Trumpists should take a long look in the mirror because Trump's former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, is absolutely correct. People look to leaders, and give deference to leaders, in a time of crisis, but only when those leaders show empathy, quick action, and a capability of saying with a level of genuineness, "I care about you." Every governor this year who chose that path, Republicans, like Mike DeWine in Ohio, and Democrats like Andrew Cuomo in New York, saw their ratings go up among the people in their states when taking this rather obvious path of leadership--and to the extent any approval ratings significantly dropped in the fall, it was more because of opening things up and the resultant spike, and the continued lack of a federally coordinated response.
We know what path Trump chose, though. Trump chose the path of not only lying, but lying in service to a callous indifference to others' suffering, and ultimately a partisan cruelty, particularly when he made a calculation to stop a testing regimen because, at that point, the virus had hit hardest in so-called "Blue" states, where there were higher population densities--as if there were no Trump fans there. That people who call themselves evangelical Christians or conservative-religious Catholics knowingly went down that path with Trump should make at least the Christians/Catholics look carefully at the creches and Christmas lights they put up just after Thanksgiving for this holiday season (The 22% of American Jews, mostly Orthodox and extreme Zionists, who voted for Trump should engage with some self-reflection as they spin a dreidel and light a menorah during Chanukah this month).
Sadly, Trump knew what his marks were really about. Trump knew how so much modern "conservative" ideology is not about policy, as much as it is about a psychological need to "annoy liberals" or "own the libs," and that, apart from a theoretical concern for fetuses carried inside sluts, I mean, women, their so-called "morality" was, most ironically, based upon punishment "values" of the type Jesus tried to warn against when He told people wanting to stone an adulteress for personal misbehavior, saying, "Let he (which then included "she") who is without sin cast the first stone." When one considers Jesus' "turn the other cheek" admonition, his continued references to supporting the poor and the meek, it is a stunning to think how anyone could think Jesus would have countenanced, let alone support, the type of "conservatism" that exists in the United States, and a candidate and president such as Trump.
Parscale is absolutely correct Trump would have won in a landslide against a hapless neo-liberal/neo-con elitist-serving candidate like Biden had Trump shown even a modicum of empathetic leadership. But Trump couldn't do that, probably even if he wanted to, because he is a likely sociopath, and a narcissist, who has lived his entire adult life in fleecing, threatening, and conning people. But sadly, what Trump revealed was what was inside too many of the people who voted for him, despite knowing everything I just said, and what Trump admitted to Bob Woodward in knowing about the airborne and dangerous quality of the coronavirus--and what the insider Parscale knew, too, which is the cruelty and lack of empathy among too many people who fell for Trump.
Yup. The irony is that the covid crisis will keep us from having the holiday dinner to directly confront our relatives and friends, and, this time, not wait for them to arrogantly say something racist or sexist. We will miss the opportunity to point a finger at them and say, "Just what the hell is wrong with you? You call yourself a a person who believes in an almighty, morally based God? You really think Jesus (Jews can say "Hillel" or "Moses") would be standing with Trump in this election? Really?"
And you wouldn't have had to worry about waiting for them to stammer about the latest QAnon bullshit they now rely on, as FoxNews is no longer able to maintain their own related con-job in spreading ignorant poison, as it is just that: Bullshit. Also, if the family friend or relative starts on about their fear of Black Lives Matter, George Soros, or "Antifa," the last of which Trump's own FBI director said was more an idea than a movement, based upon the idea that, maybe, Fascism is wrong, just put up your hand to say, "Enough!" You already know you will get nowhere telling them how even Trump's Department of Homeland Security wrote a report with the finding that it is the right-wing white vigilante groups that remain the biggest threat to public safety and people's lives. If you mention that report, they will likely just start muttering, "Deep State,"* as, again, they have had to retreat from their previous liberal-commie baiting over decades, where they used to blindly trust the FBI when it was actually doing bad things against assorted unarmed leftists--and even those who were deaf and blind.
You don't have to argue with them or give them any deference due to their age or status. Just say, "This was a simple test about morality. When you voted for Trump, you failed that test. Utterly and completely failed. You need to own that."
* It remains a historical anomaly how right-wingers take up phrases and words that were originally more acerbic and sometimes thoughtful leftist jargon. "Deep State" used to be associated with left-wing thinkers and groups before Trump started using the phrase which caught on quickly with his fans. I think of the late Peter Scott's books. I used to say "deep state" was merely a phrase that means the permanent national security bureaucracy, which so many thinkers and writers identified going back to the 1950s, and what President Eisenhower, in 1961, called the "military-industrial complex." As Gore Vidal would say somewhat tongue in cheek, he is not a conspiracy theorist, as much as recognizing how those in power tend to think alike--and therefore, don't need the "conspiracy" meeting. It is stunning how a later Republican aide began to use the "deep state" phrase in the aftermath of the Tea Party (putting the origin of the phrase in novelist John Le Carre's hands and in the 1990s Turkish secret police). But, then, under Trump, it became a phrase that attacked nearly any expertise relating to government functions. We also know the origin of the phrase "politically correct" was what the Bolsheviks spoke of as a lock-step party-line agreement, which, during the 1980s, was used in a joking way by economic leftists against their cultural leftist friends--before it became a cudgel for right-wingers to use against liberals, let alone "the" Left. The phrase "fake news" was something a culturally liberal-minded Buzzfeed editor came up with to describe the made-up stories circulating on behalf of Trump on the Internet. Even "useful idiot," that old chestnut from right-wing Cold War days, had social democratic or leftist origins. I think what I would most like to hold right-wingers accountable for is plagiarism. LOL.
