![\"lemmings\"](\"http:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/lemmings.jpg\")
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What\u2019s absolutely infuriating me right now, more than the daily psychic blows of the Trump era, is the way that my own (and others\u2019) expectation that Hillary would win the election is being turned into a blunt-force rhetorical weapon against us\u2014against myself personally and others who think like I do, as recounted everywhere, daily\u2014not just by Trump supporters but by other liberals\/progressives<\/i>. The “surprise” of Trump’s victory is the argumentative wedge that invalidates any critique: what can I claim to know about Americans’ problems if I couldn’t predict his monstrous triumph?<\/p>\n
So when I attack Trump, even when agreed with, I am scolded: my critique, I am told, is invalidated by Trump supporters\u2014not by their views or opinions, but merely by their plurality; not because they\u2019re correct about anything but because they exist in greater numbers than anyone thought\u2014the apparatus of democracy itself is turned against us. (Apparently, only good candidates win\u2014performance in office isn’t as decisive as a priori<\/i> victory, which is why Trump keeps presenting his electoral stats as if they’re policy arguments.) Because we liberals\/progressives underestimated the threat, exactly as von Papen and Hindenburg and Chamberlain did in 1933, we must be wrong about what that threat means, where it came from, and what to do about it.<\/p>\n
More specifically, I am angry because when I say what’s wrong with Trump, and what horrifying damage he will do to the world, and specifically to the people he gulled into voting for him, I am told not that I\u2019m wrong but that, simply by describing the problem in con-man\/victim terms, I\u2019m adopting an unacceptably superior rhetorical stance. When I characterize Trump or his supporters (which is not difficult; none of this is subtle) I am routinely told that I do not understand something that I can see very clearly\u2014we all are\u2014simply because our observations may be wedged into a framework of \u201ccondescension\u201d or \u201cna\u00efvit\u00e9” (which, while inapplicable and misleading and misguided, is, masochistically or not, emotionally satisfying: it feels good<\/i> to tell liberals\u2014or for liberals to tell themselves\u2014that they’re blind, because<\/i> we’re the ones evangelizing our views so confidently and intrusively). And it\u2019s absolutely crucial, if we\u2019re to survive this period (and I literally mean \u201csurvive\u201d) that these dangerous and incorrect ideas be set straight.<\/p>\n
The unpleasant reality that we all must face is that something terrible has been done to a significant portion of the American public, over the decades, that has ruined their thinking ability to such a profound extent that they are now Trump supporters. It didn\u2019t happen fast and it wasn\u2019t easy\u2014it was a confluence of deliberate and accidental factors, emerging from the advertising renaissance of the 1960s (as chronicled in Joe McGuinness\u2019 landmark The Selling of the President 1968<\/i> and elsewhere, especially Rick Perlstein\u2019s brilliant work) and incorporating the infamous \u201cSouthern Strategy\u201d and other noxious public movements so that the ability of voting Americans to understand politics on a basic level has been fundamentally distorted and wrecked. Natural anti-authoritarian commiseration and anger was deflected away from predatory corporations towards \u201cgovernment.\u201d Unnecessary, calamitous wars were presented as necessary \u201cdefenses.\u201d Bigotry was amplified and nurtured. Personalities of politicians were cast in a movie-style framework that favored \u201cfolksy\u201d dumbness over knowledge or capability or achievement\u2014we were taught to prefer candidates we \u201ccould have a beer with\u201d; those who reminded ourselves, reassuringly, of our own foibled ignorance rather than of any coherent notion of expertise. <\/p>\n
Most important, these and other propagandist elements were shrewdly threaded together (with the collusion of a weak and sensationalistic press) into a coherent system of thought that embraced two or three crucial Orwellian inversions of reality: that those amongst us fighting for the underprivileged or the historically disenfranchised, rather than being heroic (as anyone defending the downtrodden is generally regarded in Western culture, starting with Jesus), are actually \u201cthe elite\u201d in disguise, sowing unfairness and imbalance; that the qualifications for high office or for any task that one develops in universities or libraries, rather than enhancing one\u2019s capabilities and perception, are actually the foundation of a sort of effete willful blindness; that (as John Updike argued decades ago) the American pioneer spirit, the spirit of rebellion that was the proving ground for our nation and the symbolic basis for the world\u2019s eternal romantic fixation with \u201ccowboys,\u201d somehow means that dumbness is a virtue; that the ignorant are better; that feelings of exclusion or envy (setting aside those that sell movie tickets or sporting events) are not childish whims that must be cultivated into ambition and competitive, aspirational drive but are, instead, the bedrock of a deep hateful truth, a resentful awareness of a profound, uncorrectable \u201cinjustice\u201d that must be nurtured over a lifetime into a profound anger: the worst and ugliest kind of anger; the kind based on the deep psychology of jealousy and bafflement, that fuels totalitarian movements.<\/p>\n
Just as Scientology shrewdly insulates its followers against psychiatry and the internet (the forces of reason that can tear it down) or Glengarry Glenn Ross<\/i> real estate sharks \u201cprotect\u201d their victims from attorneys, the people who create the sentiments I\u2019m describing work to discredit not just universities and cities and other symbols of civilization and meritocracy, but journalism and constitutional government\u2014the only forces in a modern society that can save it from tyranny\u2014so that, like Scientologists with serious problems who are trained to run away from the doctors and psychotropic drugs that can save them, the public fights against the forces of enlightenment.<\/p>\n
How bad is this problem? Look around you\u2014Trump is the President. But we\u2019re not allowed to outline the crisis the way I\u2019m doing here because it\u2019s \u201ccondescending\u201d and \u201cout of touch.\u201d Like missionary doctors sent into infected areas with vaccines, we\u2019re rejected as interlopers: the fact that we weren\u2019t aware of the extent of the disease and rot (that, in other words, we were surprised by Trump\u2019s victory) makes us, not more correct in our dire warnings, but, somehow, less correct<\/i>; more easily dismissible; \u201cproof\u201d that we know nothing and deserve to be disappointed and alarmed. The doctors and their vaccines are expelled from the villages because<\/i> they know better than the Shamans\u2014yes, they bring penicillin and it provably works, but that\u2019s irrelevant compared to how superior they think they are; the way that they parade their knowledge so insultingly, for which they must be punished.<\/p>\n
So I\u2019m tired of being told that I\u2019ve been \u201cliving in a bubble\u201d because I expected Hillary to win. I\u2019m tired of being lectured about how the fact that a surprising number of gullible Americans were tricked (by means of historically-proven totalitarian techniques) into voting 100% against their own interests, thanks to a systematic, half-century-old propaganda campaign and a trained aversion to facts and reality, somehow means that I\u2019m<\/i> confused; in the wrong; na\u00efve; misguided; \u201celite.\u201d I\u2019m tired of seeing the catastrophe of Trump\u2019s election being held up as \u201cproof\u201d that liberal\/progressive solutions \u201chave failed\u201d\u2014which is like arguing that the rise of Naziism \u201cproved\u201d that Jews had failed. (As David Bowie sang, \u201cTo be insulted by these Fascists is so degrading.\u201d) I don\u2019t care if it\u2019s \u201ccondescending\u201d or not\u2014there is far more at stake than the pride of Trump\u2019s victims (be they tenants, contractors, \u201cuniversity\u201d students or voters). You can\u2019t get the snake oil off the market if you\u2019re afraid to insult the marks who fell for it. Yes, Hillary lost\u2014the cancer is far more advanced than any of us believed. This makes the chemotherapy more<\/i> necessary, not less. To hide from the truth, to accept that \u201cwe lost\u201d and this somehow means that the forces of enlightenment should give up and go home, is to abandon a fundamental patriotic duty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What\u2019s absolutely infuriating me right now, more than the daily psychic blows of the Trump era, is the way that my own (and others\u2019) expectation that Hillary would win the election is being turned into a blunt-force rhetorical weapon against us\u2014against myself personally and others who think like I do, as recounted everywhere, daily\u2014not just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44286,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44285"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44285"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44543,"href":"http:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44285\/revisions\/44543"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}