Trumpsters

I’ve been putting off writing this entry because it makes me sick to think of Donald Trump as President of the United States.  The image of him sitting in the oval office conducting America’s business is more suited to a miserable, fever-induced dream than reality. Then to wake up and have to face that it isn’t a dream after all and the day ahead will be another day of living during the Trump administration is living in a nightmare that refuses to go away with waking.  Another day of knowing that they actually did it.  They voted for Donald Trump for President. 

I was hoping they wouldn’t do it.  I was afraid they would, even halfway expected they would, but deep inside, I held out some small hope they wouldn’t. I should have known better.  You see, I know them: the Trumpsters.  I’ve socialized with them, worked with them, I’m related to many of them. So, knowing them as well as I do, I’m not surprised that sixty-three million of them would vote to destroy the country they so loudly and constantly profess to love by voting for a man so unqualified and so unworthy, so venal and loathsome, so corrupt, ignorant and immoral, that he will sell this country to the highest bidder, pocket the proceeds, and watch his supporters sicken and die without one pang of guilt.

Why would they do that?  Why would so many people who rely on government spending and government programs for jobs, healthcare, childcare and education, vote against their own self-interest, but what’s even worse, vote against what’s best for their own children, to elect a self-centered, self-serving representative of whomever will pay him the most? That is the big question, isn’t it, and I don’t pretend to have the answer. To try to provide some context, if not to actually understand it, I look at the behavior of cult members. 

A cult is governed by a leader who allows no dissenting opinion.  A leader who creates the reality in which the members live.  He (it’s always a he) identifies the powerful and evil external forces that threaten the lives and the souls of the cult members, and he offers the only path to salvation, which always involves complete and unquestioning allegiance to him.

Those of us born without the cult gene can’t understand how cult members would willingly hand over their identities, their freedoms, their fortunes, their lives, even their children, in order to be accepted as members in good standing.  But it’s vital for the rest of us to understand the reality of the phenomenon. Trump didn’t create his cult members; they’ve always been here, waiting in limbo for a cult leader to come along and claim them. They waited until Trump came along to tell them what they wanted to hear: that nothing wrong in their lives is their fault, that everything that is wrong is the fault of immigrants, and minorities, and gays, and liberals.  And he told them that if they trusted him, if they were loyal to him, he would fix it all, never mind the details of how.  And that was what they had been waiting for. 

It’s vital to understand the relationship between Trump and his supporters, for once it’s understood, we can stop the useless exercises of analyzing the election loss and figuring out how to win them back next time.  The only way to win them is to offer them a leader more Trump-like than Trump. That is, more right wing, more simplistic, more dishonest, even more willing than Trump to tell them what they want to hear, knowing that it’s all a lie.  

But we can’t do that, can we, because we’re decent people.  So we have to accept that Trump supporters are lost to us.  There will be another Trump eager to take his place once his indulgent lifestyle claims him. So we have to go on without them. We have to go on trying to save our country and the planet in the face of their active opposition. Not an easy task, probably an impossible one, but what else is there but to try, and to mourn what has been lost.

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.