A colleague of mine, whom I like, respect and get along fine with, made a rather startling admission yesterday. He reported that he took one of those online surveys that tells you which presidential candidate is most aligned with your “views,” and proudly confirmed that the result was Trump.
I said, half-sarcastically, that I was not surprised, given that (although he’s a bright guy who’s good at his job) when it comes to current events, politics, history and other important subjects, as I tell him all the time, he basically doesn’t know shit about shit, which he occasionally acknowledges, along with the fact that he gets all of his information from Fox News. Another colleague asked him to identify what Mitch McConnell’s actual title/job/position is, and he couldn’t. At one point he said, “I just like Trump’s foreign policy,” which when I asked him what that “policy” is, he answered, “F*** everybody.” Which, of course, is not a policy. So he’s basically cool with the idea that support for Trump derives from ignorance.
Somewhat more surprisingly, he followed this up with a declaration that, as a general matter, “I don’t give a sh** about anybody else.” Which I also found unsurprising; what surprised me a bit was that he doubled down on this, saying “Yes, I’m very selfish.” So he was also cool with the idea that support for Trump derives from selfishness.
At which point I reiterated my longstanding theory that support for the GOP in general, and Trump in particular, is largely built around selfishness and cruelty. My colleague again agreed that he was selfish, but denied being cruel. I mentioned that the “f*** everybody” “foreign policy” of which he was so fond would get a lot of people killed; that rolling back environmental, health and safety regulations, consumer protections, &c. would get a lot of people killed and cause a lot of people to suffer, as would striking down the Affordable Care Act. He still insisted that irrespective of all that, his own personal political motives were merely selfish, but not cruel.
Another colleague piped up and said that one need not necessarily be cruel to support Trump, which I disputed, pointing out that his entire platform, and his entire appeal to voters, revolves around cruelty and promises to treat people cruelly; to treat immigrants cruelly, to treat Muslims cruelly, to treat LGBT people cruelly, to treat people in foreign countries cruelly, to treat women cruelly, to treat journalists and reporters cruelly, to treat his political opponents cruelly, to treat anyone who doesn’t effusively praise him cruelly. Even if you “like” his “policies,” to the extent he has actual “policies,” what’s to “like” apart from their inherent, and intentional, cruelty?
Ironically, I really wish I could think of or come up with some reason(s) for supporting (or voting for) Trump that are either at least semi-rational, or that are not grounded in some form or combination of selfishness, cruelty and ignorance. Resentment, which is another popular and apt motif, I think is a combination and/or symptom of those three things, as is self-congratulation or self-praise which happens to be the Grand Nagus’s most nauseating trait. Racism, too, is a manifestation of selfishness, cruelty and ignorance.
I’ve been working, slowly, on trying to educate my colleague about all of this; he at least understands now that Republican governance — tax cuts, deregulation, court-stacking — is geared solely toward ensuring that that party’s owners are never held accountable for the harm they cause, that the consequence of that is a lot of avoidable human suffering, and that the difference between Republicans and Democrats is that the latter take the opposite view, viz., that corporations and industries should be held accountable for the harm they cause to the public, consumers, workers, and the environment.
If you look at our politics and our “partisan divide” through that lens, it all makes perfect sense. Appeals to selfishness, cruelty and ignorance, in Republican campaign ads and on Fox, et al., are designed to get people who would never vote for the GOP’s actual agenda as set forth above, i.e., people without wealth, power, privilege, influence and advantage, to agree (and vote) to keep those things right where they are, in the hands of those who do have them.
As for my colleague, there are two hurdles I still have to overcome: (1) he still can’t bring himself to care about the suffering or plight of others; and (2) he can’t get past the Both-Siderist throw-up-your-hands “whaddaya-gonna-do” posture that every conversation ultimately reaches. If we can get past that, maybe he’ll actually appreciate the ramifications of his voting preference and, as such, start to reevaluate it.
We’re getting there. Slowly.