RESPONSES ON A THREAD

 By Ruth A. Sheets

I’m a regular commenter on a few threads on Substack.  The issue this weekend for Robert Reich was Trump’s bizarre speech about golfer Arnold Palmer, a legend who did not deserve Trump’s diatribe about his anatomy.  As usual, the thread took a variety of directions.  Here are a few of my comments with brief intros as to what I was actually responding to.  As you can see, we didn’t stay long with Trump’s “Penis Envy,” the title of the post.

A member talked about Trump and his shenanigans being like a placebo which never will work meaning Trump’s followers are fools, believing in placebos.  My response, Power, I am not sure you are right about placebos being BS.  The reason placebos work so well for some is that human beings have powerful brains, immune systems, and other mechanisms that enable us to change the way we think about a problem within ourselves and readjust our thinking and systems.  That is not a bad thing unless people use that as their sole means of treating a medical problem.  Faith in whatever one holds as more powerful than oneself  has been an important aspect of human survival.  What Trump is offering is not a placebo, it is just blather.  He has no positive ideas, no plans (not even concepts of plans), no understanding of how anything works, which is why he was such a lousy businessman and lousy everything else.  People want to believe in him because he is rich, loud, white, male, and a TV star they have been led to believe really functioned as he did in "The Apprentice."  The masterminds of the program have finally admitted it was an entire fraud, constantly covering up for Trump's stupidity, general ignorance, and inability to judge a person accurately.  Trumpers and Trumpettes want Trump to be that guy and to yell "you're fired" to everyone who has caused them trouble in their lives.  Those folks are afraid of life and everyone who does not think as they do.  They want them to go away, thinking life will be better if they are gone.  They have no idea of how the world works, just as Donald Trump doesn’t.  They may think Trump is a needed drug, but the truth is, he is the infection that is harming them.  He and his billionaire friends want those Trump supporters to be their permanent serfs and are grooming them for that role.  It's working for some because they show up at his rallies, listen to his BS, cheer and laugh on cue when he talks about penises, deporting their immigrant neighbors, putting everyone he doesn't like in jail, turning our military loose on Americans Trump doesn't like.  They know what he wants and they will give it to him whenever he snaps his fingers.  There is real medicine that could help them, voting for Democrats who actually care about them and don't intend to use them against their neighbors, but they prefer their fantasy.  

The thread turned to Christianity and Trump’s efforts to portray himself as Christian when one would rarely find him in a church or doing anything that would be identified as Christian.  I said this. 

Daniel, it seems that the "love" part of the message of Jesus is lost to a majority of those who claim to be Christian but have substituted Trump for Jesus in their lives. The "love" part is just too hard when resentment, anger, fear, and hatred are stronger emotions and can let someone believe it is they who are being crucified by the horrible people who just can't see how badly they have been treated and how wonderful Trump is and just how much he has done for them. They can't name a single thing except maybe "well, the economy" or "I could get groceries when Trump was in office" or "it's the border."  Of course, none of these is honest if they are even asked a follow-up question like, "so what kinds of groceries did you buy 4 years ago that you could afford during the pandemic that you can't now? Are you buying the same brands and quantities?" Then they could be asked "so, tell me how what is going on at the border has impacted you directly? Have you been eating fruits and veggies lately? Who do you think picks those for you? If the immigrants are gone, would you go to work in the fields?" When our media do not follow-up, they are taking the blather that comes from conservatives' mouths as gospel (pun intended) and are playing the Trump game for him. The media have been doing really well at it for the past 9+ years, even presenting Trump and Friends' demand for Obama's birth certificate as legitimate, "well, why not just show it!" Funny that they can't demand an honest medical report for Trump. That would be fair, but it isn't about fair it is about Trump winning no matter the cost.  A bunch of pseudo-christians are clinging to Trump's coattails hoping they'll get maybe a tiny bit of his passed gas that they will call "perfume.".

Then, somehow, we transitioned to Trump supporters believing the Bible as truth from beginning to end, commenting  that people who believe those stories are not too with it.  This was my response. 

Rob, all cultures have stories and probably most believe those stories to be true, at least up to a point.  There are people who believe in Adam and Eve and Noah and the Ark, but most, even evangelical Christians don't.  Science has crept even into their minds because they hold cell phones in their hands, live in heated, air conditioned houses, shop at stores for their needs, and can travel pretty much wherever they want and it is due to science.  They want the Bible stories to be true because they think it explains why life is so hard for them, and makes them somehow special in the world.  There is something idyllic about imagining a garden and two naked people romping around until a snake tells them something they already knew, that the "tree of knowledge" is what will make them truly human.  No one really wants to romp in such a garden forever, or live on an ark for 40 days with a bunch of animals.  They don't want most of the rest of it either, but think they want something different from what they have now because they are told the only reason they don't have it is that others have taken it from them or deny it to them.  Our billionaire class, our gilded "heroes" have promoted all of this to keep people despising each other, distracted  while the rich get richer.  No one asks them the purpose of this acquisition, except that it gives them pleasure to see others suffer if they even notice at all.  We could do better here if we were to vote out of office, those who care nothing for the people.  That is hard because so many of the people have been lied to, deceived, and ignored by those they want to keep in power.  It is almost as though they like their problems so they don't have to push themselves to try anything else.  The stories help provide comfort and a kind of history while the people really do depend on science and probably want to hate it but know they don't want life without it.