By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--May 15, 2018
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Don’t get me wrong. Thinking people will always try to see past their own ideological blind spots, to put themselves into the shoes of those they disagree with. That’s an admirable trait. In normal times it’s a trait I would applaud with enthusiasm. But these are not normal times. Indeed, sometimes, I wonder if we appreciate just how abnormal — how fraught with danger — they really are. Under Trump, American laws, news media and mores are under assault, to say nothing of American democracy itself. And I’m sorry, but I don’t think “understanding” Trump followers will ameliorate — or even address — any of that. Besides which, is there really so much left to “understand”? Not from where I sit. Long before Trump even existed as a political force, many of us noted with alarm the rise of a backlash among right-wingers deeply angry and profoundly terrified by the writing on the demographic wall. Said writing foretold — and for that matter, still foretells — the declining pre-eminence of white, Christian America. As several studies now show, a sense of alarmed displacement among white, Christian America is the soil from which the weed of Trumpism grew. The idea that we must “understand” those folks carries with it an implicit suggestion that in so doing, we might find some ground for compromise. It would be a great idea in normal times. But again, these times are not normal. No compromise is possible here for a simple reason Trump followers seem to understand better than the rest of us: You can’t compromise with demography, can’t order numbers to stop being what they are and saying what they say about the coming tide of change. But what you can do is seize the levers of power and change the rules of the game in hopes of blunting the force of that tide. That — again, look at the studies — is what Trump supporters elected him to do.
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