Electing Donald Trump was ultimate proof of how Americans are dumb and getting dumber. "Big-balls pea-brain" Trump told them he can do everything, and illiterate morons usually lap up such statements with a spoon. These are the same people who believe religious bullshit and are frantically awaiting the Messiah (a new one for Jews, and the return of the Jedi, a.k.a. Jesus for Christians, and a.k.a. the Mahdi for Shiite Muslims) to come and save them. Save them from what? Who knows, but hopefully from their own stupidity.
As a species, homo sapiens is equiped with a unique cerebral cortex that makes humans extremely adaptable and a successful species. But in the vast majority of modern humans, the cortex also plays dangerous tricks, which makes the species also uniquely deadly. No other species wages wars on large scale with the brutality of humans.
The human brain's cerebral cortex demands answers to everything around it in the environment. When facts are available to explain something (e.g. clouds are facts that explain rain), the brain stops asking the question. But when it has no explanation (e.g. Why do people suffer and die? Why must I die?), the fitness-driven brain invents an explanation to allow its bearer to continue functioning, such as "Oh, you don't really die; you go somehere else like heaven and paradise where you meet with your parents and ancestors, and you get to meet the Big Zombie in the Sky called God in person and you'll stop suffering." That explanation is universal to all human cultures, and it is called religion.
Trump is a modern manifestation of Messianism. Given the increasing complexity of our world (technology, globalization, information...), individual humans feel more and more impotent. Their brains' cerebral cortices cannot provide answers to the questions raised by a complex environment. "Who are all these people with different hairs, skins, colors, cultures, religions...? How do I deal with all these machines (cars, computers, cell phones, robots...) that are increasingly interconnected?"
A hundred or two hundred years ago, the environment of your average human was relatively simple. One grew up in one place, rarely traveled far or saw people from other cultures and regions of the world, had simple needs for daily life... Nowadays we have to process a multitude of complex questions and most people do not learn enough to understand some of the answers that sciencce and technology provide. Hence, the feeling of losing control and a search for easy-to-process answers.
For example, Covid? What the heck is a virus? What the heck is a vaccine? Who are these people saying I should take the vaccine?.... Too complicated to understand the biology and the medicine. Then someone says, "Don't bother. It's too complicated. But I have a simpler explanation: It's a plot. It's a hoax. It's a trick. It's a conspiracy. Trust me, I know. You don't have to make an effort to understand. You don't have to think. I've done the thinking for you". It's an easier explanation for the brain to be told what to believe than having to do the hard work of trying to really understand. One of those "someones" is Donald Trump.
By cultivating the comfort of ignorance in people, Trump becomes the only one who knows, the Messiah, the easy answer provider. "I don't have to think when I listen to him; he's doing all the thinking for me. He alone can fix it". He doesn't even have to provide facts to explain his anwers to my questions.
Alas, the long history of the human species shows us that there have been many messiahs, many tellers of doom, many prophets, many explainers of the unexplainable, many "great men" (a.k.a. bloody mass murderers and conquerors) that have come and gone, but not one of them has solved the fundamental questions with real answers. If they had, the species wouldn't be in the mess it is in, it wouldn't have to wage all these wars...
The ultimate answer is in accepting that until we find new facts to explain certain things, we just have to accept that not every question needs an immediate answer. Not every problem must have a solution one can buy off the shelf. We must combat our own cerebral cortex and not remain enslaved by it. Contentment is the key to carrying our happiness inside of us, rather than keep absurdly searching for answers that don't exist and which charlatans like Trump tell us they have.
======================================================
Authoritarianism Expert Shatters A Trump ‘Illusion’: ‘One Of The Biggest Scams Of All’
Lee Moran
Mon, November 11, 2024
Authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat spoke on MSNBC’s “The Weekend” about one particular appeal that President-elect Donald Trump had for some voters that resulted in his decisive 2024 election victory ― and how the “illusion of competency” is “one of the biggest scams of all” of authoritarian leaders.
Many people “would like to be relieved of the burden of choice” when it comes to voting in elections, and that is what Trump promised during the campaign to evangelical Christians, Ben-Ghiat noted.
“They are not afraid of being relieved of that burden of choice and letting somebody else make the decisions,” she explained. “And so, in fact, often authoritarian personalities who are like the big boss at home or in the workplace, the bullies, they are the ones who are glad in the political ground to give up their agency and voice to somebody else.”
Trump promised voters that “I alone can fix it,” Ben-Ghiat recalled.
“This is reassuring to some people,” she continued, calling it “very sad” because, throughout history, people have all eventually discovered “that this brought disaster upon the country.”
“The illusion of competency is very important,” she added. “That’s why they’re going to put their trust in him to solve their problems because they think he’s competent. And that’s one of the biggest scams of all.”
No comments:
Post a Comment