Trump might eke out a victory, but it looks like Biden wins the White House and the GOP holds the senate. The country, in other words, chooses stasis and the continued gridlock that makes us ungovernable–a failed state in the making.
Fear makes us stupid, and people are really scared. As a country, we're like deer paralyzed in the headlights. We're stuck in place and find ourselves incapable of moving forward. If we all are the deer, the car rushing toward us is the future. That part of us who wants to face it can't because the other part of us keeps us paralyzed. Continued paralysis does not usually end well for the deer or for the car.
I think the pandemic and the summer protests worked against Dems more than for them because both increased the fear that paralyzes us. Trump's pouring gas on the flames was irresponsible, but effective. Nevertheless, if the GOP had a more responsible, mainstream candidate, I think it would have won the White House easily. It's not because Republicans have solutions–they have none and are not interested in developing any–but because in a time of pandemic and social unrest they symbolize the old and familiar to large swaths of the country–the part of us that is more fearful of the future.
Even if Trump loses, there are far more people that voted for him than I hoped would. Like many, I was hoping that the country would repudiate him decisively, but it's clear, despite everything we know about Trump, we're not capable of that. Most Trump supporters are decent and sane in their non-political attitudes and behaviors. Why would they vote for someone who will go into the history books as the most indecent, unfit president in our history? Can they not see that? Won't they be embarrassed to tell their grandchildren that they supported such a deeply corrupt madman? How to explain this?
Fear largely explains it. Frightened people understandably want to feel safe, but choices made in fear instinctively look to the past and the familiar. Fearful people don't have the brain width to think things through, so they make symbolic choices that represent what feels comfortable and the safe rather than make practical, sensible choices that might actually make them safer. Trump makes a lot people feel safer because they see in him a defender from realities that they would rather not face.
He might be raving madman. He might be someone who really doesn't care about them or provide for them. But he plays the role of strongman effectively enough to make them believe he will keep them safe from the future's uncertainties.
Why does the long-term prisoner often fear release? Because prison and its routines are familiar and feel safer. Life outside is a complete unknown in which he'll have to fend for himself. Why does a woman with a fragile identity stay with her drunken, violently abusive husband? Because it's familiar and to leave him is scarier than to stay with him.
Trump is the school-yard bully who symbolizes safety to those who submit to him. Elected Republicans have become the sniggering members of his gang who cower behind him. Many in red states admire his crude, macho swagger; many others see him as a jerk, but better to go along to get along. It's the safer, more comfortable path.
Joe Biden frightens them. It's not so much because of who he actually is–a relatively decent, middle-of-the road pol–but because of what he symbolizes–the complexity of American life outside their cultural bubble. They listen to the media that tells them not to be fooled by Biden's seeming decency. That's just a facade. He's a puppet of godless communists who seek to destroy everything they hold sacred. Better to stay with the abusive madman you know than go with the sane, decent one you've been told hates you. This kind of stupidity is believable because of the way that fear makes us stupid.
The irony, of course, is that their choosing what feels symbolically safe just leads to conditions that make them less safe in the non-symbolic, workaday world. Vicious circles to ensue.
I don't think the rest of us can underestimate the fear factor driving the behavior and attitudes of the cultural Right. How those of us outside their bubble, especially those of us who just want to solve real problems, work with so many people who are so afraid, I don't know. There is no political cure for such soul sickness. Like the Coronavirus, we can seek to contain it, but unless a miracle cure emerges somehow, it will just have to run its course.
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