Goines On: Trumpeteristics

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The moral insult that is Donald Trump couldn’t fail to cut Goines’ mind like a buzz saw. How could one credibly explain the rise of such a man to become President of the United States? When this question arose anew recently, Goines thought he might have a new twist on an idea of more than a year ago, when he had realized that traces of each one of Trump’s numerous character flaws could be found in most people, even a few of them in Goines himself.
    Trumps’ flaws were frequently cited in intelligent, objective journalism: fantasies of privilege, sexual license, grandiosity, freedom from external restraints, understanding without effort, being special, even creating reality by fiat. Each was a fantasy because it was contrary to fact, unrealistic.
    But Goines’ earlier exploration had stopped short of explaining what, specifically, was different about the Trumpeters – people who had voted for Trump and, especially, would vote for him again if given the chance. Might it be a matter of the number of shared traits, or the degree to which they were shared, or the identity of the particular traits, that rendered people vulnerable to Trumpism?
    While admitting that the question might ultimately be unanswerable, Goines felt comfortable understanding Trumpeters as sharing two main Trump characteristics: The first trait was essential: that they were primarily interested in looking out for and taking care of themselves – conserving what was theirs – and to hell with everyone else and their stuff. The second trait facilitated their idolizing Trump: like him, they were still children, or childish in their thinking – like the relative of Goines who, along with a Christmas card, sent him an evangelical pamphlet titled “Steps to Peace with God,” with the handwritten admonition to please read it before throwing it away. The relative seemed not to have any inkling that his approval of Trump utterly destroyed any credibility he might have when it came to recommending belief in God. Goines appreciated the irony in the pamphlet’s advocating the same sort of “deal” Trump did: unconditional surrender.
    And, as children, Trumpeters seemed to believe that the Office of President endowed whoever occupied it (so long as he wasn’t black or female) with the authority of a parent, to be respected and imitated. If Trump could speak his mind, they, his children, could speak theirs. If Trump said climate change was a hoax, then they, his children, were thereby absolved of any possible consequences of it. If Trump could contradict evidence by declaration, then they too, his children, could make things be the way they wanted them to be merely by saying that that was the way they were. It was a raving new world.

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