I rarely encounter overt Trump supporters in my daily interactions. On occasion I might pass a pick-up truck decked out in Trump stickers with American flags waving in the wind. Every now and then, I might see a maskless supporter strutting in a store, itching for someone to confront him. And for the first time, I encountered a Facebook friend of a friend who supports Trump. I’m aware that I can have a big mouth and that I lack patience in the face of stupidity. So, not surprisingly, this wasn’t a positive experience for either of us. But it did prompt me to think about why someone would abandon all reason, morality, and reality to embrace someone like Trump.
I looked up definitions for the word “cult” to determine for myself if the Trump supporters I encountered were actually members of a cult as others have described them. One definition taken from my Dictionary phone app defined cult as: “a group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc.” From my observation, Trump supporters do revere or adore Trump and they are definitely glued together by their reverence and loyalty to him. Their intensity is downright dangerous as demonstrated by their attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, believing his lie that the election was stolen from him.
The woman I encountered on Facebook was quick to assert that Trump won the election and to attack Biden as a person with dementia, as only caring about himself and his “crackhead son”, and to attack me personally as a person who didn’t know the truth and not worth listening to, especially after I told her I wasn’t buying her nonsense which lacked evidence, context, history, logic, and common sense. I called upon her to watch Biden’s press conferences and speeches and to listen to actual journalism and no longer allow herself to be feed a bunch of propaganda. I suppose I only succeeded in making her furious. Funny thing is, I never got angry, never lost my cool, and never resorted to calling her names. At the end, she called me a liberal and told me to grab an ice cream and go sit in a creepy basement with Joe Biden and then to go sit under a rock with my BS. I ended by thanking her for the compliment and saying there was nowhere else I would rather be and that at least my liberal BS is based in reality.
Coming from a career in higher education, I’m not accustomed to dealing with people who uncritically accept rumors, gossip, innuendos, false accusations, conspiracies, and lies as truth worth acting upon. The scary part is that these people have not only armed themselves with guns, but they are actively running for local, state, and federal offices to enact laws that fit and defend their perverted version of reality. They are also enthusiastic about voting. God help us if they gain power in our local, state and federal governments. History tells us that truth-bearers like academics, journalists, and their books are the first people on the chopping block in a society run by immoral lying autocrats who depend on an ignorant and apathetic populace.
The reality is that our society currently has too many people who cannot distinguish between actual news and propaganda. I believe that if they knew better, they would do better. I realize it is unwise to wait until college to teach critical thinking skills. Trump said out loud that he loved the uneducated. Indeed, every autocrat depends on the loyalty of those who are simple-minded, apathetic, and easily swayed.
In conclusion, I learned from my encounter that Trump supporters won’t be swayed by reason nor evidence. It is therefore up to those of us who rely on evidence, appreciate democracy, respect science, and demand social justice to rally all those around us to vote in the mid-terms this year to elect reality-based candidates and to do it again in 2024. Otherwise thinking people and this country will be in big trouble.