That’s the punchline to a joke (which a columnist recently opened with). Airplane passengers are told there are two meal choices: chicken, or a pile of excrement laced with broken glass. One man pipes up: “How is the chicken prepared?”
For nine years I’ve struggled to understand the appeal of the other choice. As a humanist, I love humanity, trying to empathize with fellow humans. Telling myself Trumpers are otherwise mostly good people, just misguided on one thing. Still, it’s a big thing.
Recently PBS’s Judy Woodruff televised a gathering with Wisconsin voters discussing political polarization. The Republicans did sound like reasonable people, horrified by political divisiveness. Yet they support Mister Divisive.
When a Dick Cheney, poster-boy for right-wing GOP partisanship, endorses a Harris, it tells us there’s something very very wrong about the Republican candidate. Lately Trump’s been vaunting conspiracy loony Laura Loomer, something even Marjorie Taylor Greene denounces as appallingly racist.
And all you Republicans who jeered about Biden’s aging — how can you not see Trump is far more cognitively damaged? Which is far more dangerous given his psychopathic personality disorders.
We hear much about issues — the economy, inflation, immigration, crime, etc. To imagine Trump would do anything good on any of those is delusional. Meantime many say their lives were better under Trump. On what planet was that?? In what bubble? (Yeah, prices were lower. No thanks to Trump. His idiotic tariffs will send prices skyrocketing.)
There’s also the foolhardy “strong leader” allure. But is your idea of strength trying to retain power by lies, fraud, and violence? What is it about convicted criminal or fake electors you don’t understand? You wrap yourselves in the flag and call yourselves “patriots,” while America will be disgraced and degraded if your morally vile candidate wins.
Then some believe Trump a divine instrument. If you buy the fairy tale of a God, maybe you can make yourself believe he’d be that crazy.
But whatever your motivations, however misguided, you make yourself a joke if you’re not even operating in the actual real world of facts. Another pathology of Trumpers. Heck, stop watching that Fox shitshow. Laura Ingraham; Hannity; Pirro; Jesse Watters. Jesse Watters. My gosh, what disgusting dishonest creeps. How do they look in the mirror? And Fox seems almost reasonable compared to other screeching voices now out there.
Just how much lying can you fall for?
And it’s not “issues” MAGA is really all about anyway. It’s not even culture war stuff either, per se — except insofar as it’s a generalized visceral hostility toward the “cultural elites” they identify with Democrats. Whose “Trump derangement syndrome,” when provoked by things he does and says, his supporters love. Denouncing him just titillates them more.
Thus Trump’s very transgressiveness actually seems to work in his favor. Freud would have had a field day analyzing this cult. He wrote, in Civilization and its Discontents, how for the sake of society’s benefits we grudgingly suppress the nastier impulses of our unconscious psychology. But part of us wants to rebel against that. Trumpers gain vicarious thrills from his norm-busting behavior, which they’re inhibited from acting out directly themselves. While his badness allows them to feel less bad about their own. And voting for Trump is itself transgressive behavior.
Yet it’s one thing to enjoy the show; quite another to make this man president, with all that power. How can anyone imagine that’s somehow a good idea? The lack of seriousness, the irresponsibility, is stunning — like citizenship is just a game played on their phones.
It’s fucking insane. I’ll have the chicken, thanks.
