I don’t get it.
I do not get the way so many Americans (and not just Americans) bow down before the altar of Donald Trump.
And it’s not just an altar. It’s an entire belief system with Donald himself as high priest of his own self-referential religion.
Belief is the key here. People believe what he says, despite:
• The many ways his concept of reality has been questioned;
• His manipulation of culture war “truths”;
• His admiration for totalitarian monsters;
• The many ways his integrity has been compromised (especially regarding his taxes, Covid and Russia);
• His habit of perceiving every issue through the way it will affect him personally rather than how it will affect the country;
• His claim of the religious and moral high ground despite the appalling reality of his own amoral and pussy-grabbing personal history;
• The total lack of evidence for his incredible and outrageous claims regarding the electoral system.
The main danger, of course, is that because so many do believe him, in a country awash with guns, he could rouse people to undertake actions that would seriously undermine the Republic.
Donald Trump has never been more dangerous than he is right now.
His old habit of claiming “fake news” for every report he doesn’t like is inspiring him to go all in. He is now undermining the electoral process and implicitly calling his base to action – to not allow a fraud to be perpetrated upon the American people.
Will any of them ask to see the evidence for this very serious claim?
Because it does need evidence. All he’s said so far (amid the flying saliva) is that postal votes shouldn’t be regarded as legal and that no votes should be counted after election day.
Well, sorry Donald, but you went into this election knowing that postal votes were allowed, that they have always been counted (sometimes long) after election day, and that they traditionally favour Democrats.
The reason for this last point is that the American system (despite asserting as self-evident that all men are created equal) has always made it hard for the little guy to vote. Voting is non-compulsory, happens on a Tuesday (when working folks often can’t attend in person) and in counties all over America there might be only one ballot centre, obliging people to travel long distances and then queue up for hours. Can you imagine the outcry in Australia if any government tried to introduce a system like that?
It’s a system deliberately contrived to favour the votes of a particular class and the only defence the rest have is the postal system, which has been around a lot longer than Donald Trump. But as usual, as soon as something doesn’t suit him, he wants it changed or declared illegal.
To this point there is no evidence – not a scrap – of any wrong-doing by voters or the many people working in intolerable conditions to maintain the integrity of their democracy while the legions of Trumpian darkness chant outside and brandish legal weapons.
This is where Trump has dragged America, to the brink of (I hesitate to even say it) Civil Disruption because his base are so manipulated and enraged by the culture wars they have no concept of objective reality. (And it’s not just Americans with this problem – it’s certainly happening here in Australia.)
So what can we do about this?
There’s no pleasure here in smiling to ourselves because we can see through the trickster’s ploy while the yokels gape. And it’s not just Trump who is perpetrating (or at least riding on the coat tails of) a mass delusion. All of us have been deluded, and it’s time we took back control. We need a means of seeing reality objectively so debate can happen around a mutually accepted set of facts. If we can’t at least agree on the facts then there’s no hope for debate, and other measures will be found for the settling of grievances.
I truly shudder to think where America is going in coming months. The best thing Biden can do, if he is declared the winner, is to fully support all calls for recounts (under properly controlled conditions). That might just placate some of Trump’s base and will at least seem presidential.
That’s what America needs – someone who can remind Americans what unites them. For theirs is a truly great democracy with an amazing history, culture and heritage. Their revolution made an enormous contribution to the freedoms and liberties enjoyed across the entire Western World. Even Dubya, a president deplored by so many, had a sense of the dignity of the office of president amid such rich historical narrative.
Not Trump, his own dignity evaporated in a storm of petulant tweets and narcissistic spin-speeches designed to divide the country when it most needs healing.
If he maintains his confected outrage then there’s a shit-storm coming, and not every shit-storm can be contained in a diaper.
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