Why do Republican voters like Donald J. Trump? That is the question of the moment in the
blogosphere. The polling data suggest
that substantive policy is not the answer.
With a phenomenon of this magnitude, there are clearly several correct
answers. Let me call attention to one
answer that has cropped up in the discussion of the Trump phenomenon. It is, I find, both plausible and especially
disturbing.
Trump's rambling free-form public speeches give people
permission to say openly things they have long wanted to say but feel they have
been bullied into not saying -- things like "nigger" and
"spic" and "anchor baby" and "illegal rapist
drug-dealing Mexicans." Trump has
liberated, in millions of Americans, ugly, hateful, despicable sentiments that
have been bottled up and forcibly suppressed.
It feels good to them to bring those sentiments into the sunlight, to hear
a rich man say them unapologetically.
What would Jesus say, were he to return to earth and walk
once more among us as a natural man? When
I ask myself that question [as I often do], I am reminded once again of Matthew, Chapter 23, verse 27: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear
beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and
of all uncleanness."
That is a remarkably accurate description of many of the good White
Christian folk who flock to Trump's gatherings and cheer him to the echo.
Will Trump win the Republican nomination? I suspect not. If he does, he will guarantee a Democratic
victory. If he does not, he will so damage
the successful nominee that the same result is all but certain. But that is not the end of it. Freud and the Sixties to the contrary
notwithstanding, there is much to be said for repression. The sentiments whose expression Trump is
legitimating deserve to be repressed,
they ought to be repressed, and no
good can come from exposing them to the light, for although real sunlight may
indeed be an effective disinfectant, metaphorical sunlight does not have that
cleansing property.
There are fifty-five million registered Republicans in the
United States. Let us suppose roughly 30%
of them support Trump, as recent polls suggest, which is to say more than
sixteen million adult Americans. That is a whole lot of whited sepulchres out
there filled with uncleanness and dead men's bones!
Professor Wolff --
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of Ronald Reagan’s successful campaign for president against Jimmy Carter. Americans were quickly becoming tired of Carter’s exhortations and policy directives to turn down the heat, drive slower, mandate energy efficient automobiles, and simply adopt a general attitude of conservation through deprivation. By way of contrast, Reagan encouraged the use of gas-guzzling cars, higher speed limits, and a general attitude of consumption. Add to that Reagan’s promise that it was now “morning in America” as opposed to the “malaise across America” warnings from a dour Carter. At the time, the American electorate chose the indulgence of Reagan over that of the cautions parsimony of Carter. Although the current situation is not entirely analogous, let’s hope that the psychological liberation unleashed by Trump does not reach beyond those who have heretofore been repressed.
-- Jim
Wait, you argue against a guy who is taking it to the establishment partly by calling names by appealing to a passage from the Bible in which Jesus does virtually the same thing?
ReplyDeleteI do indeed. As the bumper sticker says, WWJD [What would Jesus do?] He sure wouldn't propose rounding up people with brown skins and muscling them across the border. Don't be taken in by false parallels.
ReplyDeleteI apologize for being a few days late in reacting to your excellent entry on the Trump phenomenon. I may seem to be nitpicking, but your statement that, "Freud and the Sixties to the contrary notwithstanding, there is much to be said for repression" needs substantial qualification, if only for the linkage of Freud with sexual license.
ReplyDeleteFreud would surely have thought the range of transgressions that we've come to characterize as "the Sixties" to be infantile and highly regressive socially. However much his work has fallen into scientific disrepute in recent decades, Freud, like his contemporary Lenin, was deeply conservative regarding social mores. One of Freud's truly interesting latter day disciples, Philip Rieff, a scholar and cultural critic whose relative obscurity these days is lamentable, states in "Fellow Teachers": "'No': that is the fathering word of our humanity." Some have called Donald Trump the id of the Republican Party. I take that, and the absence of any fetters on that id as it seeks ever more deviant political gratifications -- the absence of a super-ego, so to speak -- as being what you're getting at.