The "faithless" media and Trump

There's a front page story in the Washington Post this morning headlined "a defiant Trump meets the TV news crowd in private -- and let's them have it."  For anyone who followed the campaign, there's nothing particularly surprising in it, neither Trump's criticism of the press for being "unfair" and "dishonest," nor his lack of graciousness.  "One participant asked Trump for his definition of 'fair,'" the post writes, "noting that part of the news media’s job is to critically examine a candidate’s words and background. Trump replied that his definition was 'truth.'”  For many of us, this assertion has been (and remains) somewhat baffling, particularly coming from someone who has been called out by "fact-checkers" more often than "lying Ted" or "crooked Hillary" combined.  It would seem that Trump's version of "truth" comes back to a certain sort of image that he holds of himself and that he wishes to project to the world.  One could delve into the self-image, his selfie-self, but it would have to include assertions like "no one respects women more than I do" and his "I called it" prescience.  Neither stands up well to "fact checking," and there is almost always evidence to contradict the assertions, but nevertheless the "truth," the only truth that counts, is Trump's revelation of himself.  And so, "the truth is no one respects women more than he does" and "the truth is Ford kept jobs in the US because he called out their Mexican plant," never mind that Ford planned all along to "repurpose" the US plant and that their plans were well publicized and well reported.  Anything that contravenes his revealed truth is "unfair" and "dishonest."  

Trump is right about one thing, however, the press did not understand him well, or his appeal to the American public.  That much, however, is patently obvious in the fact that he won.  Only a few called it, and those who did understood something about Trump that most missed.  One of the more prescient, as it turned out, was Richard Rorty.  A rather contentious philosopher in his own right, he wrote a defense of an European style democratic socialism in Achieving our Country, and a part of that defense came in the form of a warning that is now circulating in social media.  He wrote:

[M]embers of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers — themselves desperately afraid of being downsized — are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.

At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for — someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. …

One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past 40 years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. … All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.

If that doesn't sound prescient, I'm not sure what does.  Whether it was a result of his "big brain" or just visceral instinct, Trump's hammering of Ford's plan to open a plant in Mexico drove home the point that neither big business nor the government had any real allegiance to the American worker -- that neither were trying prevent wages from sinking -- that both were, "in truth," conspiring to export jobs through trade agreements and sink wages through foreign competition.  If ever there were a symbol of American industry, with the possible exception of Chevy, it was Ford, and so the Mexican plant had the acute sting of betrayal.  Trump's "truth" had nothing what-so-ever to do with the particular business decision at hand, which, it turns out is easily fact-checked and easily debunked.  Trump's "truth" was the symbolic revelation of betrayal and no amount of fact-checking, no amount of debunking, will dissuade those for whom the symbolism of betrayal resonated.  Trump's truth is a different kind of truth altogether, and by all accounts it resonated with a "non suburban" electorate.  Like Zarathustra's prophecy come to life, Trump descended on his golden escalator to promise that, once elected "the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen," not to mention the entrenched politicians and the Clinton News Network that facilitates them, "will no longer be calling the shots."

There is a cultural clash, of course, between Trump and the press, many of whom want to believe that they are observant of "truth," in both senses of the word observant.  They have not only a commitment to truth, but the sort of truth that can be verified through multiple sources.  (Metaphorically speaking, the reporter may see a ghost, may be absolutely convinced he sees a ghost, but nevertheless nudges his companion and asks, "do you see that?"  If the companion says, "no," the reporter thinks to himself, not "what is wrong with my colleague?" but rather "I wonder if I need to lay off the bourbon?")  Symbolic truth is fine, of course, but only if it accords with the facts, and the facts are available to everyone who cares to look.  Trump, however, is appealing to a revelatory truth, and Trump is the prophetic revealer of truth.   It is one thing for Joe Dirt to call out the tricky lawyers and entrenched politicians, quite another thing for the likes of Trump, who has all that any American could want and then some, to call out wall street and the coastal elites.  He is, if not exactly an "insider," nevertheless someone who should "know," and has come to "testify" on behalf of the common man.  He is speaking to an audience long observant of "truth," who have not only an on-going commitment to the revealed truth of the Lord, but one should note it is always the sort of truth that comes from on high and is revealed only to those blessed to receive it.   Trump clearly has been blessed.  If Joe Dirt were to imagine heaven, it would look a lot like Trump tower, and while Melania may not be one's cup of coffee, there are plenty of other super-models to imagine in her place. Trump is, perhaps, more Zarathustrian than Christian, and some evangelicals were queasy in their support for him, but the archetype is clear.  Trump clearly sees himself less as a "strong-man," per se, more as a messianic figure, descended from heaven as the singular revealer of a truth that cannot be contravened. 

Within this frame, it seems almost silly to ask, "can Trump tolerate dissent?"  The answer is clearly, "no," and not only "no, but hell no."  The first commandment is always, "thou shalt have no other gods before me," and Trump touches on something basic.  For those who found it odd that Trump, with more four-pinocchio and more pants-on-fire ratings than any other politician over the last two decades, could be seen as more "trustworthy" than Clinton.  She lied, of course, but she lied in ways that all politicians lie, to cover or obscure inconvenient or embarrassing "facts."  Trump's lies were of an altogether different order, and the first media mistake was to assume a false equivalency between Clinton's lies and Trump's lies.  His lies are a test of faith.  For those who find it odd that evangelicals can believe (really believe?) that the earth was created in a week with Sunday off, don't fully understand the nature of "faith."  If one chooses "faith," one has also chosen to believe that modern astro-physics and Darwinism are "lies," despite all the contrary evidence, as a demonstration of that faith.  It is not credulousness, or under-educated stupidity -- and to assume a condescending attitude, as I sometimes find myself doing, is insulting.  Faith, rather, is an act of choice, of will, and Trump's loyalty oaths, among other things, were no different in kind from the evangelical preacher who asks his parishioners, as a public demonstration of faith, to come forward.  If one has chosen faith, if one has chosen Trump, one must as an act of will believe (really believe?) the revealed truth that they are now blessed to receive.  The media are simply tools of a corrupt elite, and their truth is at best a distraction, at worst a seduction away from the deeper, more profound, more significant truth -- the truth with a capital T emblazoned in the golden glow one "feels" as the message resonates in one's heart.   Trump has asserted over and over that only he really knows, only he can really save us, and he demands nothing more than complete faith, then too nothing less than complete faith in the singular gift he brings to the American people.

Do I think Trump has tapped into this archetype cynically?  No, not really.  Personally, I think he's crafty, but I don't think he's smart enough to think it through as a plan.  Although the golden glow of Trump most likely conceals a profound emptiness at the core, and there is the narcissist's outsized need to be loved, I do think he believes (really believes?) in his own mythology.  He has been proselytizing his own exceptionalism throughout his life.  While his three a.m. tweets are perhaps the pathetic push of a man who cannot stop proselytizing lest the doubt seep through the cracks, he nevertheless WANTS to believe, and he REALLY wants us to believe, he is the messianic figure he presents himself to be.  So, no, I don't think Trump is setting out with dictatorial designs, but I do think, emphatically so, that he won't be able to help himself.  He will demand nothing more, but then again nothing less than complete faith.   If there is a lesson to be learned it is this: it's not simply, or not only, that faith cannot tolerate dissent and gets a bit pissy in tweets.  The whole point of choosing faith is the choice to purge one's self of the anathema of doubt, and to purge one's environment of those "satanic" forces that foster doubt, and it's easy enough to find those who are "faithless" -- they are the one's who dissent, the one's who reveal antipathy and skepticism, the one's who do not submit to the true authority -- and from there, in the history of "faith," bloodshed ensues and in the chaos that follows, more bloodshed in the efforts to restore order.