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Insulting Trump& #39;s appearance is not only gross, it& #39;s also counter-productive. Everything about Trump is (not necessarily intentionally) an elaborate test of loyalty for his followers.
Trump, it& #39;s important to understand, is basically everything his base ostensibly despises (apart from being white): he& #39;s a New York businessman, a wealthy heir, a grifter and a charlatan. He doesn& #39;t drink, he& #39;s coddled and vain, he& #39;s almost aggressively effete in his mannerisms.
He is almost the precise opposite of the alpha-male archetype his acolytes supposedly aspire to. He& #39;s unhealthy, germ-phobic, he has a hairstyle that& #39;s barely Euclidean to cover up his pattern baldness, he plays no sports (except golf, which he cheats at) and dodged the draft.
He& #39;s a bad liar and a noted philanderer. There isn& #39;t a Christian bone in his body, but he purports to share his fans& #39; faith. He falls short of any moral standard espoused by any philosophy: he fails even at being a conservative libertarian.
He is entirely without redeeming features, an achievement that is impressive in itself. And yet he exerts a hold upon a certain segment of people. In order to do that, they have to deny he is any of the things he very clearly is.
When you insult him, you come up against a powerful psychic wall of denial in his acolytes. They believe he is super-humanly perfect, because they *must* in order to sustain this colossal act of self-deception.
It& #39;s therefore pointless to draw attention to any of his many flaws. They& #39;ve already accounted for them in their narrative. They& #39;ve had to, because they& #39;re undeniable. They depict him as a muscular, golden hero, because what choice do they have now?
It& #39;s like a version of the Emperor& #39;s New Clothes where no one listens to the child pointing out the obvious. In order to prove loyalty to Trump, one must always deny the evidence of one& #39;s senses.
The more grotesque he is, the more deeply unimpressive, the more horrific in his words and deeds, the more his supporters have to double-down. Each new low demands a correspondingly deeper level of denial, and that in itself is part of the game for them.
There& #39;s something masochistic in it. Who can love this vile stain of a human being the most? Who can suppress their natural revulsion most convincingly? Who can embrace the full horror of this situation? Who can own the libs by giving a shit the least?
And the more outraged we are, the more weirded out by this gruesome, illogical loyalty to such a transparently foul creature, the funnier it becomes for them.
When you try to expose a false idol, it doesn& #39;t work if the very falseness of the idol is a central part of its appeal.
Trump and his rise to power is a manifestation of something deeply ugly in the psyche of white culture. He& #39;s a concept, and loyalty to him is part of that concept, part of that broader movement of hate for hate& #39;s sake.
https://politics.theonion.com/after-obama-victory-shrieking-white-hot-sphere-of-pure-1819595330">https://politics.theonion.com/after-oba...