With thanks to Dave Hardy, again......
Trump in his current role is tribal leader of Red America. In this role, Trump
is free of any intellectual accountability so long as he stays loyal to the
elemental identity markers of his tribe. He can lie
blatantly, reverse himself back and forth repeatedly, or stammer incoherently
without consequence because his supporters have placed complete faith in him as
an authentic representative of the volk.
Clinton
controversially described half of Trump’s supporters as “irredeemable.” Trump
earlier this year framed the same idea in a more colorful and perhaps more
damning way: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and
I wouldn’t lose voters.” Both statements reflect the same underlying truth:
Trump enjoys a hard-core support that lies beyond persuasion, utterly immune
to even the starkest factual evidence. Clinton committed a
gaffe because she acknowledged a reality that literally every other
person in America, including Donald Trump himself, is permitted to speak
aloud.
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