Jingoism is bipartisan. Tribalism is human nature. My sports team/country/race/religion is better than yours. Pretty sure Clinton and Sanders supporters can point out their inflicted wounds from within the left wing. I know I was guilty of revering Obama more than deserved in 2008 and gave him way more slack than deserved at the end of his administration… But I was never dogmatic or rabid about.
I find it fascinating that Trump supporters cum fanatics (as of the last month) have to use actual Trump-like delusion to justify Trump’s and his administration’s actions. A clear-eyed critical-thinking approach to parsing the last 18 months (let alone his 40 year public history) reveals he’s unfit to lead and most likely corrupt (as casual and unawares he is about it).
And his supporters don’t need to switch parties, embrace liberalism/DNC, etc, to do this. One can remain a staunch conservative and call out Trump’s glaring faults. (William F. Buckley Jr would be horrified with the Trump and his movement.)
So I have been pondering the tripling down on supporting Trump in light of the abundance of facts. My best guess is it’s the immediacy of technology combined with a 20 year “Reality TV” molding of voters mentality that has given us this historic circus. In large part, because we construct our realities and mortality/fear-of-death buffers around our governments. When our current Washington DC reality starts pushing on the flaws of that paradigm, some blatant self deception and lashing out ensues.
Build the wall? Those screaming #MAGA now are just humans scrambling to maintain their personal walls between their ideal world view and the ominously encroaching truth: We are all flawed. We all die. We all have no idea what/where/when/why.
It’s hard for me not to respond with the same angry fervor. But I try. Albeit, sometimes with snarky humor, but at least it’s humor? Yeah, I’m flawed. And one day I will die. 😅
My personal way of dealing with this bizarre period of American life is to create video reaction/call-to-actions. Ironically, I really, really thought I’d not be doing any this time around! It just seemed like it would be redundant to mock or warn. Boy, was I wrong…
For simplicity, I am going to keep adding them here as they percolate out. In reverse order of creation. Feel free to share!
This is a whole series now so visit the Breaking News! Playlist.
