Hispanic Fanatic

It’s that time of the electoral season, when journalists, political scientists, psychologists, and experts in every field (up to and including herbology) spend innumerable hours attempting to figure out what motivates voters.

This is a quest that is never focused on progressives. Apparently, we are easy to figure out. Liberals just want to smuggle a billion undocumented immigrants into America, burn down all the churches, perform forceful abortions on every woman, and make all the guys marry each other. It’s that simple.

But Trump voters? Truly they are a mystery of the modern world.

For example, CNN recently profiled Republican primary voters and included this nugget of pure wisdom: “Trump critics who think his supporters are blindly loyal would benefit from some time in the quarry with McIver, or on the boat with Konchek.”

Well, those are fine all-American names. And in the article, McIver and Konchek come across as admirable, hardworking, humble men.

You see, just like Trump fans will never stop supporting him, the mainstream media will never stop insisting that blue-collar dudes who embrace bigotry and fascism are great guys.

Also, the idea that liberals “would benefit from some time” with Trump supporters reinforces the idea that progressives are obligated to get out of our bubbles, get into that quarry or fishing boat, and work hard to empathize with Trump supporters. 

But we will never ask the same of MAGA. They can go right on screaming that all progressives are pedophiles. To ask Republicans to listen to progressives is ludicrous, even insulting, and we certainly can’t be criticizing conservatives.

The gist of the CNN article is that Republicans are not “blindly loyal” to Trump, and they question some of his actions. But as the article makes clear, they go ahead and vote for him anyway. Seriously, every one of the free-thinking conservatives profiled in the article admits that, come November, they will vote for Trump.

Maybe I’m missing something, but that seems pretty damn loyal to me.

For almost a decade now, media outlets have been straining to portray Trump voters’ motivations as more complex than they actually are.

Mountains of data going back years show that the most accurate indicators of Trump support are racial animosity, a yearning for traditional gender roles, and comfort with authoritarianism.

So if you are racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and love dictators, we have the perfect candidate for you.

Of course, not all Trump supporters possess these unsavory characteristics. There are also those who believe, against all logic and data, that the economy does better under Republican presidents. Others have a mortal fear of liberals. And still others, billionaires mostly, stand to benefit from another Trump administration. 

Christian nationalists also love the guy. But so do hard-core conservatives who want to live in a world where nothing changes, ever. These people are the greatest, in that they espouse a made-up legal philosophy, originalism, that insists Americans can carry heavy weaponry that didn’t exist in colonial times even though in just about every other aspect, we should live exactly like Benjamin Franklin did. It doesn’t matter that most Americans don’t want to live in the 1700s, because originalists demand that we do so.

By the way, no other industrialized nation seems to have this hero worship of their leaders from hundreds of years ago. No other developed country says, “Let’s base our laws on the best guess of how our prime minister who’s been dead for 200 years would rule.”

Another aside: Isn’t it odd that conservatives, who shriek that discussions of civil rights are irrelevant because they originated way back in the 1960s, have adopted a motto that clamors for taking America back to the 1950s? And they are straight-up obsessed with Confederate generals from a century before that. It’s all about picking and choosing from the past for these guys.

In any case, media coverage of Trump supporters is invariably fawning or apologetic. This is not a surprise, since the man himself gets more positive spin than most would-be insurrectionists could ever dream of receiving. 

This is because news outlets are constantly striving to “find something that is genuinely suboptimal about the Democratic candidate and dwell on it endlessly to ‘balance’ coverage of the criminal in charge of the GOP.”

The approach works well for Trump and Republican leaders, who want to convince voters that they are “simultaneously just little guys like us — helpless victims of a liberal police state — and strong, powerful father figures who will protect us from the bad guys.”

It’s quite the balancing act.

Many historians believe that Ibn al-Haytham, who lived in present-day Iraq 3,000 years ago, was the world’s first scientist. He invented the pinhole camera, discovered the laws of refraction, and studied natural phenomena such as rainbows and eclipses. 

And if he lived today, he would be the subject of at least two dozen conspiracy theories and get death threats daily on Facebook.

You see, we Americans are not too fond of science. Oh, we take advantage of its benefits and breakthroughs — everything from the internal combustion engine to aspirin to the internet. But we don’t actually like the concept.

And our disdain for smart people in lab coats has gotten worse since the pandemic, which is not a surprise considering that millions of people still believe that both the virus and its vaccine are hoaxes or government plots.

According to a recent survey, the percentage of Americans who say science has a “mostly positive” effect on society is at 57%, down a staggering 16 percentage points since before the pandemic. And 8% of us think science has a “mostly negative” impact on society. I guess those people are Luddites, Amish, or mad scientists who have seen the error of their ways.

Now, as you can guess, trust in science is not the same across the political spectrum. Republicans have “less confidence in scientists and the benefits of science than Democrats.” In fact, fewer than half of Republicans (47%) say science has a mostly positive effect on society. That’s disturbing enough, but consider that back in the pre-pandemic days (if you can even remember them), about 70% of Republicans had a positive view of science.

That’s an enormous drop-off in such a short amount of time. It further illustrates that the Republican Party’s descent into ignorance has been rapid and decisive. These are people who once thought science was admirable, but they have jettisoned their logic and reason to fall into line behind their mad emperor, who despises people smarter than him.

It also shows how paranoia, fear, and distrust are the GOP’s favorite states of being. There is no such thing as a fringe theory in the modern Republican Party. For example, anti-vaxxers used to be pariahs. But now they are conservative leaders.

Now, this should end the debate over whether Republicans are anti-science. Yes, many liberals have made earnest pleas to respect different points of view and not insult conservatives. This is well-meaning nonsense.

Republicans are basically shouting, “We hate science.” There is no ambiguity here.

For example, the Texas Board of Education, which Republicans lead, recently rejected proposed science textbooks for schools because they contained “too much information about the climate crisis.”

In other words, there was too much science in the science textbooks.

The Republican-majority education board also objected to the textbooks because they “included teachings about evolution but not creationism.” As we know, conservatives “have long pushed textbook publishers to present pseudoscientific concepts like ‘intelligent design’ as equivalent to well-established scientific theories.”

But it still takes a startling amount of chutzpah to say, “If you don’t teach my religious hokum alongside your well-established scientific facts, I will ban your textbook, and I’ll tell you straight to your face that this was the main reason.”

Is that anti-science enough for you?

The disdain for science has filtered down through conservative leadership to the general populace. Currently, a plurality of Americans believe that God created humans, with evolution having no role at all.

Denying evolution is not an indicator of a well-educated society that respects science.

Speaking of evolution, the latest scientific tidbit that I have found fascinating is the work of ecologists who studied “the unequal distribution of birds and other species” throughout America. They found that the patterns of birds revealed “the impact of bigoted urban policies adopted decades ago.”

Science can reveal a lot to us. If we don’t kick it to the curb first.

If your favorite phrase is not “Fuck around and find out,” it should be.

This pithy warning marries the vulgar and profound, the practical and the metaphysical. It also covers a dizzying range of human misbehavior.

Drank too much at the party? Invested in a shady start-up? Asked a rude question? Cheated on your spouse?

In all cases, you know what happened next.

In 2016, America elected a president who was euphemistically called a “political neophyte.” More honest observers referred to him as “total nutjob who should not be allowed to even visit the Oval Office as part of a tour group.”

He led the nation into chaos, death, and economic calamity.

We fucked around and found out.

Now, eight years later, millions of Americans want to take another chance on this unrepentant disaster. These voters are either racists, love authoritarianism, or have suffered grievous blows to the head that have caused massive memory loss.

Maybe these people should heed warnings that their preferred candidate is such a threat to democracy that major media outlets are publishing entire issues analyzing all the ways that his election jeopardizes the nation’s continued existence.

On the other side of the political aisle, maybe Democrats should not be so lackadaisical about the votes of young people, African Americans, and Latinos. Maybe party leaders shouldn’t be so chill about polling that shows their candidate is trailing in multiple demographics, and is leading only among middle-aged suburban dentists in blue states. 

For that matter, perhaps the Democratic Party should realize that their last two candidates have been the most hated woman in America and the oldest person to ever run for president, respectively, offering voters the most uninspiring of choices for three straight elections now.

But no, the Democratic Party seems determined to fuck around and find out.

Future generations of Americans, if there are any, will be mystified that so many theoretically rational people saw catastrophe looming on the political horizon and then, rather than fight it, either accepted it with a shrug or enthusiastically embraced the madness.

These young Americans, struggling to rebuild a shattered nation, will ask why we didn’t do more. They will question our intelligence, morality, and sanity. They will beseech us, in tones that alternate between angry and perplexed, why we insisted on fucking around and finding out.

And we will have no answer.

This will be a very special year. Because it will be our last one.

Well, at least it will be our final year as a functioning democracy if a certain bigoted crime boss / cult leader wins the election this November.

Recently, media outlets have caught on to the fact — at long last — that an insane autocrat will be the Republican nominee for president, and he stands a decent chance of becoming the leader of a government that he tried to violently overthrow. 

Of course, he could not do this if millions of Americans didn’t think it was a good idea to support a narcissistic lunatic who almost destroyed the country when he was in charge. But it’s not really about the racists, conspiracy nuts, and authoritarian lovers who make up the GOP base.

As everyone knows, this election will be decided by that tiny sliver of undecided voters who are torn between a competent but uninspiring octogenarian and a slightly younger guy who faces 91 felony charges in four different cases and who once suggested that Americans drink bleach.

Yes, it’s a real fucking coin toss. Should they go with the man who dodders a bit or the raging misogynist whom dozens of former staffers, aides, and cabinet members say is a direct threat to democracy?

What’s an undecided voter to do?

Recently, the Washington Post looked at this strange demographic. In their article, they profiled an indecisive voter from my hometown of Milwaukee. The man truly didn’t know who to vote for, but he added that he thinks Trump is “hilarious.”

I must admit, I didn’t know that “hilarious” was a legitimate criterion for electing the leader of the free world. But even if it were, I fail to see the hilarity in a deranged old man who spews nonstop insults, lies, and hatred, interspersed only by delusional boasts about how great he is. It’s not exactly the foundation of a tight five for a solid standup act. But maybe I’m just not in on the joke.

And speaking of jokes, let’s consider the Electoral College.

Be honest. If you were building a country from scratch, would you even consider such a tortuous, bizarre, illogical, antidemocratic mechanism?

This “18th-century system — which is unlike anything used by the United States’ 21st-century democratic peers” is a preposterous contraption that “empowers a sliver of the U.S. population in a diminishing number of battleground states.”

In a nation of 330 million people, presidential elections now come down to “about 400,000 people in three or four states,” resulting in an infuriating farce where “more and more people feel that they don’t have a say.”

It also means that an easily persuaded guy in a battleground state who has no principles, concern for others, or awareness of real-world consequences — but who finds a particular candidate “hilarious” — has far more say than you do about whether or not an aspiring despot takes over the nation and grounds our society into dust.

Yeah, I’m still waiting for the punch line.