worshippers, especially in the American media, dislike Zelensky more than Putin, if they dislike the latter at all.
I know Trump supporters, but no worshippers. I also know some “Never Trump” supporters. To favor any candidate over Trump (a truly emotional and immature reaction) has given us Biden/Harris.
Part of Trump’s popularity was driven by the fact that although massively wealthy, he came across as a political outsider, one of us. When accused of not paying his “fair share” of taxes he admitted he exploits loopholes in the tax code and then proceeded to explain that all of the wealthy contributors to Democrat campaigns do the same. He suggested the Democrats vote to change the code, but then said they won’t because that would upset their donors. Spot on! He won many more supporters that night.
As stated here many times, a system that forces us to choose the leader of our country by selecting “the evil of two lessers” is indeed a faulty, corrupt system. The very idea of professional politicians must have Mssr. Jefferson, Hamilton, et al spinning in their graves.
You are absolutely right. A career in politics shouldn’t act as a springboard to riches, which is what it is for many (most? all?) professional politicians. People like Blair parlay political prominence into millions, so many of them that one suspects this was the intended career path from the beginning. The idea of service has been replaced with one of self-service, and that, I’m afraid, is unavoidable in our modern democracies. The gentlemen you mention were just that, gentlemen, and that’s what they were before, during and after their political lives. They didn’t depend on politics as a cash cow – they just wanted to serve. Today’s lot are mostly spivs on the make. Then again, I can’t imagine many Americans would have been all that impressed if, say, Hamilton had said he knew how to find tax loopholes. Different times, different mores.