Over the past year, I've become heavily infatuated with the website Quora.com
I thought this here blarg might be as good a place as any to repost an answer I tappity-tapped to this question posed by username Amal Ali. (original page found here)
Q: Despite his hate speech towards Muslims, Trump's popularity stays high compared to other Republicans. Americans, what does this mean?
My Answer:
It means that fear is still a decent motivator for people.
The
kind of fear that drives people to shrug off human rights violations
and spew hate speech to their grand kids. The kind of fear that keeps
ratings high for Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. The kind of fear that
turns otherwise well-mannered schoolchildren against their peers because
mom and dad say that "those people" hate America. The kind of fear that
roars against higher taxes but would never dare to question exorbitant
defense spending. The kind of fear that justifies acceptable losses
in the name of a war on some vague political buzzwords. The kind of
fear that spends two terms of a presidency still questioning the
elected's nationality and using racially motivated doubts to hold
congress at gunpoint. The kind of fear that has turned the armed forces
into the giant bully of the international schoolyard. The kind of fear
that can see a white mass murderer as a troubled individual or a brave
hero but makes out an entire race of people to be inherently evil. The
kind of fear that drives hard-working people to believe that if only
they had worked a little harder they wouldn't be facing any debt. The
kind of fear that keeps a collection of economic, socio-political,
racial, gendered, sexual, and otherwise ill-conceived, overly simplistic
monsters in a box to show off whenever its to the best interest of the
head monster to keep people scared and boxed off. The kind of fear that
keeps walls between people who are so much more than the reasons for
those walls. The kind of fear that says you must always hold tight to
what's yours 'cause there's always someone out to take it.
That
kind of fear is Lv.1 skills for players who've chosen the Dictator,
Cult Leader, or Political Opportunist classes. And to continue that
metaphor, we Americans are a pretty cheap mount.
-------------
So anyways, what do you think? Americans? Non-Americans?
Feel free to comment on here or any of my social media about this or anything else you want. I always love hearing from other people since it makes me feel a bit less Sam Rockwell in Moon.
\,,/.
-Odist
