Yesterday I read this article in the Atlantic by David Brooks describing why half of the country not only tolerates Trump (and what he is doing), but actually see him as heroic and a good person. The article relies heavily on the thoughts of the late moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. I am not qualified to refute these men (who are both much smarter than I), but as I ponder the article, I believe that they missed something important.

The above link is a gift link, so you should be able to read it without a subscription.

To summarize the main points of the article:

• Prior to the enlightenment, people “grew up within a dense network of family, tribe, city, and nation”, from which they inherited a shared sense of duties, responsibilities, obligations, and values. There was never an individual choice to find your life’s purpose.
• The enlighten thinkers saw the many wars over whose morality was right and decided that it is better for individuals to develop their own values and for everybody to learn to live with that diversity. MacIntyre argued that the loss of moral coherence was baked into the enlightenment, and that this led us to lose the coherent moral criteria required to make good choices. We may use words like “virtue”, but its meaning has become random and lacks coherency.
• By the 1980s, people made choices less in terms of good vs. evil, and more in terms of what felt pleasant at the moment.
• Over the past 30 years, people leaned into deriving their sense of righteousness from their political identities. This turned politics into a holy war, where compromise looks like betrayal.
• When Trump arrived, he never tried to speak the language of morality. Instead, he speaks the language of preference, power, selfishness, and of acquisition. Rather than seek to be formed by the institutions he enters, he uses them as a stage on which to perform.
• This led MacIntyre to conclude that people like Trump because he is “just an exaggerated version of the kind of person modern society was designed to create”.

I don’t disagree with the above, but I think that there is more going on here. For example, why did our political polarization accelerate so rapidly in the past 30 years?

And are we really clashing over ideology when Trump himself doesn’t really have one? I’m beginning to believe that for many people, it really is just about owning the libs.

Let me explain…

Prior to the 2016 election I was a lifelong republican. I was not a fan of Rush Limbaugh (way too much hyperbole), but my wife listened to him everyday, so I had a pretty good idea what he was selling. For the past 30 years, the main talking point of right ring media was that liberals are evil, scary, and are to blame for literally everything. Some republicans may not be perfect, but all liberals are corrupt and they want to destroy you, your God, and your country. We must fight them at all costs!

It reminds me of the battle of Saipan in WWII, where thousands of Japanese civilians and soldiers had been exposed to such extreme propaganda about the false atrocities of the US soldiers, that they chose to jump to their deaths rather than surrender (even as soldiers announced on bullhorns that they would be merciful). Many Americans have been exposed to similar propaganda against liberals, and are now throwing the entire country off the cliff.

Here’s how it works:

Trump does or says something that reasonable people might object to. For example, he might:

• Fund his own private police force (who hides their identity and have very little accountability) with a budget that exceeds the combined budgets of the FBI, DEA, and the ATF.
• This private force can make citizens and non-citizens alike get sent to a cage in an alligator swamp for little or no reason, and argue that these people do not deserve any of the “inalienable rights” that our constitution states belong to all humanity (not just citizens).
• This private police force has been given a quota to arrest at least 3,000 people every day. As this quota is only for arrests (not convictions or deportations), there is little downside in making a bad arrest. This pushes the focus away from targeting violent criminals towards mass arrests that often include more innocents than serious criminals. They will meet their quota.

At this point, even some republicans might be a little concerned – silently questioning why this is needed and where will it ultimately lead.

And then a democrat will loudly state that this is a very bad idea because:

• Police should be accountable to its citizens.
• All people deserve due process.
• This takes resources and energy away from catching actual criminals.
• There is no good precedent for this – literally every authoritarian dictator has assembled a similar secret police force.
• This makes us look really bad internationally – civilized countries are now issuing travel advisories to the US as their citizens may be needlessly harassed or arrested. This does not put us in good company.

And then the concerned republicans take a deep sigh of relief and realize that all is well – this must be a GREAT thing because the evil liberals are against it! The enemy of my enemy is always my friend, and I will enthusiastically support everything that they are against! (Steve Bannon once wrote that he HAD to automatically oppose masks during Covid since democrats encouraged there use.) They only oppose a position if the liberals agree with it.

I get it – life is tough and it’s only getting tougher. The cost of living is rising, good jobs are harder to find (especially in some rural areas), and medical expenses can bankrupt anybody at any time. Scapegoating is a proven way for wanna-be authoritarians to consolidate power, and right wing media has been presenting liberals as the boogeyman for the last 40 years. The only thing that they hate more than a liberal now is an immigrant.

It might feel good to “own the libs”, but ultimately it won’t bring you any satisfaction and it won’t improve the country because democrats aren’t the root cause of the the country’s problems (although they certainly share some of the blame). Moving too far left or too far right will always lead to authoritarianism, and while republicans accuse the democrats of moving to the extreme left, most of Europe and Canada consider the democrats to be center or center-right.

All of this propaganda is just a way to distract us from the real issues. Extremism and nationalism have never turned out well.