For many years we've heard recommendations from psychiatrists, psychologists, sociologists, group therapists, political consultants, rational friends and unindoctrinated family members on how to handle the most challenging conversation we might ever have from now till nobody knows.
The shocking overpopulation of the species presenting the challenge is a bizarre, incoherent, often hostile and always profoundly ignorant bundle of Trumpian emotional disturbances and cognitive sparseness, both of which neuroscientists suspect are consequences of procreating misfires.
That, or they were dropped on their heads when infants. (Scientific note: The strongest support for this hypothesis is their infantile behavior.)
Whichever theoretical cause is embraced by the intrepid conversationalist accepting the challenge of a face-to-face or at least attempted one-on-one discourse with a member of the afflicted, extreme caution is advised. (See: "often hostile," Diagnostic Manual.)
Yet the most popular recommendation opted for is also the simplest: Don't. Don't bother, stay far away, never tempt exasperation or risk hostility.
Another suggestion — invariably dubbed proactive by those dissatisfied by the lesser syllabic active — comes from the repentant, woebegone former Republican strategist Stuart Stevens, senior adviser to the Lincoln Project.
He, poor thing, believes his organization has devised perhaps "the most effective weapon" for the challenge-accepted sort to carry into conversational battle. Mr. Stevens, you have the floor.
"[Ask] 'is this who you are?' Hold up a picture of Marjorie Taylor Greene, red-faced and screaming. Is this how you see yourself? Do you want to be the guy in the 'Camp Auschwitz' sweatshirt storming the Capitol? Do you want your kids to think that being found liable for sexual abuse and being a felon are presidential qualities?"
I can recount what the nearly universal responses would be to the questions. I can do so with high confidence because I encounter them most every day in social media, especially Twitter, ground zero for Trumpian incoherence and profound ignorance.
In fact I'd say my experience in the sociological field of the cult's severe abnormalities is even greater than Stevens', greater in frequency and more intense in despondence.
Trumpers' replies would be, and are, That's not us, it's you. We don't scream red-faced with asymmetric bullshit, you guys do. We rightly see ourselves as the virtuous ones, neither twisted into extremism nor ideologically deranged. That's you folks, all of you, you despicable radical leftist Marxist fascists.
Our sweatshirts are honorably patriotic, announcing as they do that we must make America great again, and we're the only ones who can do it. Your sweatshirts are the ones plastered with concentration-camp pictography — your overt acknowledgement of the forced reeducation detention centers you'll erect over the next four years.
Our man has done no wrong; the allegations, indictments and sham of a rigged trial — your man's handpicked judge wouldn't even allow our man to speak in his defense.
And it's Biden not Trump who's the creepy sexual abuser, a pedophile pawing children and old geezer rubbing the unwelcome shoulders of younger women.
Finally, you want real felonies? Your guy — and we quote, Crooked Joe, the most corrupt president in U.S. history — is running an entire crime family and raking in illicit millions from the Chinese,
My recommendation on conversing with Trumpers: Don't.
To put it simply, they are abusive, toxic people. And it is always best to stay away from abusers. My older sister is a Trump supporter and anytime she repeats the propaganda she willingly feeds on (she has a masters degree and I barely graduated high school so I don't necessarily buy into the idea that college educated people are not Trump voters), I simply clam up, keep my mouth shut. My stony silence is usually a signal to my sister that I think she's full of it, and no further discussion is warranted. These people all deserve to be shunned. Not participating in an argument with them starves them of their anger fuel.
Posted by: Anne J | June 30, 2024 at 11:50 AM