AUGUST 9, TUESDAY

TRUMPIAN TRUE BELIEVERS

Yesterday I wondered about the slow shift in American values because of a world turning upside down and about how I felt good because the slow shift was in the direction of my own shifting values without my having anything to do with it.

But today I am wondering about the slow shift of crumbling of faith among those who are true believers in Donald Trump as the embodiment and savior of MAGA values. It is so apparent that Trump has feet of clay and that he is hopping from one outrageous lie to another in order to to save himself, to me anyway.

Two things seem apparent. One is that he is totally self centered and that as his world crumbles he will say anything to try and save himself. And the other is that in spite of all the lies and and nonsense he spouts there are still people who are true believers. These true believers have pinned their indentity and their faith on him and no matter how obvious his shenanigans, they have total faith in him to the end. A true believer shuts everything negative out. But there other Republicans who see his circus act and realize that he cannot win again. It is obvious that there are simply not enough true believers. And even those who are true believers in MAGA values are becoming aware, as the rest of us are, that he is doomed, that he has too much baggage, that he can never win again not even in the electoral college which is stacked in his favor. He didn’t win the popular vote the first time, but now as he writhes and rants and lashes out his base will shrink and shrink. He is finished. He is a comic figure who has destroyed himself. Some are still afraid of him, but no one feels sympathy for him. He is on his way out. And he has no one to blame but himself. He has brought the persecution which threatens him on himself.

He will take down with him anyone that he can and is still dangerous. But even his riled up followers are comic, inept, quixotic figures. The guy who attacked the FBI with a high powered rifle and got himself killed was living in his own looney tunes world. Apparently he was an intelligent guy, a loner, but was as unmoored to actuality as Trump is. So was the QAnon Shaman in a Daniel Boone styled Viking helmet who forced his way into the Capitol as were the rest of the screaming horde who shocked everyone with their audacity but who were in the end a bunch of nuts in their own dream world thinking they could destroy the government with their bare hands.

The dream of MAGA is not over. It will slowly, slowly shift as the world changes. Change in identity will come slowly.

But as I think of these true believers I think of the true believers in so many religions who are disconnected also from measureable actuality. What follows is my own tentative and idiosyncratic personal, and quite possibly shallow, attempt to deal with this.

There are those who believe in the virgin birth, rising from the dead, eternal life in heaven. They are no less of true believers without physical proof than those believing in Donald Trump as savior with no physical evidence at all. Hindu Nationalists are true believers as burn churches and persecute Moslems in the name of an incarnation of Vishnu (a mythical figure), embodied in another mythical figure, Ram, with no shred of evidence beyond blind faith in his existence. And yesterday a true believing Moslem tried to stab Salmon Rushdie to death because he made light of another mythical figure, a self prolaimed savior, Mohammed. So it is easy to see why some MAGA true believers have faith in Donald Trump and believe all his lies to be true. The blind faith of true believers seems to be everywhere. Sometimes these saviors are projections of our worst fears and resentments leading us to violently defend ourselves, but often the saviors we choose or who choose us are projections of the fully alive selves we would like to be and make us better people and more fully alive because of our faith in them. Being a true believer in Jesus Christ is radically different from being a true believer in Donald Trump (who some compare to Jesus Christ) but the intensity and certainty of both seem very alike.

In a world that is rapidly changing and nothing seems fundamental we yearn to be true believers in what will makes us most alive, but apparently as humans we have trouble distinguishing which is which.