The Trump phenomenon has evolved my view of the human mind even
further. We are masters not only of
deceit, but also of self-deceit. We
actively work against the truth by spinning the most plausible yet specious
arguments possible. The implications are
almost impossible to bear. Ordinary,
functional, everyday citizens are capable of balkanized brains that foster
division, delusion and denial. This is
not an outlier situation, but rather a pervasive norm.
These conclusions are based on the phenomenon of millions of
Americans bowing down to the ignorant, lie-spewing, messianic bravado of
Trump. They accept it as fact. They are throwing away the ideals of their
country, democracy and freedom, and even pushing the risk of world war, while
chanting for the construction of a great wall, and the banning of all
Muslims. These are people who, outside
the context of politics, are kind and funny, hospitable and giving. They are you and me. And they are also the muscle working to
foment a great catastrophe.
How can the soul-splitting power of fear and hate be
neutralized?
As a lad, I thought it was as simple as using reason. Reason, I believed, was efficacious; that
once things were explained in transparent terms, people would ‘see the light’ and
alter their behavior. Although I must
have been disabused of the pure notion relatively quickly, I clung to the postulate
that rational arguments could win the day, if presented in earnest, at least in
relation to most people.
The ‘smart’ part of the human mind outweighed the stubbornly
psychological. This was my root. A lot of social paradigms are built on the
concept of the ‘rational, autonomous person.’
Democracy rests on the good sense of individuals to make choices that
foster the common weal. Economic theory
embraces ‘rational, self-interested agents’.
And so on. I was spurred in my
assumptions by the theoretical paragons of our time.
It’s all a lie. This paean
to human clarity, embodied in our ideals, is hideously wrong. Trumpism epitomizes what I should have known
already. Even a casual study
of fascist states reveals it. Humans are
far more psychological than rational.
They can be drawn under the banner of a “great lie” at certain critical times,
when currents of frustration and fear merge into a seething undertow.
What this means is that the truth can be right before us,
even the most basic empirical evidence, and we won’t see it. We can’t
see. The psychological bends perception
and reason to its preferences. In bland
professional jargon: confirmation bias
occurs.
Denial of such magnitude takes vast internal machinery. What I have come to realize is that we are
all far more like those with multiple personality disorder than we think. Minds split into warring internal factions. Mental balkanization allows us to know the
truth but also to lie and embrace, not the truth, but the lie.
It follows that humans can be rational in some ways and
irrational in others. We are selective,
subconscious and stubborn.
There even can be awareness of the contradiction. The addict knows their behavior is wrong, and
yet just can’t stop. One part of the
mind sees a cliff ahead; another weaves counterarguments, injects exemptions--and pushes down on the pedal.
Consider dreams. The
mind spins scenarios much larger than the individual self. It creates dream people, dream places,
quasi-realities and moods. Dreams
demonstrate that the mind is much bigger than the self. It forms alter-selves, cousins of the
“alters” that affect those with dissociative disorders.
It is not that the followers of Trump are stupid. One part of their mind knows he is a snake
oil barker, a narcissist without conscience, a virulent racist, a trafficker in
fear. This part of their mind knows he
could start a world war, one likely to end civilization as we know it. They know all this. But another part of them
shuts down this discernment. It keeps truth
out of the spotlight. It
holds the keys to the penitentiary of repression.
The mechanism of this denial is evolutionary. If fear is great enough, the focus of that
fear becomes extraordinarily important.
I suppose this worked well when humans were commonly threatened by sabretooths
and cave bears. It worked absurdly and
slaughterously during the thousands of years in which city states and nations
warred against each other. In the
nuclear age, it won’t work at all.
Somehow, people have to learn to embrace the truth, even if
it is intensely painful. We have to stop
blaming and scapegoating others. When
contradictions are exposed in our belief systems, too often the resultant
‘cognitive dissonance’ fosters prejudice, sweeping self-doubt and self-loathing
into the darkest, most untouchable depths.
The sensitive ego flees from the agony of real understanding.
As millions of people line up behind Trump, sacrificing
their freedom, dignity, and democracy to his complete lack of virtue, his
bottomless and destructive need for attention, his addiction to endless, escalating
conflict, it exposes, in a monstrous way, not only the fragility of the human grip
on wisdom, but also a propensity to capitulate to fear. The Trump spectacle is the most tragic example of
human folly I have witnessed in my lifetime.
I understand that politicians like Clinton and Bush are
incredibly corrupt. And it is intensely
anger-provoking to watch them lie to us with pleasant faces, offering fake assurances,
while channeling more and more money to the richest one-tenth of one
percent. Under Bush, the economy crashed
worse than it has since 1929. People are
suffering due to entrenched oligarchic avarice.
I’m hornet-hive mad about this.
We all should be, and yet--
The answer is not Hitleresque fascism.
In other circumstances, it would be intriguing to ponder the
mind’s plasticity, its ability to split into various houses. But right now this compartmentalization is a
national menace: the dominant part of
the Trumpite mind is immune to clear reason.
It also thrives on any misery inflicted on liberals. Fear and hate reign in such a psyche. That part which could hear has withered like
a flower without sunlight.
Although I don’t believe in Biblical Revelation, if there
were a Satan, wouldn’t his surrogate be someone positioned at the head of an
Empire, someone capable of destroying all humanity by fire? Someone who lacked any virtue, who debauched hundreds
of millions of hearts, co-opting them into a crusade of violence, despair, and
murderous abandon?
I haven’t even mentioned the anti-science of the Republican view that
global warming is just a hoax.
I’ve never seen anything like the Trumpian descent before. I feel I am watching the end unfold quite rapidly. It’s very sad.
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