#RevThread #104
Trump Attraction Syndrome-- Four parts
Part 1: Stubborn Indifference
1/ A friend has a great question that now bugs me as well. Why are so many people not bothered by Trump's evil?
Trump Attraction Syndrome-- Four parts
Part 1: Stubborn Indifference
1/ A friend has a great question that now bugs me as well. Why are so many people not bothered by Trump's evil?
2/ Trump is an adulterer; he has ties with organized crime; his greed is always on view; he separates children from their parents and causes children to be caged; he lies repeatedly; he exudes racism; he has a lifetime of defrauding others; he admires and imitates tyrants.
3/ My friend put it like this -- “I know lots of them are good people, so I can’t understand how they can follow someone who does such objectively evil things. I don’t want to believe they’re all evil.”
4/ It’s a mystery, this attraction to evil, and I’m not going to solve it in four tweet threads. But I do begin with this: “Jesus answered, “Why do you call me good? God alone is good.” (Mark 10: 18). Say what?
5/ Jesus is saying that we are all, everyone of us, a mixture of good and evil. If even Jesus asks, “Why do you call me good?” I’m sure as hell not going to claim to be good. God alone is purely good.
6/ Not one of us would want all the thoughts and images that cross our mind to be broadcast. The question isn't therefore: “Why do good people follow this evil man?”
7/ The question is: “What’s going on that so many millions of people who usually behave well are either indifferent to Trump’s evil or they’re roaring their approval as he models and teaches evil and stupidity?”
8/ I see these four things: Stubborn Indifference; The Joyful Release of Hatred; Daddy Issues; Mimetic Contagion.
9/ The indifference part is the easiest to get. Most of us just plug along. Our own lives are hard enough.
10/ In the 1930’s, as Europe cascaded into Fascism, the great poet W.H.Auden went to Spain to fight against Franco’s forces. Back home in the British Museum, Auden reflected on the world’s indifference in his great poem, “Musee Des Beaux Arts.”
11/ Auden was looking at Bruegel’s painting “Icarus.” [Icarus was the boy of myth who fashioned wax wings and flew too close the sun, crashing to earth as the wax melted.] Here’s the painting. You can see the legs of the drowning Icarus in the lower right corner. 
12/ Auden writes:
“...In Brueghel’s “Icarus,” for instance: everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster: the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,...
“...In Brueghel’s “Icarus,” for instance: everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster: the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,...
13/".. But for him it was not an important failure: the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green water
And the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.”
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green water
And the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.”
14/ That covers most of the folks I know --“Let’s not talk about it because there’s nothing we can do about it.” These are the ones we have to persuade to vote for Democrats this fall.
15/ If We The People don’t create a new congressional majority committed to blocking Trump’s autocracy, we could lose our liberties for generations.
16/ This indifference to our disaster gives a passive assent to those engulfed in the Trump cult.
17/ The quiescence of most churches, most corporations, and much of the media encourages both the rallies and the obnoxious ranting on Fox News, thus enfolding more and more of the vaguely discontented into the ranks of the enraged Trumpsters.
18/ Something evil is being released in those rallies and strengthened nightly on Fox. To that something we turn in the next thread.
