The tragic truth is, they want to believe in what he says, whether it’s about immigrants eating pets, toilets that need to be flushed a dozen times, or windmills causing cancer. “They’re eating the dogs” is just as credible as, “Goody Proctor’s astral projection is tearing at my entrails.” Both are absurd, and yet people want to believe in them. Or, perhaps more accurately, because they are absurd, some people want to believe in them, as long as these absurdities feed their dark fantasies of the world, the flesh and the devil. But the real core of Trumpism, the hypermassive black hole around which all of these other groups orbit, is the army of somnambulists who want to believe. Maybe people believe in this nonsense in the same way that they’re willing to indulge in the kayfabe of “professional wrestling.” The important thing is that a large number of Americans want to believe in the semi-lucid nightmare over the waking world.

Source: The Guardian October 09, 2024 03:16 UTC