Donald Djingis Trump

Among the many emails which I get every day there are always a number which come from US organizations which support Trump and his Republicans, and I have (so far) not unsubscribed these because I wish to get now and then an impression about the methods or our political opponents (although I think that we are in Europe not yet quite as far misdeveloped as the US system).

Among this load of, e.g., offers to send firearms (supposedly for free), promotion of alternative miracle cures, occasional rabid Evangelical claims and comments there was one impression which puzzled me: any mentioning of Democrats is consistently in derogatory terms, ridiculing, expressing outright contempt, and similar, and the way the present mid-term elections are going, the method seems to work very well. WHY?

After some thought there came to my mind some opinion which is ascribed to Djingis Khan, that undeniably very successful founder of the largest ever Eurasian empire: When somebody asked him what was BEST, his answer was that ”Best is victory, to slay one’s enemies and to drive them like panicking cattle, to reduce their families to tears of helplessness, to rape their wives and daughters!” Well, we may think this uncivilized, but what is he actually expressing here? Is it perhaps the same feeling which we experience if ”we have shown them” and ”let them have it”? Occuring in a situation where we feel FREE to demonstrate to those self-evidently far inferior losers how little they are really worth compared to us? This can be quite an intoxicating feeling which may easily result in something like addiction, but the precondition for it is of course that there actually is, or has been, a real victory. As in the case of Trump has ectually been.

If we now imagine that Trump’s loyal followers are something like addicted to the feeling of being victorious (a feeling which is cultivated by Trump by his steady flow of claims about his opponents, about minorities and about the world in general – he is reported to have produced up to now 8,3 public lies per day in office) we can also expect that they themselves will do everything in their power to continue feeling as they do. E.g. we can expect them to vote eagerly for the Republicans (especially extremist ones) in any upcoming election. Which is in fact a problem. And what to do about it?

If I find in my inbox an invitation to sign an open letter to Trump (or some of his ilk) which begins with the formulation ”My name is Ernst Mecke and I am FURIOUS”, then that may be a sometimes successful way of getting the recipient of the invitation to contribute money (because a certain minimum contribution is the precondition for the signature to be counted and sent), but in the intended recipient of the message it will at most produce a feeling of satisfaction (he has shown it again to those losers, and now they are helplessly excited, crybabies as they are …). Far better it would be to tell those in power that one is amused (indicating that they have FAILED with something which they possibly intended). Such will make them of course angry, and to tell their FOLLOWERS that one is amused will certainly NOT make them vote differently. To THEM it could be better to tell in clear and friendly terms that at the same time while they are busy pursuing their victory and feeling victorious, their so very loud leaders are very quietly stealing from them more and more of the very preconditions for a bearable life (such as social security, medical services, the possibility to organize themselves in trade unions and negotiate living-wages). But the impression from the emails I get is that such thoughts are not widely spread in the USA (and I do not know how to get these ideas into their heads). Thus, we have just to wait and hope (while realizing that even a Democratic victory is no guarantee for a better development of the US system). And here in Europe (at least WESTERN Europe) we have, so far, not yet the situation that a Trump-like politician had won an actual victory. But what to do in OUR situation would be a different discussion.