When I was far too young, I watched The Manchurian Candidate starring Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury at a friend’s house back when television didn’t have too many choices and Saturday afternoons showed old movies. The movie disturbed me the rest of my life. One scene, in particular, left me with nightmares.
A group of captured American soldiers who had been brainwashed by Chinese communists are being presented to an audience of party functionaries and military leaders. The presenter, a bald Asian man with a fu manchu mustache, tells one of the soldiers to shoot Bobby, the youngest of the group. As the man points a gun at his forehead, the boyish Bobby smiles innocently at his executioner. That smiling face staring at death bothered me until I re-watched the film about fifteen years ago in an effort to finally exorcise those demons.
Trump’s most loyal supporters remind me of Bobby. Trump famously said “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” Back then, we envisioned the person he would shoot would be an opponent. Now, we know the people he’s shooting are his supporters and they’re smiling while he pulls the trigger.
Trump promised to drain the swamp in Washington. Instead, he filled his cabinet with Wall Street bankers, corporate CEOs and Washington politicians who feel entitled to use taxpayer money to fund plane rides for personal travel. But the Trumpsters don’t care. He’s sticking it to transgender people who want to serve in the military. Take that!
Trump rolled out a tax reform program that’s little more than tax cut for the rich and will probably raise taxes on the middle class. He wants to do away with the estate tax, a tax that only affects estates worth more than $5 million, while doing away with the exemption on state and local taxes, something that benefits almost every American homeowner. But that’s ok. He’s still talking about building that wall.
Now, he’s cutting subsidies for Obamacare which will raise premiums by 20%, increase the deficit by $200 billion and increase the number of uninsured by 5%. The middle class will almost certainly pick up the tab and the lower middle class will feel the pain of losing insurance. But, hey, he’s defending those Confederate monuments.
After a steady diet of Fox News, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and the like, Trump’s die hard supporters have been brainwashed just as surely as those soldiers in the film and only react to the grievances pointed out by their masters. As Trump levels the gun at them, they smile and thank him for taking on the cultural elites, illegals and others who are ruining the country. They only make up about 25% of the nation, but they’ll stick with Trump until they’re are dragged off stage and he retires to one of his country clubs to play golf at their expense.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
On the flip side Trump may be one of the greatest things to happen to the American electorate since the invention of the telephone. Let me explain. How many pollsters knew the size, extent, or preferences of this voter block before Trump? Whatever “their” origins they have certainly come out of their shells to participate with Trump. The simple fact that they participate (whether by social media, voting, protesting, or rallies) indicates that “they’re” no longer just passively listening to talk radio demagogues. They get to observe themselves this way, and the more Trump focuses on them the greater the intensity of this recognition of themselves as political actors. That may scare many among the readers of this blog; however, we know from science that the act of observing an event changes the event itself. In other words one may well expect this new slice of the electorate to “exercise” this participation in more evolved ways going forward. And I don’t mean that our condemnation of their views will matter in that process really. It will be the outcome of them viewing themselves, “exorcising” their own excesses, and over time joining ever more mainstream views. In a sense this should delight us, as it should lead them away from the siren call of talk radio, demagogues like Trump, and toward a greater appreciation of public policy outcomes. As the parties know these folk would not have been reached otherwise, and Trump is the perfect lance for this blister.
Sir,
I still see “exercise” rather than “exorcise.”
For a long time now I have peached that his policies must be allowed to go thru as quickly as possible. There is only one way that these mental midgets are going to learn. EXPERIENCE. Yes, many of us will suffer consequences, but the consequence for the long-term will be a memory. Maybe for a few generations, this Nazi fetish will be repugnant (even to those who don’t understand the word!)
Thomas, you have identified the conundrum that tries the souls of real Americans.
The obscene, vulgar, traitorous, racist, ignorant utterances from the moron in the White House along with his daily reminders that he is mentally and morally unfit to serve the country seems obvious to large numbers of Americans. The list of serious breaches of trust grows by the hour. His constant lying, his inability to deal with reality, his corrupt cabinet, his use of the office to help is private businesses, his temper tantrums, his ignorant tweets, his lack of empathy for the suffering of Americans and his obsession with his own image – all are apparent to anyone with eyes and ears. Somehow, there are still millions of Americans who do not see the problem. How can that be? How can voting age adults not see the obvious?
Is it an education deficit? Are they unable to read? Are they extremely gullible? Is the thrill of being a racist and Nazi so overwhelming to them that they do not mind that their country is coming apart?
The religious right is the most perplexing. They hear the moron in the White House brag about being a sexual predator. Do these people not have daughters, wife or sisters? Are the white women who voted for him desperate to be grabbed down there? Are they sacrificing virgins to some pagan god? How are rape and sexual assault any part of family values?
At a company convention in Las Vegas Iattended some years ago, a performer hypnotized people we knew from work. They went up on stage and became the show. Our friends were hilarious. They did funny things. They believed things that were not real It was an incredible performance. We knew that they were not shills because we knew them from work. The hypnotist attempted to put everyone under, but only a dozen or so people were susceptible to suggestion out of a few hundred. They believed they could smell things that were not there. They believed they could hear things that weren’t there. They believed their shoes were telephones, and they picked up their shoes and spoke into them. It was fun.
After the performance, the hypnotist asked a serious question: “Could these techniques be used on the public in general?” Scientology involves the use of repeated hypnotism. EST uses hypnotism. Cults program people to believe things that are not real. The danger of right wing media is that there will be a number of people who are susceptible to suggestion. They use propaganda techniques to convince people of things that are not real. Anyone who has gotten into a discussion with someone who has been programmed by the right knows how difficult it is to discuss facts with them. If you spoke with someone from North Korea, Communist China or other controlled state, you would see how propaganda works. It is convincing.
We live in a world which provides immediate access to excellent information for little or no cost. Today, any one of them could sign up for an online course offered free from Harvard, MIT or the University of Pennsylvania, all Ivy League universities. They choose not to do that, even though it costs only time.
In the same world, there are sources of counter-information, lies and misinformation. Millions of Americans are unable to discern fact from fiction. We live in a world where disinformation is available. Our fellow citizens can choose to be informed or not. Too many of them choose to be duped. They act like Moonies, and some of them are a danger to the United States.
Thomas,
If you don’t learn how to spell I’m going to unsubscribe.
THEIR is the possessive of THEY.
While one might EXERCISE demons, it might be better to EXORCISE them.
Fixed. I depend on you folks to be my editors. I write about 500 words in less than an hour every morning with no editor except my readers. Sorry for the typos and misspellings.
I remind myself that 50% of the population has an IQ lower than 100.
Speechless, Thom. This is just so spot on.
I think the people who want to impeach Trump underestimate the extent to which his base zombies will defend him. They will destroy civility and civilization to defend their man’s claim to power, regardless of whether his policies help or hurt them personally. Impeachment will energize them.
In these times at least, identity trumps economy in the world of politics. This is not limited to the U.S. From Russia to Spain to the Middle East to India and the Philippines, the world’s people are feeling overwhelmed with how small their world has become under global capitalism and advancing technologies. We are all retreating to the comfort of “my culture right or wrong.” Trump and like-minded politicians all over the globe are taking advantage of this rising tide of displacement anxiety. As for me, I suddenly feel like a dinosaur. I am as disturbed as anyone else in the world by a fundamental shift I have to acknowledge – the post-WWII liberal democracy I knew and trusted all my 50+ years to set the world right is dying. Trump is not a blip. He is the new normal for at least a generation. Faster your seat belts.
I share your concern that identity politics have superceded the more practical concerns of economic well-being. In that sense a focus on the politics of identity is failing the electorate – a mistake by Dems and Repubs. A prescient book by Daniel Patrick Moynihan of the emerging future with identity politics: https://www.amazon.com/Pandaemonium-International-Daniel-Patrick-Moynihan/dp/0198277873/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1508523419&sr=8-16&keywords=daniel+patrick+moynihan