(3-minute read)
It’s an art.
Years ago I was elected to serve on the city council of a small town in Kansas. With the exception of one person, a recent addition, an entire council was replaced over a single controversial issue—the construction of a new sewer plant. Voters were riled up! An entire council needed replaced! At the same time! The council was replaced. There was a peaceful transfer of power.
After the new council was elected a group in the city circulated a survey available to any resident concerning the city. One of their questions asked was what people considered the best accomplishment of the city. Come on, guess? Did you guess the new sewer plant? You did, didn’t you?! That’s what came out on top. People liked it! Make that the majority of survey responders liked it.
Not the people that voted to drain the swamp though. BTW the city switched to staggered terms after learning what happens when an entire governing body is replaced at the same time and all that institutional knowledge and experience is lost. Fortunately for us all the city workers were competent and professional. (Project 2025 would do away with all the civil servants that keep our country ticking over as politicians come and go.)
Keep in mind that a third of Americans don’t bother to vote for a variety of reasons.[1] That’s roughly 80 million people that don’t participate even with candidates as polarizing as President Biden and the rapist Trump. Eighty. Million.
Sobering, isn’t it?
Tapped.
The rapist Trump came along and tapped into the dark underbelly of America. It was there from the very beginning. Even the Civil War didn’t finish it. It just went underground and kept bubbling back to the surface. Trump just gave it a focus, repackaged it, gave it new buzz words, and set it out like it was brand new.
It isn’t new. It’s racism. It’s misogyny. It’s bigotry. The rapist Trump has directed hate speech against immigrants since 2016. Years of demonizing. Years of blatant lies. Lies accepted in their totality by his cult followers. He has continually trashed our form of government and other democracies while talking about men like Xi, Putin, Orban and Un in positive terms. Many of his followers openly embrace his call for a dictatorship in the United States of America as he turns his back on our allies in Europe, Asia, India and Africa.
The problem is that in addition to his cult voting for him we have fickle voters whose main approach to politics is what’s in it for me and that have a limited understanding of the world around them. People will vote on what they think reality is rather than what it is. In other words you can tell people that they’re doing better but if they don’t believe that they’re doing better it won’t matter. Tens of millions of people now have jobs that didn’t previously, but they’re unhappy with what groceries cost. Were they better off without a job? It’s a conundrum. Having been through several times myself I can say that my family was better off with me having a job.
And as a further example of Trump and his supporters’ unawareness he said recently that he didn’t know what NATO was until he took office in 2016.[2] He said that he figured it out in 2 minutes. Trump still approaches government with that same lack of understanding. It’s hard to imagine that depth of ignorance for any person seeking the highest office of the land but there it is. What’s true for Trump is probably true for most of his followers.
Ignorance is bliss.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/12/15/945031391/poll-despite-record-turnout-80-million-americans-didnt-vote-heres-why
[2] https://kimatv.com/news/nation-world/fact-check-what-biden-got-wrong-about-trumps-nato-comment-president-trump-joe-biden-summit-press-conference-kamala-harris-zelenskyy-putin-europe-gaffe
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