(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



An Unwillingness to Acknowledge Trump's Genius is an Impediment to Defeating Him [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-11-30

The Republican Base is the Main Locus of Our Political Disease

*****************************

Earlier today, I posted a diary that was part diary and then part video under the title “The Underappreciated Genius of Donald Trump.” It was a complete flop with the Daily Kos audience. Not slammed, but after four hours not a single Recommend.

I’m wondering if it was some sort of repulsion to the whole idea of appreciating Donald Trump. He is such an ugly person. For anyone inclined to hatred, he’s a very appropriate person to hate. Who wants to appreciate that human monster?

But there’s a reason to recognize that Trump is not just an “f-ing moron,” but has accomplished some extraordinary things. We need to understand how he accomplished those things — especially the means by which he made fervent supporters of a lot of people America needs to turn instead to the better angels of their nature — so that we will better understand how to bring some of those “good people” back to the side of Democracy, the Rule of Law, Constructive Purpose, the Common Good, the Honest Truth.

If we saw how Trump moved those people into the Trumpian space we could be more effective in undoing what he — and the Republican Party as a whole — have done to their political consciousness.

Understanding the battlefield is key to wage the battle wisely.

So I think it would be better for the side that wants Trump to fail to be willing to look at the blueprints for what Trump, in his genius, has built. Because we need to deal with the Republican base.

That’s where the problem lies: It was they who made him the Republican nominee, it was they who let him weaponize them, it was they who stuck by him even after he’d attempted a coup d’etat right before our eyes.

Even if Trump were to leave the scene, we would still be stuck with a Republican base that has been eager to nominate Trump, though he was clearly the opposite of the kind of person who should be entrusted with power, and are apparently ready to make him their leader again even after all his criminality and constitutional lawlessness has been exposed.

American cannot be politically healthy so long as there are so many Americans in such a state of political consciousness. The base must be dealt with.

So part of the job of our times is to figure out what’s happened to create this vast reservoir of brokenness that lies in the Republican base, e.g. to understand, how that reservoir got filled with whatever it was that made it possible for the Republican base to nominate in 2015 a man who openly showed a character the very opposite of what any rational person would want to entrust with presidential powers.

That understanding requires that we grasp how a group of geniuses of propaganda achieved something remarkable: to get people to believe obvious lies in a society in which good information in abundance flows freely throughout the society. Aside from Trump, and his genius in selling the Big Lie apparently, though it’s so obviously a lie, there were other geniuses whose propagandistic work can help us to understand the state of consciousness to be found now in the Republican base. It can be traced from Limbaugh and Gingrich, very effective propagandists, to FOX News developing a fervent following that they could lead into all kinds of false beliefs.

Extraordinary accomplishments all of them. For very “evil” purposes, that led to the state of consciousness in the Trump base.

Because the Republican base is the reservoir of brokenness that underlies all the broken doings in the Republican world, we should remember that Trump is not only “the problem” he is a symptom of “the problem,” which is the Republican base from which Trump and all the rest of the Trump Party get their power.

We should spend half as much time as we do on Trump — gratifying as it can be — and devote the time freed up to working on the question of how the corruption of the Trump base can be transformed into something more compatible with a healthy national political world.

We are glad to acknowledge the genius of a Bach or Shakespeare or Michelangelo. It is not gratifying to acknowledge the power and genius of Evil.

But we’ve got a job to do, which is to undo the way so many basically decent people have brought into the grip of an indecent force. Which is to bring back people — whose earlier years perhaps, or parents or grandparents were reasonably respectable in what they supported politically — from the side that various propagandistic forces have led them.

Including, in recent years, what Donald Trump has done with the Republican Base he hijacked in 2015.

Even if Trump were to leave the scene, we would still be stuck with a Republican base that has been eager to nominate Trump even after all his criminality and constitutional lawlessness had been exposed.

There’s not enough attention being devoted to understanding the problem of the crazy and broken Republican base. Long term, that must be an ongoing project.

**********************

[That previous piece, “The Under-Appreciated Genius of Donald Trump” is here, if anyone has the stomach to consider that the hated Orange Gangster has displayed some extraordinary abilities, as if he has some profound understanding of the human pool of the Republican Base he was summoning to give him the kind of support that has made him one of the most impactful people in the history of the world.]

All these people are worth studying, to understand how

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://dailykos.com/stories/2023/11/30/2208917/-An-Unwillingness-to-Acknowledge-Trump-s-Genius-is-an-Impediment-to-Defeating-Him?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/