Why they vote for the monster
Dispatches from the red state
Everyone wants to know how this race is so neck-and-neck. How can anyone vote for a monster? For charades over truth? For fascism over democracy? For fear over curiosity?
At a recital last weekend, my daughter dressed as a starfish and belted out Cosette‘s timeless song from Les Miserables, “Castle on a Cloud.”
I had explained to her the meaning behind the character, play, and historical context. My voice cracked and I choked on tears as I described how the poor rose up in defiance, as the French Olympic Opening Ceremonies captured so masterfully and artfully.
My ten-year-old autistic daughter who defends mosquitoes, saves every spider, and screams if her brother snaps the branch of a decayed Queen Anne’s Lace bush, responded in the same way strangers on the internet responded on a viral video of my friends’ house washing into the river. “Yeah, so?”
This ten-year-old girl who feels all the world’s sorrows, who I’ve seen collapse under the weight of her own injustice—because for a hypersensitive selkie-girl in a hyper-capitalist, hyper-competitive world running at warp speed where physicality, conformity, and the Scientific Method reign supreme, life is not fair. She’s not psychotic, just afraid of her feelings. And rightly so.
I believe this is why people victim-blame. Blaming the victim shuts off our hearts and feelings so we feel less, therefore it hurts less. This is why people blame the rape victim for dressing slutty, or unhoused persons for willfully bringing their economic hardships onto themselves.
Why, when a house in a red state falls into the river, liberals shrug it off and say, “Well, that’s what happens when you vote for a climate change-denying governor,” as they did in the New York Times’ comment section.
It hurts to admit that innocent people suffer needlessly. Whatever pain I’m feeling for poor orphan Cosette, my daughter feels it ten times more. And then she won’t be able to get out of bed and perform the song.
But we have to get out of bed and perform the song. How, when it hurts too much?
Maybe this is why Trumpers wave Fuck your Feelings flags. Why they drive big, lifted trucks and own big guard dogs and buy so many guns. (One guy I know has enough guns to put his kid through college.)
I know some of these guys. Many are extremely sensitive, which is why, thanks to machismo cowboy culture, they likely weren’t given permission to feel their feelings. They don’t know how to feel these feelings or what to do with them, so they suppress them by becoming numb and victim-blaming. Just like our grandmothers probably didn’t know about periods and consent.
Feelings (and immigrants) are dangerous, and the Monster and guns and lifted trucks and Rottweilers give them protection.
Maybe the Monster makes them laugh and fills their brains with champagne bubbles, which is preferable over Truth, which is pain.
The Monster lies so well— just like that boyfriend you had in high school who told you everything you wanted to hear, and part of you knew it was a lie just so he would sleep with you, but you didn’t care because all you wanted was to feel some inkling of pleasure.
Lie to me, you whispered. Just make it stop hurting.
We can let our hearts break. We don’t have shame and victim-blame those who will vote for the monster charlatan. We can light a candle and say our prayers that Truth will win. Here’s an optimistic post from Anne Lamott. Thanks to my mom for sharing.
Xo,
Summer
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Historically, humans do tend towards authoritarianism. That said, I’m so triggered by support for fascism, I may have driven home from the grocery store yesterday just screaming f&@! you at every Donald Dump sign I passed.
Summer:
To me, the biggest problem is that intellectuals and humanists like me try very hard to understand why white, straight males overwhelmingly support Trump. After the MAGA rally at MSG, things became much clearer. MAGA is not about "policy." It's about racism, misogyny, and homophobia. Having grown up working class by the steel plants in Buffalo, having worked in them and having been a drywall subcontractor for a while, and having then married a wealthy woman (my first wife) and having thus spent time in country clubs before going on to graduate school to become an English professor, I think I am a bit of an authority on straight white guys of every socio-economic class. I try to explain their motivations and my disgust in this week's Substack, arguing at the end, with a reference to Lysistrata, that our only hope is women.
https://johnsonp.substack.com/p/why-have-white-guys-lost-their-collective