I do not like being baffled. My desire not to be baffled has led me to read all of James Joyce's books, to repeatedly listen to the recordings John Coltrane made just before his death, and to say YES to women that any reasonable man would have walked away from.
It hasn't always turned out well, but that's not really the point. The point is that I can't help myself. If you present me with a Gordian Knot, I will sit down and break my fingernails on it in my attempt to untie it.
So for the past two years or so, I have constantly circled around the question, How on earth can there be Republicans who support Donald Trump?
I mean...he is so obviously not only stupid and corrupt, but actually fiercely misogynistic, immoral, and anti-American. How on earth could any sensible person support this man?
My friends have come to the conclusion that Trump supporters are stupid and / or evil. I don't think that can possibly be the answer. There are stupid and evil people, of course. But not many. Certainly not THAT many.
So...it was something else.
I understood why rich people would support Trump. What the fuck do they care if he is "a fucking idiot" so long as his actions push more gold coins into their money bins? It's not like any of his other actions have any effect upon them, after all. Who cares if some Venezuelan kid gets put into a chain-link cell? Who gives a fuck if the Russians helped Trump get elected? Etc.
But why regular people? Why poor people? Why people who actually suffer because of Trump's actions? And why all of those Congressmen? I mean, I know that most of them are rich, but surely they are not JUST rich people, right?
Well, today I was doing my Daily Devotional Reading in Henry Thomas Buckle's History of Civilization in England Volume III, and there was a bit which hit me right between the eyes:
"With Reid [Thomas Reid, 1710–1796], the main question always is, not whether an inference is true, but what will happen if it is true. He says, that a doctrine is to be judged by its fruits...."
And I don't think that Buckle was in any way approving of this concept, but I don't think he was dismissing it, either. And if you think about it...I think you can easily justify it. For instance, there certainly are things that I don't tell my children because the knowledge would not do them any good and might / probably would disturb them. Even more than that, there are times when I tell them things that I either do not think are true or that I am not sure are true because I want to give them solace. So, for instance, even though I do not know if I believe in the Christian concept of the afterlife, I have no problem telling my two younger (special needs) children that when I die I will go to Heaven and that I will be there waiting for them.
I see Buckle's comments on Reid falling into this same realm.
And when I put that back into the Trump equation, it goes like this: it would be so awful to think that the President of the United States of America would betray his own country that we're just going to reject the idea that it could happen.
Of course, I don't approve of that idea in any way.
But it makes sense to me.
I understand it.
And now...I want to know what I can do to work against that notion.
Got any ideas?
No comments:
Post a Comment