By Anton Allahar
Following Donald Trump’s re-election to the US presidency, many wonder how such a flawed and vulgar human being could be sent back to the White House after his disastrous first four years. After 35,000 lies told while in office, after all the grifting, impeachments, indictments, criminal convictions, multiple accusations of rape and the constant flow of vulgarity, over 73 million Americans felt he was the leader they wanted.
How might we explain the phenomenon of Trumpism? I begin with a philosophical observation concerning ‘truths’ and ‘lies’ and argue that self-deception is a necessary and integral aspect of human living. Human beings are not able to cope with the stark reality of life that can often be truly harsh and unbearable. Thus, as a survival tactic they invent coping mechanisms, one of which is the willing acceptance of obvious untruths. Consider the person who says, “my father was not an abuser, he was just a strict disciplinarian.” It’s a restatement of a harsh reality in language that softens its impact. And when Trump’s many transgressions and obscenities are pointed out to his supporters, the response is a dismissive “who among us is perfect?”
The distortions and lies we tell ourselves are crucial to the maintenance of individual and societal sanity and manifest themselves in many different ways. I will use the United States as my point of departure to examine just two of those ways to explain the recent political developments in the US and their echoes among Caribbean peoples whom Trump described as coming from “shit hole” countries. Yet, among those same American-based Caribbean peoples Trump received great support. Relatedly, I want to offer an explanation for how so many Puerto Ricans (and Latinos), for example, who were said to come from a garbage country, nevertheless voted for Trump.
Christianity
The first area in which I seek an explanation for these phenomena is religion. Almost 70% of the US population believe in the Christian God and all the narratives that surround Him: His mother, who was a virgin, had a baby. He was a flesh and blood man, who died on the cross but rose up from the dead and ascended into heaven. There is only one God, but Jesus is simultaneously God and the Son of God. He fed the multitudes (5000) with five loaves of bread and two fish. He will have a Second Coming (The Rapture). And believers are routinely invited to eat His body and drink His blood.
Capitalist democracy
The second area in which I examine the problematic acceptance of widely-spun lies and make-believe is politics. Thus, if billions of people could be made to accept as true the implausible propositions above, it is not difficult to get them to believe that the US is a democracy, that capitalism is freedom, that the revered, Christian founding fathers, who were slave owners, were champions of freedom, justice and equality, that all are equal before the law, and that American values should be the template that guides the rest of the world. For colonialism, genocide of indigenous peoples, slavery, indentureship, patriarchy and misogyny and the theft of entire countries, all carried out by democratic countries, do not invalidate the claims and promises of white, Christian, democratic purity.
The relates to the lie of ‘capitalist democracy’ and its acceptance and celebration by hundreds of millions in both the modern secular countries of advanced capitalism and our dependent capitalist Caribbean. The big lie is that ‘capitalism’ and ‘democracy’ are synonyms, and the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ is not an outright contradiction. Such claims mask the ‘truth’ that capitalist democracy is not about equality, fairness, freedom, compassion or even one-person-one-vote. Thus, we find instances in which the poor, the weak and the homeless could openly proclaim the wonders and glories of capitalism and democracy, that may not be perfect but are certainly better than all other options.
This is the context in which signs that read “blacks for Trump” and “women for Trump” etc., are to be understood. Steeped in false consciousness, the sign bearers, whether black, brown, female or Latino etc., have bought the lies. For among other things, capitalism is about profits and profits are tied to the exploitation of cheap labour and as is known, historically two of the best-known mechanisms of cheapening labour are racism and sexism.
One-party democracy
Similarly, to explain Trump’s recent victory, we must remember that the two so-called ‘parties’ of Republicans and Democrats comprise a single party, the party of capital, and members unquestioningly embrace the economic system of capitalism as superior to all others. The single, one-party system features two branches: the Republican and the Democrat. Further, I regard the democrats as republicans lite for at the end of the day both branches of the party of capital are primarily committed to the state whose primary task is to protect the interests of capital. They may have slightly different foci in their domestic policies, but on foreign policy they are indistinguishable. Consider, for example, how presidents from both branches of the party have promoted and supported the illegal and immoral blockade of Cuba for over sixty-five years. Or, the equally long-lasting economic, political and military support for Israel, a rogue, terrorist nation where leaders like Netanyahu commit genocide daily.
Some explanations
To explain this contradictory scenario, I employ George Orwell’s notion of doublethink alongside W.E.B. DuBois’ notion of double consciousness as they help us to understand the behaviour of Trump’s supporters. Doublethink speaks to a person or a group holding two simultaneously contradictory positions without feeling any mental or intellectual discomfort or misgiving, while double consciousness addresses the dissonance that attends black (and brown and other) Americans who are torn between the promise of equality and the reality of systemic inequality.
To allay the dis-ease created by cognitive dissonance (e.g., Rousseau’s “man is born free and everywhere is in chains”), human beings engage in a form of mental gymnastics, which leads them to redefine harsh realities in ways that are more soft and tolerable. In developing this idea I do not focus on Trump or Jesus per se, but try to understand the mind-sets of their followers. Both Trump and Jesus are said to be charismatic. Their followers follow them because of the feelings Trump and Jesus excite in them. It is not about logic and evidence but about sentiment, affect and feeling.
Thus, in the case of Trump’s vulgarity, e.g., grabbing women and simulating masturbation with a microphone stand etc., followers say “I don’t care. I just love him.” And for Jesus’ followers, who say God is all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful etc., the natural disasters that kill millions of His followers are simply ignored or dismissed as: “the Lord works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform.” Those who survive praise God, those who do not survive, well, ‘s—- happened.’ The psychologists explore explanations within the battle to defeat cognitive dissonance and restore cognitive consonance.
Trump’s white, non-college educated male supporters believe that he sees and understands them. He describes them as left behind in modern-day America and the plan to make America great again promises a return to a lost golden age when uneducated, white, Christian men built and ran the country. The idea of being ‘left behind’ has a coded meaning that simply casts the rural, working-class whites as displaced in the new affluent America where they do not boast the material trappings of success. Those trappings are now seen to be held by better educated ‘immigrants’ and the loss of their American Dream has left them confused, fearful and even violent. And in Trump, who actually said he loves the poorly educated, their salvation is promised (“The Great Awakening”).
The opiate of the people
The generalized fear of white racial and cultural displacement (‘Great Replacement Theory’) is tied to the wider trend of economic decline in late capitalism. With that decline, blame is assigned to the normal scapegoats: immigrants, people of colour, non-Christians, Jews, Muslims, the elites, gays, transgender people etc. The overall socio-economic-political mood welcomed Trump’s racist, sexist and homophobic denouncements and fueled a populist, radicalized commitment to ‘making America great (white and heterosexual) again.’
Similarly, double consciousness describes the conflicted and contradictory condition of being ‘black in America,’ and living in a society that extolls freedom and equality while simultaneously practicing systemic racial discrimination. For black Americans, ‘doubleness’ and contradiction define their daily lives, where one-person-one-vote is the mantra, but systemic voter suppression, gerrymandering and redistricting are the reality.
In DuBois’ words, double consciousness is a way: “of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness, — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body….”
This ‘doubleness’ is also helps to explain the poor, white, uneducated, unemployed American in the land of plenty. They are the ones ‘left behind’ and comprise Trump’s base. Their angst is tinged by fear, and like black Americans for Trump, the numbing balm of religion is liberally applied. Marx was perfectly on target: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature…. It is the opium of the people.”
As opposed to simply describing Trump’s electoral victory, this is my attempt to explain Trumpism.