My problem with this argument (apart from being full of vague and glittering generalities masquerading as "science") is two-fold.This.https://t.co/UHkKNrpJde pic.twitter.com/P43UMWcaQU
— George Conway (@gtconway3d) August 27, 2021
One: it assumes a normal baseline Trump somehow “re-wired.” That “baseline” was not present in the people who supported Trump and still clamor for him to be reinstated into the Presidency. The baseline that was there is not the same as in non-Trump supporters. It is clear to any sentient being Donald Trump is no more equipped to be POTUS than a cat; and I hold cats in very high regard. But the people who support Trump weren't "re-wired" by him; they were unleashed. It's the same phenomenon every "apocalypse" movie is based on, where the thin veneer of civilization is ripped away and we all descend into bestial chaos and blind panic as we claw each others eyes out because... reasons.
It doesn't happen that way in real life, as any disaster (floods, hurricanes, forest fires) can attest. The "veneer" of civilization isn't that thin and isn't even a veneer; it's bone deep, it's, dare I say, "human nature." But it makes a good story so we keep telling it to ourselves because too many of us do fear "the other," convinced that given half a chance they will rape our women and take our stuff and laugh at our impotence.
Yeah, that doesn't happen, either, but too many live as if it's going to any moment now.
Trump supporters are quite sincere in their anger and paranoia and fear. I've been around such people all my life, one way and another. The driving force of Trump is nothing other than racism. He simply expresses the fear of a brown planet some white people in America have. He didn't "re-wire" them; he gave public expression to their anxiety, and they flocked to him like moths to a light bulb. He set free their anger and fear. He allowed them to speak publicly. They weren't "re-wired." They were just released.
Two: "Re-wiring" is a metaphor that assumes the people supporting Trump have no agency in their decisions, no control over their impulses (unlike we wise sages who contemplate the nature of time and space and history and study the wisdom of the ages from our ivory towers). This is just another way of making "them" the "other" we don't really have any connection to, but whom we should help because, poor dears, they can't help themselves. The've been "re-wired." You know, that's how some people's brains work. Not ours, of course! But it does theirs. Such a pity.
I'm just surprised they stopped at "amygdala" and didn't bring up that favorite of the last decades of the last century, the "reptile brain." Ah, dem was de days! Good times, good times....(as much bullshit as The Bell Curve, but at least not quite as much overt racism. Still rooted in racism, but then, what method of distinction of large groups of people isn't, really?).
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