OPK wrote: ↑November 7th, 2020, 6:00 am
Trump to me is a boatload too far of personal shortcomings. BUT if you are strongly pro-life, he’s your only choice. If you’re strongly second amendment, he’s your only choice. If you are strongly against PC culture, he’s your only choice. And that’s before getting to debatable issues about who has the better economic platform, who has the better immigration policy, who has the better view of America’s role (and the cost of that role) in policing the world. Overlooking someone’s faults does not equate to adopting those faults. And looking down at someone else for the choices they make — whether it be political choices or otherwise — is a human reaction but it is not a positive one.
Judge not, lest ye be judged yourself.[/quote]
OPK wrote: ↑November 7th, 2020, 6:18 am
^^^ AND TO EMPHASIZE: this is not directed at gumbo or any other poster.
I wouldn’t be offended if your eloquent defense of rj199 and (some) Trump voters is directed at me. We just disagree on some big points. Perhaps starting with “judge not.”
I “judge” stuff all the time, and am willing to have my judgments judged, specifically here my critical analysis of Trumpism. I will even acknowledge that I may cross over into “judgmentalism,” though I hope not. I believe that the social scientific reliance on “critical analysis” should not be a cliché; it should be an investigative first principle. Critical analysis means using one’s critical faculties to examine evidence to break down X (analyze X) into component parts, to see how it works, to see what makes it tick. In this case, X is Trumpism.
Below is my critical analysis of Trumpism, jumping off from rj199’s post, with pointed comments about Trump but focused on Trump supporters. It is my judgment, based on critical analysis. Perfectly fair for anyone to judge my argument, assess its accuracy and persuasiveness.
I won’t repost richardjackson199’s understandably impassioned response to CNC’s also impassioned post. But I do want to respond, as I think his post avoids some fundamental issues. Because I have not carefully followed the debate OY, I don’t know who’s been banned OY and why. I infer from his reference to “ridiculed, chased away, or silenced (OY)” that he himself feels ridiculed.
It’s an awkward task to criticize substantively and seriously, yet also sensitively, another’s post on such a contentious matter. Trump and Trumpism do not inhabit our normal political spectrum. Reactionary populism is not totally new in the American experience, but it has never captured the loyalty of anything close to 70 million Americans.
From my fiercely anti-Trump and anti-Trumpism perspective, I find it pretty ironic for a Trump supporter to complain of feeling ridiculed and silenced. For it’s the “manly” Trumpists who delight in calling their opponents “snowflakes.” “Pardon me if I don’t give a damn about your feelings,” snarl the manly Trumpists.
Now, I believe rj199 does
not do that sort of thing. Just from his single post, I’ll concede he’s very likely to be just an everyday nicer person than I am. I’m full of enraged, pissed-off patriotism. In 2016 I voted in the Republican primary for a pissed-off patriot, John Kasich, who struggled mightily to contain his disgust as Trump moved toward the Republican nomination. As I have posted before, my patriotic anger is directed not merely toward Trump, but to cowardly Republican Senators, immature Republican House members, and what for the present I’ll characterize as “low-information” Trump voters.
Trump is a sociopath, a deep (i.e., shallow) narcissist, a pathological liar, a lifelong fraud and grifter, a failed businessman who has defaulted on major loans and declared bankruptcy repeatedly. He cares not one whit about democracy, the U.S. Constitution, the honor of the Presidential office, or the American people. He was taught by his father to cheat people before they cheat you, which message was reinforced in the 1980s by his mob-vicious NY “mentor,” Roy Cohn, none other than Joseph McCarthy’s right-hand man.
Trump has foisted his sociopathies onto this great country and its wonderful people, some millions of whom have willingly and thus shockingly accepted the burden of Trump’s literal madness. His MAGA slogan is .... a slogan. He has done absolutely nothing to make this country great, not ever in his sociopathic life. He has uplifted no one, ever, and cheated everyone he could, always. Thus, when rj199 says “Trump has some serious flaws and did some bad things,” my response is that this is a serious understatement of Trump’s pathologies. He does not have merely “some” flaws, nor has he done merely “some” bad things. His moral defects, his serial cruelties, are unprecedented in the American Presidency, by several orders of magnitude.
Trump isn’t committed to a pro-life position, nor to any part of our Constitution. He has no understanding of the complexities of the abortion issue, nor has he recently, if ever, read the U.S. Constitution. Joe Biden is hardly an exemplar of political correctness, whereas in multiple ways Trump proudly parades the ugliest moral/political “incorrectnesses.”
To wit: Trump has a history of racist dog-whistling, from the outrageous full-page ad against the Central Park 5, to his fevered “birtherism” obsession, his constant refrain about “saving the suburbs from thugs,” to his pathetic inability even to honor the late John Lewis. Trump is a lifelong racial provocateur. Racists recognize and celebrate him as one of them. He basks, if coyly — patently implausible deniability — in their praise of his white nationalist fulminations.
Similarly, neo-Nazis and QAnon nutters celebrate Trump as their Mussolini. He is the Strongman/Q who will recreate the golden age of white Christian “pure Americanism.” Trumpism is fascism. He ran on fascist themes in 2016 and has elaborated on those themes throughout his Presidency and in the current campaign.
So, I recognize that millions of Trump voters are as sincere in their patriotism as am I in mine. But we understand patriotism through a fundamentally different historical prism. Trump’s call to patriotic triumphalism is without substance. It depends on an emotional attachment to a mythological, fairy-tale vision of American history.
Similarly, when Trump supporters say he has regained respect for America in the world, they ignore the reality of the unthinkable surrender of world leadership under Trump. He is seen as a dangerous clown by all of our Western democratic allies. Their common refrain is, “Have the American people lost their minds?” Far too many Trump supporters defiantly respond, “FU, we don’t need any of you.” Foreign policy pros know better. But actual knowledge-from-experience doesn’t impress many Trump voters. They prefer Trump’s “gut instincts.”
I do not know how to say, nicely, to someone who has voted twice for Trump, “You are voting for a sociopathic fascist, a man of monstrous cruelty, an American Mussolini.” How to state, politely and humanely, what everyday evidence, red warning lights furiously flashing, tells us has been and to this very moment is an existential threat to our constitutional democratic republic?