The Results Start to Come In

A real time discussion is warranted. 

Joe won Delaware. Guess it's over.

Or is that conclusion premature?

What Some More Trump Supporters Think

Rempel’s burned equipment in the field

The New York Times wrote this about a farmer in Nebraska, Johnathan Rempel, who put Trump flags on his farm equipment. Some moron came along and burned his equipment down. The NYT writes:

“In Mr. Rempel’s farming community of Henderson and in the countryside that makes up much of the majority Republican state of Nebraska, people say that President Trump represents their deep convictions. And those strongly held beliefs exist in a good versus evil framework in which many see issues like abortion, immigration and what is to them the trade-exploiting, virus-spreading nation of China in the starkest of terms.

“The forgotten men and women of our country,” he promised back then, “will be forgotten no longer.”

The president’s supporters in places like rural Nebraska say they feel remembered. To them, these four years have brought a sense of belonging in a country led by someone who sticks up for, and understands, their most cherished beliefs. To the more than 50 percent of Americans who disapprove of the president, Mr. Trump can represent division and dishonesty. In Henderson, and many places like it, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign pitch that he is fighting for the soul of the nation simply doesn’t resonate. People here would view its soul as being in jeopardy if he triumphed.

“I said, ‘No, that’s not possible,’” Mr. Rempel, a fourth-generation farmer, recalled, describing his disbelief that his equipment had been destroyed and his corn harvest put in jeopardy. Mr. Rempel won’t speculate on a motive for what he believes was arson; the State Fire Marshal has said only that it is investigating the incident.

“Whenever you see something on fire that was lit on purpose, or whenever you see a business destroyed, whenever you see somebody making a point through violence, it’s evil,” Mr. Rempel said. “And evil destroys.”

“I like what he stands for. He’s against abortion. He’s against evil. He’s against higher taxes,” said Pat Goossen, who owns The Petal Pusher, a flower shop on Henderson’s Main Street. “He shares my values. I don’t want higher taxes. I don’t want our jobs going out.”

Though the president has refused to denounce white supremacy, Ms. Goossen, who is white, like most of her neighbors in Henderson, said she couldn’t believe that the president was being tied to violent outbursts at rallies against racial injustice.

“Do you honestly think he caused the burning and the riots? Are you out of your ever-loving mind? He did not,” she said. “He was a victim of this just like the rest of us.”

Mr. Rempel enjoys the lonely feeling of being on the farm, where he can zone out in the cab of his combine or behind the wheel of his pickup, bouncing down gravel roads. “I love being in flyover country. I love it. I embrace it,” Mr. Rempel said, walking through his rows of corn and fretting over every bent stalk. “I lived in Omaha. Nobody knew who you were. You could do whatever you wanted. You could go steal a car and run into a post and run away and nobody cares.” Rural life, he said, offers accountability among people who share a set of values. Being around parents, grandparents, those “who take pride in you,” is grounding. It’s something he thinks is lost in big cities.

‘Everybody wants to put people in a box so we can decide right away if we hate you. You’re a Trump supporter! You’re a Biden supporter! We hate you!’ he said. ‘We need to quit that as a country. You are who you are, and I am who I am, and I can love you even if I don’t agree with you.’” (emphasis added)

What can one say in the face of that? Politics has been weaponized by moralizing it into good vs. evil. The articulation of evil in Biden and the political opposition is fuzzy at best. Once again, this looks like another example of radical right political poison doing it’s intended job in the minds of decent people. Rempel sees rural life as a source of accountability among people who share a set of values. That implies that people in urban areas are bad or evil. Is that what rural people really believe about people in cities? Are people who work their butts off in cities and raise their families as best they can just evil slackers and freeloaders who could not care less about being good, honest or hard-working?

How can Remple love people in urban areas or one who support Biden if he sees this in terms of good vs. evil?[1] I don’t think he can.

Footnote: 

1. That is why I try hard not to slap the evil label on average people. I criticize lies, deceit, irrational emotional manipulation as immoral or, if malice is there, evil, but not most people. Trump is an exception. He is evil and dripping with malice.

Trump’s Immoral Legacy of Distrust

Flags at the D.C. Armory grounds in Washington representing those who have died of the coronavirus in the United States. The lasting effect of Mr. Trump’s relationship with the truth may be most evident in terms of the pandemic.

The New York Times writes about the president's legacy as one of significantly eroding public distrust in facts, the legitimacy of political opposition and democracy itself. Those have been among the top Trump goals from day one. Sadly, he succeeded. The NYT writes:

“Born amid made-up crowd size claims and “alternative facts,” the Trump presidency has been a factory of falsehood from the start, churning out distortions, conspiracy theories and brazen lies at an assembly-line pace that has challenged fact-checkers and defied historical analogy. 

But now, with the election two days away, the consequences of four years of fabulism are coming into focus as President Trump argues that the vote itself is inherently “rigged,” tearing at the credibility of the system. Should the contest go into extra innings through legal challenges after Tuesday, it may leave a public with little faith in the outcome — and in its own democracy.

During his final weekend of campaign rallies, Mr. Trump continued to sow doubt about the validity of the election, making clear that he would deem any outcome other than victory for him to be corrupt. At a rally in Philadelphia, which has a sizable nonwhite population and a Democratic-led government, he asserted that the city would falsify the results. “Are they going to mysteriously find more ballots” after polls close, he asked. “Strange things have been known to happen, especially in Philadelphia.”

The nightmarish scenario of widespread doubt and denial of the legitimacy of the election would cap a period in American history when truth itself has seemed at stake under a president who has strayed so far from the normal bounds that he creates what allies call his own reality. Even if the election ends with a clear victory or defeat for Mr. Trump, scholars and players alike say the very concept of public trust in an established set of facts necessary for the operation of a democratic society has eroded during his tenure with potentially long-term ramifications.  

‘You can mitigate the damage, but you can’t bring it back to 100 percent the way it was before,’ said Lee McIntyre, the author of “Post-Truth” and a philosopher at Boston University. ‘And I think that’s going to be Trump’s legacy. I think there’s going to be lingering damage to the processes by which we vet truths for decades. People are going to be saying, ‘Oh, that’s fake news.’ The confusion between skepticism and denialism, the idea that if you don’t want to believe something, you don’t have to believe it — that’s really damaging, and that’s going to last.’”

That assessment is basically correct. In my experience, most of the president’s supporters are mostly closed to accepting facts, true truths and/or sound reasoning. In particular, true truths and sound reasoning are often rejected out of hand. Unfortunately, most of his supporters cannot see this and deny it when the facts and argument is presented. 

Maybe his worst legacy boils down to this: Tribal loyalty and reality talk, and everything and everyone else walks. Tribal reality can be true, false, mixed or ambiguous, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is loyalty. The radical right has been working for decades to get the typical conservative mind to this point. They surely are not going to give up on what has finally succeeded for them. Radical right elites are on the cusp of realizing their decades-long vision of a corrupt, authoritarian, white America and culture. That vision is built mostly on lies and deceit, and thus it is built mostly on immorality.

As the NYT comments, “the very idea of truth is increasingly a fungible commodity in a political environment that seems to reward the loudest voices, not the most honest.”

My Restless, Discontented Mind

Multiple matters are on my mind before this election. Here's a couple.

The morality of the capitalist mind, and its 

intent to deceive, knowing or not

One of the things I am exposed to for hours and hours and hours is financial reporting, information and news on cable TV. If it were up to me, I would be exposed to very little of it. Maybe that mindset is a mistake. 

But once awakening to that kind of content and listening carefully for years, it is now clear that the word moral and the concept of morality is almost never used. The closest the capitalist folks ever get to is 'good' or 'bad', almost always in the context of future earnings. That now strikes me as intending to wall off broader thoughts about morality beyond the culprit(s) and heroes du jour. That is how I interpret this. My personal opinion.

What basis in logic or reason is there for that? Why would the concept of morality be walled off, even by Bloomberg? As best I can tell, people deeply involved in capitalism are all most on the same page. Capitalism, free markets and profits are sacrosanct. Social impacts are downplayed into almost non-existence. Adverse social impacts, more pollution, exploitation of poor people, etc., are almost never even mentioned, much less discussed in significant detail. The modern capitalist propaganda mirage (lie) is that business is "amoral" and thus off the table for moral consideration.

IMHO, that is a false capitalist lie and deceit propaganda tactic. That said, there is also such a thing as pure socialist, communist, fascist and/or Christian-religious propaganda. We are awash in in all of that nastiness and deceit. It is not going to go away because it is protected free speech, at least so far.

The morality of rigid political, economic and religious ideology, and their 

hidden intent to deceive and enslave

Over the years, the power of rigid ideology to corrupt and deceive minds, societies and governments has become clearer and clearer. Ideology tends to kill acceptance of, real facts, true truths and sound reasoning. Rigid and/or sacred ideology goes a long way to lead minds to reject inconvenient facts, inconvenient true truths and inconvenient sound reasoning. Al Gore was partially right to label the concept of inconvenient reality and reason as inconvenience. The rest of the right he didn't mention was that intentional deceit is immoral and unwitting deceit is ignorance.

As social and political polarization stays in place, or increases, ideological distortion and misplaced beliefs are more likely to get worse than better. The radical right has been working relentlessly for decades to get most conservative minds to where they are today. That cannot be undone in my lifetime. The problem is multigenerational. One line of thought posits that this problem could eventually lead to forever human enslavement as the power of tyrants and demagogues to deceive, divide and enslave populations increases. One source labeled that technology-enabled potential outcome as "The grim fate that could be ‘worse than extinction’." 

The question is whether societies can keep up and self-preserve against the increasing power of evil, often powered in the name of (1) sacred profit, (2) a sacred ideology, and/or (3) a sacred God.

Now, exhale

Obviously, that is all potential, not certainty. Societies can and do learn to self-defend. It is possible that on Nov. 3, Americans will reject the path we are now on. That would come in the face of millions of Americans who see the path we are now on as the road to salvation, goodness and morality, not something worse than human extinction. From what I can tell, the differing visions of reality and possible outcomes could not be much different.