1.
I am writing this on November 3rd, 2020, on the eve of the American national election. It is certainly the most important election in my lifetime; it is no exaggeration to assert that American democracy is on the line. A very imperfect yet worthy struggle to establish a more perfect union might be coming to an end. Tomorrow--or perhaps as late as next week--we will find out whether we wake up in purgatory or in hell. (Hell if Trump wins, purgatory if Biden wins, for if the latter wins, the fight is just beginning, since serious problems, e.g. climate change, will remain. In purgatory, however, at least there is hope).Today I was scheduled to have two injections, one in each eye. I knew that I would have to give reading a rest for a while after this procedure, so I decided to read as much as I could beforehand. One of the articles I read was, "The Great Con He Rode In On,"
by Mark Donner, which appeared in the November 19, 2020 edition of The New York Review of Books. It was, forgive the pun, an eye opener; it confirmed my worst suspicions.
The author attended a Trump rally in Michigan and wrote the following:
The dynamic playing out before me was ancient: Already Nietzsche was calling it 'resentissement,' and had he been transported to Freeland, Michigan, the German philologist would have recognized instantly what he was seeing enacted before him, a kind of Mummers' revolt of the powerless:
"The resentissement of natures that are denied the true reaction, the reaction of deeds, and compensate themselves with imaginary revenge... This no is its creative deed''.
Nietzsche referred to the hostility of the powerless as "the resentment of the lambs for the bird of prey." Immortal words! Note that birds of prey carry off lambs only when they're small and vulnerable enough. Since we are talking metaphors here, I interpret Nietzsche's quote as it applies to our current political crisis as follows: the Trump supporters must be powerless and vulnerable enough for the birds of prey to be able to continue to feed upon them
The German word for 'bird of prey' is Raubvogel, a much more law-of-the-jungle term compared to the English one, which comes across as being more taxonomic and abstract. I immediately googled "Nietzsche und die Raubvögel" and got the following excerpt, which, in my translation, follows:
That lambs detest birds of prey is not surprising; yet this doesn't hinder the predators from continuing to carry them off.
The metaphor is almost apt to the present situation; almost because American lambs have no idea who's controlling the skies. They are also armed to the teeth.
2.
Donner mentions that, during the rally, Trump, using the 'royal we,' claimed that 'we brought you a lot of car plants, Michigan. We brought you a lot of car plants. You know that, right?' The crowd went wild even though the statement is a blatant lie: there have been no new car plants in Michigan. But who's counting? Certainly not the crowds of people gathered together without social distancing, and for the most part, without wearing masks.
What has especially irked health care workers is Trump's recent claim, which he delivered at another rally, that doctors get paid more when a Covid patient dies.
Many pundits were outraged. But this normal reaction fails to understand what is really going on here. In one sense Trump's lies are the rants of a madman. But Trump is more clever than you might think; they are also the rants of a master populist. He knows what his base wants to hear.
It is also a mistake to dismiss Trump supporters as mere racists. After all, many of them voted for Obama in the past. When you feel humiliated; when you feel lost; when you feel angry, you often boost yourself up by putting others down. And racism, unfortunately, still remains a common font of scapegoating in the white working-class community. When a Trump supporter, for instance, hears "Black Lives Matter," he just might reply, "Don't we?"
For many of them feel they don't matter at all.
3.
Many years ago I worked with a nurse who worked in a psychiatric hospital on the weekends. She told me that many of the men had abrasions on their penises; they spent a good deal of their time obsessively masturbating. They had nothing else left, except for a sexual fix.
Trump is like a whore telling her client during intercourse, "You're a man! You're bigly important! You're tough and sooo powerful!" It doesn't matter if what is being said is a lie; what matters is that it makes the exploited feel good.
Pseudo sex as imaginary revenge! The master of imaginary revenge says, " Come, come, come..."
They keep on coming. And he keeps on getting richer.
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