The Fever Dreams of Trumpists
Last night I extricated myself from a FB conversation. Yes, it was one of THOSE conversations, started by one of my conservative acquaintances who has become a Never Trumper. A couple of days ago, he asked what act would turn his Trumpist friends against The Orange One. The answer (nothing) was predictable; what was shocking was the nonsense they spewed in a continuous stream to justify that. Intellectually, we all sense that Trumpists are unbalanced and misinformed. When it’s laid out in plain English on social media, it makes your hair hurt.
One Trumpist would deflect all questions about Trump to Biden and his son, Hunter. He would simply not address any of the issues about Ukraine or the thousands and thousands of easily disproven lies from Trump. His source is Sean Hannity and he actually begged me to watch his show to “get the facts” that were going “to bury” Biden and his son. He would only gloat about how Biden is “cooked” and would not even address the question. Another Trumpist resorted to immediate grade school name calling and wanted to bet all comers $2,500 that Trump would not be impeached and that he would again be elected president. He didn’t like I said I didn’t believe I wanted to bet on the level of stupidity of Trumpists.
One Trumpist kept quoting the Bible. One even quoted Shakespeare, which I found entertaining. One kept quoting the lies of Peter Schweizer, author of Clinton Cash, one of those fact free “investigative” books that makes people’s brains soft. One said he would only vote against Trump if “he was convicted of a crime”. He seemed puzzled when I said that was impossible since DOJ policy didn’t allow a sitting president to be indicted for crimes they committed.
The one who took the cake? The QAnon Trumpist. I have never had a social media conversation with anyone as unhinged as this one. These folks are obsessed with pedophilia, and have this weird article of faith that the “Deep State”, whatever that is, is somehow covering up Hillary’s pedophilia ring that has “pedavores” as members. I have no idea what a “pedavore” is, and don’t want to know. This person was so unhinged that even the most Trumpist of Trumpists paused their ranting momentarily, one even saying, “I don’t even know what that means.” I burst out laughing at that one, almost spilling my Jack on the rocks on my keyboard.
What I learned during this exchange was that to a person no level of corruption, criminality, or misconduct would cause a Trumpist to think again. The really disheartening lesson was that how thoroughly these people are brainwashed with pure unadulterated bullshit. We knew that the Hillary nonsense is encoded in the DNA – but right alongside those lies, the lies about Biden and his son have already been ingrained. The facts have no bearing on these opinions; none. I have finally given up even trying to talk to these people because I make no progress. The message framing, as defined by George Lakoff, a linguist and retired professor of language at Berkeley, is perfect. This message framing hits all the emotional buttons of fear, belonging, and Them vs. Us. Once that kind of messaging becomes encoded, it’s almost impossible to alter it, and that’s what we’re witnessing.
These people are beyond reach of reason and critical thinking. The only way they can be beaten is to neutralize them at the voting booth, and that requires the engagement in massive numbers of normal people who haven’t been brainwashed. That is a huge task.
