For Anyone Convinced That This President Is The Answer
Then it must stem from Trump being seen as solving the problem of pent up resentment towards BLM, diversity, inclusion, political correctness, and equality for a certain group of people
The administration seeks to primarily serve anglo or evangelical interests that enable institutional callousness to counter minority inclusion. They want to maintain an exclusive hand in the social order of American life. With bigotry and bias in tow Trump provides cover for right wing ideologies and racializations that corrupt democracy and enable white privilege with consequent entitlement. The discrimination and prejudice that follows continues to thrive both covertly and blatantly in many aspects of our society. It reminds everyone that America actually belongs to a certain class with no regard to socioeconomic status or birthright status.
This largely explains the how and why Trump’s incompetence and behavior is overlooked or is repeatedly pardoned for marked racism and general malfeasance in office. That the threat of inclusion could spark this level of mass hysteria is not unfounded but is delusional in its rationale when interpreted as seeing fellow Americans as political opponents or racialized immortal enemies.
This takes both a considerable and collective effort of motivated ignorance to achieve. Not sure how they do it but they do it well enough to be considered Trump hyphenated loyalists, apologists, sycophants, and advocates to the incredulity of a presidency that is undermining and corrupting the essence of democracy at its core and overtly divisive and bigoted at its surface. This, awkwardly is enough to convince them that America from their vantage point and in this light is great and Trump is deserving.
By this logic, or lack thereof, we are suppose to consider the psychology of the human condition when offering prudent analysis and opinion that take into consideration our flawed existence. When writer for The Atlantic, Peter Wehner, wrote in his piece, “Why Trump Supporters Can’t Admit Who He Really Is”, I choked on my own saliva trying to absorb this tidbit from what appears to be an honest observation.
I know plenty of Trump supporters, and I know many of them to be people of integrity in important areas of their lives. Indeed, some are friends I cherish. But if there is a line Donald Trump could cross that would forfeit the loyalty of his core supporters — including, and in some respects especially, white evangelical Christians — I can’t imagine what it would be. And that is a rather depressing thing to admit.
Depressing for you but a nightmare for people like me and many others who sit here and are forced to consider what white people are thinking all the time in order to survive and navigate life. Once again Michelle Woomer’s thesis on motivated ignorance puts this matter in its proper context.
…the privileged social location of white people not only cognitively disposes them to misunderstand certain realities about the racial system, but also gives them an incentive to misunderstand these realities (or ignore them completely). Since they benefit from the racial system, it is not in their interest to understand its harms. Group interest can skew white cognition by affecting, for example, “the concepts favored (e.g., today’s ‘color blindness’), the refusal to perceive systemic discrimination, the convenient amnesia about the past and its legacy in the present, and the hostility to black testimony on continuing white privilege and the need to eliminate it to achieve racial justice”…¹
This takes a lot of ego defense, a remarkably consistent amount of repression and laughably, an absurd display of reaction formation and projection from those who have convinced themselves that Donald Trump is the answer. An inept and woefully immoral character of man is defended and praised because he claims to be defending and preserving a malcontent America that is under this chthonic threat, said to be invading suburbia, and entrenched in the Democratic party. According to them any resistance or non adherence to President Trump’s dangerous and stupid agenda is constantly foiled by a deep state agenda sabotaging or attempting to overthrow their leader in the oval office.
So what is QAnon?
“QAnon” is a baseless internet conspiracy theory whose followers believe that a cabal of Satan-worshipping Democrats, Hollywood celebrities and billionaires runs the world while engaging in pedophilia, human trafficking and the harvesting of a supposedly life-extending chemical from the blood of abused children. QAnon followers believe that Donald Trump is waging a secret battle against this cabal and its “deep state” collaborators to expose the malefactors and send them all to Guantánamo Bay.
This astonishing stream of consciousness imbibing on this fantastical self-deception vocalized by their opinions or with fingertaps memorialized on the internet is profoundly influential to those who are bereft of any plausible moral sensibility. They avail primarily through fear-mongering narratives that conclude with the conspiratorial wink. They employ the use of buzz worthy descriptors that actually tell you how you should feel about this president’s fight on their behalf without question, without much thought, and certainly without any evidence.
It is not at all surprising that this consensus consists of racializations stemming from white supremacists, and apologists to their Black sympathizers and opportunists. Again, as a nation we are completely surrounded by people who willfully want to cause great harm to others that inevitably and consequently will bring great harm to themselves.
Reference
¹ Woomer, L.M., (2015). A Unified Account of Motivated Ignorance (p. 42) (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://d.lib.msu.edu/etd/3395/datastream/OBJ/view
