Overcoming Trump Addiction
I’m beginning to understand how so many good Americans are able to square their solid sense of decency with the senseless bullying, corruption and indecency of this administration. People who are hurt by his policies and the bullying he inspires can’t risk alienating friends and family who are on the Trump Train. Many are silent. A few play along figuring that if you can’t beat them, join them. They have neither the time nor energy to fight hateful tides of self-assured inhumanity.
Their limited attention is diverted into blaming one another or blaming immigrants. They pretend to be aligned with the those control their jobs and money.
The disadvantaged are easily distracted from voting for or even believing in a better world. Many served in a war which has now lasted longer than the Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWI and WWII combined and so when an authority figure tells them that evil is the other and that he will build a wall that will protect us, they believe him not because he speaks he truth but because they want so much to believe the simplicity of his lie.
The remainder of his loyal support comes from typical comfortable wealthy or middle class, Republicans. These people believe that if they are O.K. so is everyone else and if not, surely it’s their own darn fault. This belief is as powerful as any religion and is often entangled with a selfish branch of pseudochristianity known as the prosperity gospel. “God meant for ME to be wealthy and anyone who isn’t has obviously sinned much more than I have.”
With churches, hundreds of TV channels, one of the most popular TV news networks/Whitehouse propaganda machine, the bulk of AM radio talk shows, busy work and family lives competing for attention, very few Americans have the time, energy or incentive to see the writing on the wall.
In their hearts, many of these people know that they have supported someone who has hurt our country and some of their own loved ones. But to admit that means their beautifully crafted worldview collapses. To admit that is to take the first step down the slippery slope to know that they have been deceived. Amplified lies have coerced them into shunning and hurting friends, family and neighbors. They have been persuaded to close their eyes to what they know to be true.
The Whitehouse has been turned into a den of disorganized crime. We all know that Vladmir Putin and Kim Jong Un are not more credible than the FBI, CIA, NSA and MI-5 professionals. We know that Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are not more credible than the professional journalists at the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, BBC, Reuters… In our hearts we know that Alex Jones doesn’t know or care about the truth behind school shootings as much as the victims, survivors and their families and that Donald Trump doesn’t know more about the environment and climate science than NOAA or NASA. He doesn’t know more about healthcare than WHO, AMA and CDC. It’s clear that his cabinet picks know less about their departments (FCC, interior, education, homeland security) than thousands of employees in these departments and related industries.
Eventually it will become impossible for people to deny these truths. But Donald Trump is a fashionable drug right now. He makes us feel good about ourselves. And that’s all that matters, isn’t it?
The story they tell of us is that we are the haters when in truth, we love you even as you are hurting us. Even as you are hurting yourselves and future generations. We pray that you will one day stop and listen, and pay more attention to your family and friends than to that tweeting man behind the curtain and that you’ll listen to them, your neighbors and your own conscience, not the talking heads who are paid to convince us that ignorance is wisdom and that love is hate.
“Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder’s welcome.” ― Charles Mackay
