Alex Constantine - November 17, 2024
"... Trump's "fans" have been led to believe that Antifa was responsible for Jan. 6, and Mike Pence deserved to hang. Some fully expected JFK to rise from the grave to support Trump in 2020, travelled to Dallas and gathered to greet Kennedy on the day he was to be resurrected to escort Trump to the White House. His supporters are susceptible to ego-syntonic programming: they will believe anything that flatters them and confirms their self-aggrandizing delusions. ..."
By Alex Constantine
"The American fascist would prefer ... to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power." -- Vice President Henry Wallace, New York Times Opinion Page, 1944
oters who favored Trump in the election complain that the Democratic Party constitutes an elite who "look down on us." Liberal disgust with low-information blathering is perceived at the receiving end as condescension. There are valid reasons for snubbing the regurgitation of right-wing talking points that most Trumpers give to explain why they cast their ballots for a rapist, insurrectionist and self-obsessed psychopath.
Many of them claim that Trump is "a strong leader," parroting the candidate himself. Does a strong leader chicken out of a debates or constantly make a fool of himself? Trump's notion of strength is clear to anyone who has followed his chaotic political career. "Strong" leaders he admires include Hitler, Putin, Xi, Kim Jung un and Viktor Orbán. Machiavellian tactics are the measure of a tyrant. "Strong" is a euphemism so, yes, "radical leftists" are bound to "look down on" on anyone incapable of understanding that.
Some voters opined that Trump would "stand up to Putin." Only a ninny who doesn't understand the first thing about the man would make such a comment.
The most common explanations given by Trumpers happen to be Fox News talking points, slanders and lies repeated ad nauseum. (The endless repetition is called psychic driving, a standard mind control technique.) The Biden administration put the brakes on inflation a year ago and employment is at a historic high, but smug propagandists at Fox and hundreds of conservative talk radio stations across the country haven't noticed. They constantly speak as if the economy is collapsing. All it takes to see through the deception is a Google search, but many Americans prefer to let the right-wing media do the thinking for them.
Was "life better under Trump?" Voters easily led by Fox News barkers, lacking the ability to even remember, said so. Life under Trump was a long chaotic nightmare. If Trump's tenure in office was as idyllic and Fox claims, he wouldn't have had a historically low favorability rating, and would not have lost the 2020 election. There was dancing in the streets across the country when the incumbent was trounced by a strong leader who brought a killer pandemic under control after his predecessor panicked, walled himself off with lies, and allowed hundreds of thousands to suffer and die unnecessarily. Trump wasn't moved by the soaring mortality rate, however. His sole concern was how mass death affected his chances of winning an election so he could continue to grift off the American public, and skirt accountability for his crimes.
About 45 million Americans are functionally illiterate. They depend on learning aids, like Fox or Steve Bannon's ravings. Trumpers have been led to believe that Antifa was responsible for Jan. 6, and Mike Pence deserved to hang. Some fully expected JFK to rise from the grave to support Trump in 2020. A gaggle of them actually travelled to Dallas. and gathered to greet Kennedy on the day he was to be resurrected to escort Trump to the White House.
Trump supporters are susceptible to ego-syntonic programming: they will believe anything that flatters them and confirms their self-aggrandizing delusions. General Milley's caveat that Trump is a "fascist to the core" was ignored. There is nothing flattering in the belief that a revered "strong" leader is a Nazi thug. The New New Right was receptive when Christian Nationalist leaders suggested that he is God's chosen one. This is how rubes are made. The Jan. 6th rioters don't think of themselves as seditious idiots. They were "Patriots" convinced that tabbing and beating police officers in the defense of the Fuhrer was no vice.
Simon & Garfunkel understood that "a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." What a man wants to hear is that he's a hero for buying a truckload of manure. If he drives around town in it with a flag fluttering from the hood, he's a "Patriot."
Patriots don't want to hear about racism, It makes them squirm. so "real Americans" ban books on slavery with the excuse that children shouldn't be led to believe America has a cruel history, even though it does.
Reality gets in the way. We prefer egocentric lies. Trumpers pretended to be amused when Kamala Harris called Trump a "criminal," even though he is. They wore "I'm Voting for the Felon" t-shirts. If an accusation isn't deniable, make a show of derisive indifference.
Morality isn't relevant in modern elections. Voters knew that Trump would retaliate against anyone in government who attempted to make him accountable for his crimes, but they voted for him anyways. They knew that Project 2025, a blueprint for a far-right dictatorship, is his agenda. But they voted for him anyways. They knew that a homicidal national abortion ban was probable, that the military would be on the streets to brutalize protestors, that Biden's climate change policies would be dumped, that immigrant families would be torn apart, that Ukraine might well be thrown under Putin's bus. But dumbass voters whined about the price of hot dogs (relatively low by international standards) and put dropped their stones for him.
A couple of years ago, economists predicted a period of inflation followed by a severe recession. But the Biden administration made stabilizing the economy look like child's play. The country's economic woes haven't lifted entirely, but when has the economy ever consistently purred like a Bentley motor? It clacks along smoothly for a year or two, intermittently chokes, stalls and threatens to boil over when driven too hard. That's what Trump did when he blessed the super-wealthy with trillions of dollars in tax cuts, and compensated farmers for losses caused by his tariffs. His incompetent handling of the pandemic prolonged it, further disrupting the economy that Biden inherited.
Harris's economic proposals had merit. But Trump voters didn't care about that. They wanted to see Trump dancing to to "YMCA," and smearing the opposition like Don Rickles on a binge.
Another Fox News meme parroted by programmed voters is wokeism. The word "woke" used to mean empathy for African-Americans. It has come to mean empathy or any segment of the Democratic base not tolerated by Vladimir Putin and his collaborative American right-wing admirers. Sure, wokespeak can be carried too far. Liberals ("the enemy within") can be be irritating -- but so is rabid bullshit, loonbat conspiracy theories, red-baiting, boasting, bogus allegations of election stealing, fellating a microphone. What is a corrupt billionaire who whines incessantly about the unfairness of the justice system but irritating.
Trump should add "American Idiot" to his playlist. His fans won't even realize he's insulting them as he does every time he opens his mouth and plays them for fools.
He's back, and we are all suckers and losers now, like America's military dead. They sacrificed themselves for a gruesome petty tyrant devoid of conscience. Yes, many liberals do "look down" on Trump voters. These herd animals are poisoning our blood. Pack them off to North Korea to lead the lives they crave, and put Fat Boy on the boat. Maybe JFK can escort him to the gangplank.