I was already a sentient being when the great satirist and culture critic H.L. Mencken died in 1956. But I don’t remember him, only learning about him in school. Some of his barbs seem to have anticipated the rise of Señor Trumpanzee and his MAGA movement a century ago, even beyond just “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public,” perhaps his most famous quip. He also noted that “The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots,” that “Sometimes the idiots outvote the sensible people,” that “Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love” and that “Liberty is of small value to the lower third of humanity. They greatly prefer security, which means protection by some class above them. They are always in favor of despots who promise to feed them. The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.”
He seemed to have held his fellow Americans in pretty low esteem: “Most people want security in this world, not liberty… The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary…. The inferior man craves power. His followers like him to boss them. Their natural gait is the goose step… In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.”
Last week, Dan Rather let his own followers know why he so vehemently opposes Trump: “It's not about politics. I've voted for both parties… It's about me, as a patriot, rejecting a cheating, lying, racist, treasonous, fascist, and vile man who attacks the free press.”
On Saturday, The Guardian noted that Trump’s bizarre, vindictive incoherence has to be heard in full to be believed and Rachel Leingang took her readers on a magical mystery tour of “Trump’s smorgasbord of vendettas, non sequiturs and comparisons to famous people... a laundry list of complaints, largely personal, and an increasingly menacing tone.”
She wrote that when he’s held rallies this cycle, “he speaks in dark, dehumanizing terms about migrants, promising to vanquish people crossing the border. He rails about the legal battles he faces and how they’re a sign he’s winning, actually. He tells lies and invents fictions. He calls his opponent a threat to democracy and claims this election could be the last one… [H]e’s also, quite frequently, rambling and incoherent, running off on tangents that would grab headlines for their oddness should any other candidate say them.”
“The Trump campaign,” wrote Tom Nichols yesterday, “is trying to turn the electoral process into a moral swamp. Voters are going to have to pace themselves to get to November.” On hearing his histrionics, many of us are just plain “stunned to think that many of our fellow citizens are eager to put this autocratic ignoramus back in the White House… Trump is succeeding because he is, to use Steve Bannon’s infamous expression, seeking to “flood the zone with shit.” Trump’s opponents are flummoxed by how he provokes one new outrage on top of another, and each time they believe he’s finally— finally— gone too far. Bombarding the public space with deranged statements and dangerous threats, however, is not a mistake; it’s a strategy. By overwhelming people with the sheer volume and vulgarity of his antics, Trump and his team are trying to burn out the part of our brains that can discern truth from fiction, right from wrong, good from evil. His campaign’s goal is to turn voters into moral zombies who can no longer tell the difference between Stormy and Hunter or classified documents and personal laptops, who cannot parse what a ‘bloodbath’ means, who no longer have the ability to be shocked when a political leader calls other human beings ‘animals’ and ‘vermin.’”
Trump isn’t worried that all of this will cause voters to have a kind of mental meltdown: He’s counting on it. He needs ordinary citizens to become so mired in moral chaos and so cognitively paralyzed that they are unable to comprehend the disasters that would ensue if he returns to the White House.
…The way to withstand Trump’s daily assaults on our senses is to regard them with fortitude, and even some stoicism. He’s trying to shake our confidence in democracy and basic decency; remaining engaged in civic life, calmly and without stooping to such tactics and rhetoric, is the superpower of every citizen in a democracy.
I understand why people might flinch at this advice. My wife, like so many of our friends, now reflexively changes the channel whenever Trump appears. Human beings can endure only so much of his disjointed affect and singsongy taunts, especially while knowing that the voters might roll the dice again and give this offensive man direct control of hundreds of nuclear weapons along with one more chance to destroy the Constitution.
But to ignore Trump is a mistake. To dismiss him as an incompetent clown is dangerous. Voters who care about democracy, who care about the future of freedom in America and around the world, must steel themselves to stay in the political process. We do not need to explode over every attempt to bait and troll us. Instead, we can let every one of his manic outbursts increase our resolve to speak clearly and plainly in defense of our system of government and our democratic culture— especially to family and friends who might be treading water in the ever-filling Trump septic pool.
