TO BE ANTI-ANTI-ANTI-TRUMP

I wake up every morning here in Sherman Oaks, California, gaze at the wonderful world outside my window, and within 10 minutes find myself thinking: How the hell could my country be so stupid? Thats one of the main reasons I stay involved in my Indivisible Group: being around people of reason and decency is like having an intellectual air freshener to combat the stench of stupidity wafting across the land from the White House.

As I write this, were just over four months into the Presidency of the madman of Mar-a-Loco, and already the litany of his crude, idiotic, regressive, wrong-headed, mean-spirited, dim-witted, misbegotten, arrogant, infantile, bumbling, and quite possibly treasonous actions would take longer to list than the last sentence took to write. And still, an astounding percentage of our fellow countrymen stand by him like a dog at the grave of an abusive master. As a transplanted Southerner who grew up in the reddest of Red States, Ive spent much of my recent political efforts trying to understand and explain this phenomenon to my fellow Indivisible members: how can so many defend someone so rancid for so long for so little reason?

So how can they be so stupid? First, lets define stupidity.

Ignorance is a lack of knowledge; stupidity, on the other hand, is learned dysfunctional learning. In other words, its the resistance to unlearning something we WANT to believe is true. (Were all stupid sometimes, from a commuter who wends through a maze of side streets because that route was faster one time five years ago, to a President who has oral sex with a 22-year-old intern and assumes she wont tell anyone.) If you walk across a freeway during rush hour because you dont know what a car is, thats ignorant; if you do it because a car once stopped for you and therefore you think cars OUGHT to stop for you, thats stupid.

And that, in the nuttiest of nutshells, is why so many of our fellow Americans still support Trump: They WANT to believe that he OUGHT to be on their side. SCREEECH! WHAM! OW! Then they peel themselves off the asphalt and, toothless and tire-marked, resolutely stagger into traffic again. SCREECH! WHAM! OW! This phenomenon is why, I think, theyre so resistant to facts. Truth merely addresses ignorance. Thats not their problem; their problem is stupidity.

They dont WANT to believe that Trump wont stand up for them (despite obviously selling out the poor and working class with every Cabinet appointment and economic policy). They dont WANT to believe that he wont stop terrorism (despite alienating key allies, disparaging intelligence-gathering agencies, and being a one-man ISIS recruitment video). They dont WANT to believe that he wont get them a job (despite defending 19th century industries doomed to extinction while cutting education that might train them for a job of the future). They dont WANT to believe hes not really a good guy (despite being the foulest, filthiest, most indecent human ever to park his expansive posterior in the Oval Office).

So the more we rail about Trumps unfitness for office, the more these Country Trumpkins dig their heels into their cerebellums and refuse to acknowledge the obvious. Its not that theyre pro-Trump. (Its fundamentally impossible to be pro-Trump he has no consistent policy positions on anything other than doing whats best for him at the moment.) No, theyre anti-anti-Trump. Instinctively, impulsively, unthinkingly reacting against anyone who threatens the man they WANT to believe in. Trump is their gigantic, orange-colored middle finger to any who challenge their dunderheaded dogma.

So maybe the way to address that fact-inoculated core of the alt-wrong movement is not to simply be anti-Trump. Maybe the answer is to be anti-anti-anti-Trump. That is, instead of focusing our attacks on Trump, why not instead attack those who attack those who attack Trump? Like the homicidal whackjob in Portland who murdered two Good Samaritans. Or Matt Rinaldi, the cretinous state legislator in Texas who publicly threatened to put a bullet in the head of a Democratic lawmaker. Or Michael Flynn or Paul Manafort or Jared Kushner or any of the other Russian Limbaughs swirling around the toilet bowl that is this Administration. And nobody likes the original Cryptkeeper himself, Steve Bannon. Trumpster-divers may defend their Great Man against the forces of reason to the bitter end, but fewer and fewer can bring themselves to support the gallery of grotesqueries hes gathered around himself. Theyre not protected by the invisible shield of irrational belief surrounding Trump. The fact that Roger Ailes, Bill OReilly, and Sean Hannity were all vulnerable to public censure makes clear that Trumps Teflon coating doesnt extend to his sous-chefs.

Addressing ignorance is called teaching. Addressing stupidity requires mass psychotherapy. Facts have already begun to erode support among the more teachable followers of Duh Fhrer. But to outwit the steadfastly stupid, lets redouble our efforts to go after his gruppenfhrers, the scuz that even their own leader/enabler has a tough time defending. Thats something every Indivisible Group in every part of the country can do locally. Together, that can have the cumulative effect of muffling the sound of their Stupidity Bell this July, so maybe we can hear the Liberty Bell again.