Trump's Opposition: Mutating Toward.......

Trump’s Opposition: Mutating Toward……

Peter Schultz

            That Trump’s opposition is mutating is illustrated by their increasingly shrill cries, cries that seem to echo those of Trump’s supporters when, in reference to Hillary, they bellowed, “Lock her up! Lock her up!”

            We shouldn’t be surprised by this, I think, insofar as this seems to be a fairly common phenomenon among the self-righteous who possess and/or think they deserve to possess a great deal of power. When the efforts of these types are resisted, or are not recognized as legitimate, they become increasingly frustrated and begin to imagine that their enemies are fanatics beyond habilitation or rehabilitation, beyond anything but the naked exercise of power. Thus, cries of “Lock him up! Lock him up!” are heard throughout Trumpland.

            This phenomenon has been noted among torturers who, when they are unsuccessful in “breaking” their prisoner, begin to feel as if they were being victimized. The tortured are torturing the torturer! With predictable results. Similarly, this phenomenon is visible in escalations during war, especially among military forces that are deemed “superior” to their allegedly “lesser” – that is, weaker and more backward – enemies. The allegedly superior forces, feeling victimized, resort to ever-greater force to try to prevail, with predictable and ghastly results.

            Much of the rhetoric of the anti-Trump “resistance” carries with it an implicit assertion that Trump and his supporters are “lesser” than they, the resisters; that is, less educated, less socially respectable, less cultured, less rational, etc. Hillary called Trump supporters “deplorables,” indicating that she and her supporters are superior to her enemies in the Trump camp. She and her supporters should have prevailed – and even should prevail now. Hence, impeachment is justified if for no other reason than to right “the wrong” done in the 2016 election. Because Trump is “less,” hence “inferior, he should not be president and he cannot be a legitimate president.

            This mindset often leads to extremism, to a kind of fanaticism by which the “superior” stakes all on defeating, oppressing, subduing the “inferior.” As a result, those who like to think of themselves as superior undermine the ground of their alleged superiority. Doing battle with an alleged “beast,” they become beastly themselves. And it becomes a question of exactly who is more deplorable.